"China will substantially implement the treaty in a bid to substantiate and cement China-Afghanistan all-round cooperative partnership," Hu said.

Hu spoke highly of the progress of China-Afghanistan ties, expressing his appreciation for the Afghan government's emphasis on bilateral relations and its adherence to the one-China policy.

He noted that, with the concerted efforts from both sides, the China-Afghan relations have progressed well since the establishment of the new Afghan government.

"The two sides share frequent high-level exchanges of visits, fruitful cooperation in various fields and good coordination on international and regional issues and we are satisfied with that," Hu added.

Hu reiterated that China respects the social system and development path chosen by the Afghan people and will support the Afghan government's efforts to safeguard national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, maintain social stability and develop the economy, promising that China will actively participate in the reconstruction process.

Hu said China will expand cooperation with Afghanistan in economy and trade, transportation, telecommunication, agriculture, water resources utilization as well as education, cultural exchanges and human resources development.

"China is also willing to offer intellectual support for Afghanistan's social and economic reconstruction process and improve cooperation on education, culture and human resource development," Hu said.

China values the communication and coordination with Afghanistan in international and regional affairs, and is willing to cooperate within multilateral frameworks such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Hu said.

Karzai said that China, an important neighbor of Afghanistan, is playing an important role in Afghanistan's reconstruction.

Afghanistan welcomes Chinese companies to take part in its economic development, and is willing to maintain long-term good-neighborly relations with China, Karzai said.

He also expressed his appreciation for China's firm political support and economic assistance, which have made a major contribution to the country's reconstruction.

The Afghan government will continue to uphold the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in international and regional affairs and to be a bridge for China's cooperation with central Asian countries, Karzai said.

Karzai arrived in Beijing on Sunday evening, kicking off a four-day state visit.

He is also scheduled to tour northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

"Our actions are not bound by the Pyongyang Declaration, the joint declaration made at the six-party talks in September last year or any other statements," Kyodo quoted the official as telling Japanese reporters in North Korea.

The official said his remarks represented Pyongyang's official line on the matter, Kyodo said.

There was nothing in Tuesday's Kyodo report to explain Pyongyang's declaration.

An agreement reached at six-party nuclear disarmament talks in September does not specifically address missile tests by the North. However, negotiators pledged to work toward establishing peace in the region. The six countries participating in the talks - North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States - also agreed to work toward normalizing relations.

North Korea and Japan agreed in 2002 to place a moratorium on missile tests.

The leader of the Islamists who now control most of southern Somalia accused the United States on Saturday of orchestrating what he called a border incursion by hundreds of Ethiopian troops.

"We want the whole world to know what's going on," Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, told reporters in the provincial town of Jowhar. "The United States is encouraging Ethiopia to take over the area."

American officials said they were not involved in an incursion, and Ethiopian authorities denied the claims that several hundred of their soldiers had entered Somalia in the southwestern Gedo region on Saturday morning. What had occurred, Ethiopian officials told reporters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, was that their troops had massed on their side of the border to prevent an incursion from the Islamists in Somalia.

"Ethiopia has a right to monitor its border," said Bereket Simon, an adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The reports touch on a very real concern in Somalia. Ethiopia has sent troops into Somalia in the past to root out suspected militants, and the Ethiopian government has distanced itself from the new Islamist administration in Mogadishu. It favors instead the fledging transitional government led by President Abdullahi Yusuf that is based well outside Mogadishu in the provincial town of Baidoa.

It is clear, however, that the Islamists in Mogadishu now hold the bulk of the power in the country.

The militias associated with them have sealed their grip on most of the south. They first defeated Mogadishu's longtime warlords on June 6 after months of fighting that left more than 300 people dead and thousands injured.

The Islamists set up Shariah courts, based on Islamic law, across Somalia in recent years, trying to pull the country from its long decline into anarchy. The United States has accused them of harboring a small number of people suspected of being Al Qaeda members. The courts union leaders deny links to extremists.

