On April 22, Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdul Rahman Al-Attyah in Riyadh.

Hu appreciated the GCC's positive role in safeguarding peace and stability of the Middle East and Gulf region, promoting economic growth of this region and ensuring international energy supply and stability of the international energy market. He said that in recent years, the relations between China and the GCC have made positive progress and China-GCC cooperation and bilateral cooperation between China and member countries of the GCC have had a sound complexion of mutual complementarity and mutual promotion. The GCC and its member states have become China's important cooperative partners.

In order to strengthen China's relations with the GCC and its member countries, Hu pointed out that both sides should give a full role to the political consultation mechanism, reinforce cooperation, build up mutual trust and jointly safeguard peace and stability of the Middle East and Gulf region. Efforts should be made to give play to advantage of high economic complementarity, expand economic and trade cooperation, accelerate the process of free trade zone negotiations and develop bilateral cooperation in the areas of investment and finance. Both sides should also improve the energy dialogue mechanism, jointly safeguard stability of the international energy market and deepen bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation in the energy field.

Attyah indicated that the GCC encourages its member countries to develop ties with China and strengthen bilateral cooperation in the areas of economy, trade, investment and energy. The GCC appreciates China's positive attitude in bilateral negotiations on the free trade zone and hopes to realize the goal of establishing the free trade zone at an early date.

Attyah made positive comments on China's positive position in the areas of safeguarding peace in the Middle East, supporting the Iraqi reconstruction, properly handling the Iranian nuclear issue and ensuring security of the Gulf region and looked forward to China's bigger role on these issues.