Deal Hands Islands Back to China.

(From The Moscow Times)

Russia and China on Monday signed a pact demarcating their 4,300-kilometer border, an issue that has been a bone of contention for more than three centuries and that led to armed clashes as recently as the late 1960s.

And although Russia is returning one island and part of another -- 174 square kilometers of territory -- in the Amur River, near the regional capital of Khabarovsk, political analysts said the move was positive for a Russia looking to secure its eastern borders in the face of its increasingly powerful Communist neighbor.

The protocol was signed Monday in Beijing by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jeichi, bringing an end to more than 40 years of negotiations.

"It shows that as long as we strive to find solutions on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, all questions, even complicated ones, can be …