On Friday, the courts union arranged a large demonstration in Mogadishu against plans to allow foreign peacekeepers into Somalia to quell the long spell of violence. "We will be able to bring peace without bringing in foreign troops," said Sheik Abdulkadir Ali Omar, the deputy chairman of the courts union.

Two of the main warlords who had battled the Islamists in recent months fled Mogadishu late Friday by boat, according to news agency reports, meaning the end of the 11-member, American-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, the secular warlords' coalition. Islamic leaders said that an American warship had picked them up off Somalia's coast, a claim that Navy officials disputed.

The assertions of American involvement in the border dispute and the escape of the warlords stem from efforts by the Bush administration to prevent the Islamists from taking power in Mogadishu. The Central Intelligence Agency provided payments to warlords for their assistance in rooting out extremists within the courts union leadership, a controversial policy that has since been widely criticized in Washington.

Without a central government since 1991, Somalia now finds itself in unsettled times, with the fighting that has raged on the streets of the capital for so long now quelled but the future still unknown.

"I can only do what I have done," said Halima Nur, 68, who lives in a squatters camp on the grounds of an abandoned school in Mogadishu and has buried 9 of her 12 children over the last decade. "I can wait and see."

The same day, eight soldiers, including the colonel who commanded them, were arrested based largely on evidence obtained by agents of the federal prosecutor's office as the sun set on the slain officers' corpses. With the investigation expanding, seven more soldiers were ordered to turn themselves in Saturday. All will face charges of aggravated homicide.

"You could hear the police shouting they had families and begging the soldiers not to shoot,'' said Arcesio Morales, 56, a patient at the psychiatric center who hid in a ditch during the 30-minute fusillade.

The allegation of a premeditated massacre follows findings by the United Nations and human rights groups that Colombia's military is behind a recent wave of disappearances and killings of unarmed civilians.

Together, the charges have badly damaged the credibility of an army on which Uribe has leaned heavily in a remarkably successful effort to reduce rebel attacks and kidnappings for ransom. The ambush also drew a rare rebuke from Colombia's backers in the U.S. Congress, which has approved $4 billion in mostly military and anti-narcotics aid since 2000.

"What took place in Jamundi changes your thought process,'' Iguarán, the chief federal prosecutor, said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Previously I had the impression that the human rights abuses, if inevitable in every army throughout the world, wasn't a real problem in Colombia. Now I have my doubts.''

The scandal has reinvigorated allegations that troops were involved in a wave of killings of civilians who the army claimed were rebels killed in combat.

Just this month an army captain and three subalterns were arrested in Antioquia state on suspicion of masterminding the June 1 abduction of salesman Saúl Manco Jaramillo, who was snatched from a taxi while with his girlfriend. He hasn't been seen since.

In Washington, Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., proposed cutting U.S. aid to Colombia's military and police next year by $30 million, a symbolic 5 percent.

His proposal failed, although 174 members of Congress supported it. The vote coincided with the State Department's certification that the Colombian army is making progress in rooting out abuses within its ranks, despite a spotty record and a long history of abetting illegal, right-wing paramilitary groups.

Although the investigation into the police ambush is still proceeding, the army's version that it was a case of friendly fire didn't add up.

The massacre took place in broad daylight, in a clearing where the green caps and vests of the police should have been easily visible. A conversation, let alone a loud plea for a cease-fire, can be heard from more than 50 yards away in the quiet rural area.

Investigators in the federal prosecutor's office in Cali also said that when police reinforcements arrived with lights flashing, they were driven back by gunfire.

Some of the victims were shot in the back and at a range of only a few yards, ballistic investigators said.

The investigators agreed to discuss the case only on condition of anonymity to safeguard their security and because their probe isn't over. None of the information they talked about has been officially presented, and it was impossible to check independently.

Investigators said they also found evidence in text messages sent from the cell phone of Col. Bayron Carvajal, the highest-ranking soldier arrested in the case. Although in Cali at the time of the attack, Carvajal was in close contact with his troops, ordering his sergeant, in one message sent the day before, to "pull back the ambush . . . everything is set for tomorrow,'' the investigators said.