Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday hoped his ongoing tour further enhance political mutual trust, expand economic and trade cooperation, promote humanities exchanges and strengthen strategic coordination between Russia and China.

This will help give a new impetus to the China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination and serve the interests of the two peoples, Hu said at a home dinner Thursday evening given by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Hu said he is very pleased to visit Russia again. He noted thatrecent years have seen a good momentum of development in bilateral strategic partnership of coordination, while bilateral cooperationhas been continuously expanded in the political, economic, trade, energy resources, investment, cultural, educational and military sectors, with satisfactory achievements.

Both countries have also undertaken good coordination and cooperation in international affairs, he said.

Putin said he felt very happy to welcome Hu to visit Moscow again, saying Russia highly valued its strategic partnership of coordination with China and bilateral cooperation in the political and economic sectors has scored great progress.

The two countries will hold their first military exercises this year, Putin said, adding Hu's ongoing visit would forcefully push forward Russia-China relations.

Besides Moscow, Hu will also visit Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city after Moscow and St. Petersburg. And the two countries will sign a number of cooperation agreements during Hu's visit.

Hu arrived here earlier Thursday for a four-day state visit, before proceeding to visit Kazakhstan, the second leg of his ongoing three-nation tour, which will also take him to Britain where he will attend the G8 plus five summit.

Editor: Yan