President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and President Jiang Zemin of China ended a two-day summit in Beijing yesterday celebrating a "strategic partnership" and vowing to oppose the "use of pretexts such as human rights and humanitarian intervention to destroy the sovereignty of independent states".
Mr Yeltsin, who defied pleas from his doctors and his wife not to make the arduous trip from Moscow to Beijing, appeared invigorated by the overwhelming support he received from the Chinese leadership for his military campaign in Chechnya.
"Jiang Zemin is my great friend," Mr Yeltsin told Russian reporters before he departed, blowing kisses to his hosts. "Our two countries hold the same basic views on the current situation in the world."
The joint communique by the two leaders amounted to a rejection of the evolving Western doctrine, based on the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, that state sovereignty no longer provides cover for gross human rights violations, and the international community has a moral duty to protect citizens from abusive governments.
China censored Mr Yeltsin's warning to President Clinton on Thursday that he should not forget Russian was a nuclear power, emphasising instead that the term "strategic partnership" did not imply an alliance against any third party. The fact that Chinese newspapers did not carry his remarks - something which would be decided at the highest government level - was taken by Western diplomats in Beijing as a sign that China did not want to jeopardise its improving relations with the US.
By contrast Russian newspapers splashed his comments, with Sevodnya (Today) saying a "solemn bringing down of the iron curtain" between Russia and the West had taken place in China, referring to the impact of Mr Yeltsin's tough statements.
Referring to President Clinton, Mr Yeltsin said: "It seems he has for a minute, for a second, for half a minute, forgotten that Russia has a full arsenal of nuclear weapons. He has forgotten about that. Therefore he decided to flex his muscles, as they say."
Mr Clinton replied in Washington: "I haven't forgotten that. You know, I didn't think he'd forgotten America was a great power when he disagreed with what I did in Kosovo."
The bear-hug summit - characterised by the beaming embrace between Mr Jiang and Mr Yeltsin when they met - ended in the joint communique in which, probably for the first time, two permanent members of the UN Security Council jointly rejected world criticism of their human rights records.
Russia has been strongly censured for the brutality of its military assault on the Chechen capital, Grozny, while China is frequently taken to task internationally for its treatment of dissidents, and it also has secessionist movements in Tibet and Xingiang province.
The meeting also advanced Russia's "strategic partnership" with China. The communique said that "plans by some countries to build an anti-missile system in the Asia-Pacific region will sabotage the region's peace and stability" - a reference to US proposals for a missile shield to protect Japan and possibly South Korea and Taiwan from attack.
The two countries also opposed US efforts to alter the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the US and the then Soviet Union, which limits missile defences. "Countries which sabotage basic disarmament treaties must bear full responsibility for resulting damage to strategic stability and international security," the joint statement said.
Mr Jiang, the only major world leader to back the Chechnya campaign, and Mr Yeltsin also reiterated their strong condemnation of the US-led NATO attack on Yugoslavia earlier this year, and called for a "multipolar world", i.e., one not dominated by the US.
Yesterday , Mr Jiang took his guest on a stroll through the grounds of Beijing's Diaoyutai State Guest House complex. Mr Jiang wore a hat against the December chill but Mr Yeltsin (68), who is recovering from pneumonia, went bare-headed.