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by Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - Ever since Moscow and Washington heralded their new era of friendship, Chinese officials and analysts have been taking great pains to give a positive spin to Russia's rapprochement with the West, playing down concerns that this would derail China-Russia cooperation in creating a ''multi-polar'' world.

What has kept China's spin doctors so busy has been the timing of the launching of new, recent partnership between Russia and the United States, two former foes during the Cold War.

Both the Moscow Treaty and Rome Declaration, signaling a new warmth between Russia and the West, were signed in recent weeks on the eve of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit this month, where China, Russia and four Central Asian nations are expected to approve the alliance's charter.

Founded in 1996 with the relatively modest aim of resolving border disputes, the group has evolved into a platform for voicing opposition to the unilateral policies of the United States, criticising its superpower status and urging the establishment of a ''multi-polar'', post-Cold War world.

Although its support for the United States in the military campaign in Afghanistan last year has overshadowed SCO's own regional agenda, Beijing had hoped that formulating the constitution of the group would help SCO ascend as a prime player in a wide arc of Eurasian territory, even as U.S. troops remain in Central Asia.

Meeting with the SCO's six foreign ministers in Beijing in January, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that ''the key to the role of the SCO is its self-construction, the unity and cooperation among its members''.

But Russia's increasingly close affiliation with the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) these days seems to have dealt these hopes a blow. The Treaty of Moscow, signed between Moscow and Washington last month, appeared to have set a seal on Russia's shift to more pro-Western foreign policy.

It committed both the United States and Russia to cutting their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 within 10 years, down from about 6,000 each now.

The Moscow pact - the first nuclear disarmament agreement between the two powers since 1993 - was followed by another security treaty between Russia and NATO, giving Moscow a say in the decisions of its former Cold War enemy.

Under the new arrangement, enshrined as the Rome Declaration, Russia will have much more authority to tackle security issues within a newly created NATO-Russia Council.

Although watching Russia's warming up to the United States with feelings of disquiet, Beijing has put on a brave face and congratulated both countries on their new partnership. ''We welcome the improvement of relations between Russia and the United States,'' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan last week.

But he added that China had its own views on preserving global peace and stability, and preferred broader cooperation rather than small military alliances.

The Chinese government has always opposed military alliances and maintains that the international community should set up a new security framework, in which all countries would work together to create a long-term, reliable and stable international environment of peace,'' Kong concluded.

Chinese analysts dismissed concerns that Russia and the United States' new friendship could isolate China and render Beijing's own pacts with Moscow irrelevant. ''It is too early to say that Russia has joined the ''Western camp','' argued Wang Fuchun, a researcher with the Institute for International Relations at Beijing University.

''Russia's trade with the West is trifle compared to China, and Russia is not a member of the World Trade Organisation. The country has a long way to go before becoming a market economy and it still has huge problems with the Russian Mafia,'' he added.

While biding its time to woo Russia again, Beijing has not been wasting time in courting the other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. (IPS)

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