China: Urumqi riots an al-Qaida ploy

BEIJING, July 16 (UPI) -- The July 5 ethnic violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in China's Urumqi city was part of a plan to help al-Qaida, the state media said Thursday.

A lengthy article in the China Daily said as a neighbor of Afghanistan, China has suffered much because of the turbulence in that country. The report claimed evidence revealed the Uighur separatists, blamed for the July 5 riots in Urumqi, have close relations with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Urumqi is the capital of China's northwest Xinjiang-Uighur region, which is close to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ethnic tensions have simmered for years in the region as many of the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs resent being ruled by Han Chinese, the main Chinese group in the country.

The China Daily report referred to the new U.S.-led offensive against Islamic militants in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, and said the sooner peace returned to Afghanistan the better it would be for China.

The report said the Urumqi riots took place immediately after the launch of the new offensive in Afghanistan.

"They are not coincidental because terrorist groups in Central Asia have always had close connections," the report said.

The separatists' ploy is to make Chinese people unwilling to participate in the "West-led reconstruction of Afghanistan," the report said, adding, "After all, disorder and violence in Afghanistan is to the great advantage of al-Qaida."