Li Peng, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC), will visit Belarus between September 5 and 7, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday night.

This is the first visit to Belarus by an NPC Standing Committee chairman.

Li will pay the visit at the invitation of Pavel Shipuk, speaker of Belarus' House of Republics, and Anatoli Alexandrovich Malofeyev, speaker of the House of Representatives.

During the visit, Li is expected to exchange views with President Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko and other leading officials of Belarus on furthering relations between the two countries and cooperation between their parliaments.

Li's visit, which is also a return visit to those by Shipuk and Malofeyev in 1998, will certainly promote the all-round development of the friendly exchanges and cooperation between the two parliaments and the two countries, the Foreign Ministry said.

(Xinhua 09/4/2000)