Russia and China agree on Syria, North Korea

China and Russia agree entirely with each other’s positions on the crisis in Syria and on North Korea’s nuclear program, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said on Saturday in Moscow.

“The sides hold 100 percent coinciding positions on the issues of North Korea and Syria,” Cheng, who was accompanying Vice Premier Li Keqiang on a visit to Russia, told reporters through an interpreter.

Russia and China have protected Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by blocking two U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning a government crackdown in which the United Nations says 9,000 people have been killed since March 2011.

While publicly opposing foreign interference and particularly military intervention in Syria, they have both backed U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan‘s peace plan in Security Council votes and urged the government and rebels to adhere to a ceasefire.

China and Russia criticised North Korea’s defiant launch of a long-range rocket this…