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US Ambassador Thanks China's
Separatist Region for Help in War on Terror
BEIJING, Aug 3 (AFP) - US ambassador Clark Randt
thanked authorities in China's insurgency wracked
Xinjiang province for their contribution in the fight
against terrorism, state media reported Saturday.
"Speaking as a representative of the government and
the American people, Randt thanked the Xinjiang
Chinese for their contribution in the fight against
terrorism," the Xinhua website reported.
As well as supporting the US-led fight against
terrorism on the global level, Beijing has been
battling Muslim separatists in its northwest region of
Xinjiang where they want to carve out an independent
East Turkestan.
Xinjiang governor Ablat Abdurexit told Randt on
Thursday in the province's capital Urumqi that the
separatists "used terrorist actions, as well as
religion to carry out their acts of religious
extremism and their so-called religious war,"
according to the report.
A spokesperson at the Centre of Information of East
Turkenstan, a separatist organisation based in
Germany, said the US ambassador's remarks would "send
a bad signal to Beijing which is going to use it to
attack the Uighurs," the main ethnic group in the
region.
"We regret the words of the US ambassador," said
spokesman Dilxat Rexit.
Last December a US envoy on the anti-terrorist
campaign, Francis Taylor, said in Beijing that
Washington did not consider Xinjiang's Muslim
separatists to be terrorists, even though US forces in
Afghanistan had captured "people from western China",
fighting alongside the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
He suggested that the separatist question in Xinjiang
and Tibet "should be resolved politically rather than
using counter-terrorism methods."
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