MOSCOW (AP) - Russia and China signed their first friendship treaty in more than a half century on Monday, promising to ``remain friends forever'' while stressing their partnership was not a military alliance aimed against third countries. (Read photo caption below). Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin also reiterated their opposition to Washington's plans to deploy a missile defense shield, but their careful language suggested both were looking for a way out of confrontation with the United States.
The Bush administration said the new friendship pact posed no particular threat to the United States. ``They have a long border in the region, and it's important for them to get along,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday in Washington.
Jiang's arrival Sunday followed the United States' successful test of a missile interceptor - a step forward in Washington's quest to build a missile defense system.
Neither Jiang nor Putin commented on the test, or on the Pentagon's plans to start building a new missile defense test range in Alaska.
But in a statement, the two leaders reasserted that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1972, was a ``cornerstone of strategic stability'' that must be preserved.
The post-Soviet friendship treaty signed Monday is the first since 1950, when Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung created a Soviet-Chinese alliance - a friendship that slid into rivalry and then hostility in the 1960s. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow and Beijing have tried to put the strife behind them and forged what they call a ``strategic partnership.''
Russia and China, which have vastly different nuclear capabilities, both warn the proposed U.S. missile shield could tilt the strategic balance and trigger a new arms race.

PHOTO CAPTION:
Chinese President Jiang Zemin(L) exchanges documents with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, July 16, 2001. The leaders of Russia and China said they wanted the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact between Moscow and Washington to be preserved in response to a successful U.S. test of an anti-missile system. (Misha Japaridze/Pool via Reuters)