Russia confirms SARS case

RUSSIA confirmed its first case of SARS on the border with China yesterday in a major embarrassment for visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao as he tried to convince the world his country can contain the disease.

Just hours earlier, Hu told students in Moscow that China had taken strict measures to stop the spread of the virus and could maintain rapid economic growth despite warnings that SARS could knock up to two percentage points off GDP growth.

Hu is in Russia on the first leg of a four-nation tour designed to boost his international profile and repair the damage done by an official cover-up of the SARS outbreak, which started in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

On his first trip overseas since becoming president in March, he will rub shoulders with world leaders, including US President George W Bush, at celebrations this weekend marking the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg, Russia's second city.

But in a blow to Hu's public relations campaign, Russia announced its first case of SARS in a man living in Blagoveshchensk on the Amur river, which forms the frontier with China. He had been under observation for weeks.

"On the basis of medical analysis, we received information confirming the first SARS case on Russian territory," a spokeswoman for Russia's top epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said.

Russia had decided to close checkpoints on parts of the border with China and Mongolia until June 4.

"The diagnosis is indisputable, it is SARS," Onishchenko is quoted as saying. "This is our final answer."

Hu met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and discussed ways to stop SARS spreading to Russia. It has killed more than 740 and infected more than 8,000 around the world.

Russia has a 2,280-mile land border with China and a 2,178-mile border with Mongolia, which has also reported a number of cases. Russians have been bracing for their first SARS case for weeks.

China reported its lowest rise in new SARS infections yesterday since the government pledged to report accurate figures more than a month ago.

But the country is scrambling to prevent it spreading to the vast countryside where most of its 1.3 billion people live. It has even deployed a hi-tech van loaded with monitoring equipment to police spitting, which can spread the virus, the official Beijing Evening News said.

Hu declared war on SARS on April 20 and sacked two senior officials for covering up the extent of the outbreak.

He told students at the Moscow State Institute of International Affairs the virus would not slow economic growth.

"We can definitely overcome these temporary difficulties and win the war against SARS, while maintaining the pace of economic development and continuing to contribute to the promotion of regional and global economic growth," Hu said in a speech at the institute.