RUSSIAN PRESIDENT IN BEIJING TO STRENGTHEN TIES WITH CHINA.

Byline: Associated Press 

Russian President Boris Yeltsin heralded a border agreement with China on Sunday and prepared to push forward deals to burnish the lackluster trade between the once-hostile neighbors.

Arriving Sunday night for his third trip to Beijing, Yeltsin also said he had developed a rapport with Chinese President Jiang Zemin that allows them to forgo formalities and focus on work. They will meet Monday to finalize an accord over their often bitterly contested border and issue a statement on relations.

They also are expected to discuss Iraq's current standoff with the United States over U.N.-ordered inspections of suspected weapons facilities, said Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky. Both nations are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The meeting is meant to strengthen ties that were developed in two previous meetings, and both countries said the closer relations should not been seen as a threat to Washington.

``The progress of certain bilateral relations will not harm the interests of any third party,'' China's official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday. ``In this way, this pattern of partnerships is totally different from that during the Cold War.''

The communist fraternalism China and the Soviet Union shared in the 1950s gave way to rivalry for the allegiance of the socialist world. Beijing and Washington forged diplomatic ties in the 1970s out of suspicion of Moscow. Now Beijing and Moscow are interested in finding counterbalances to Washington's power.

The border agreement, six years in the making, is being held up as proof of their new cooperation. It lays out the long eastern frontier, from Mongolia to the Tumen River near the Sea of Japan, and includes territory the two fought over as recently as 1969. The shorter western border is still being negotiated.

``The border demarcation alone made it worth coming,'' Yeltsin said upon arrival Sunday night.