“New (military) exercises with China possible” official said

"It is possible by the time we decided to conduct new exercises with China, other SCO countries would be willing to join, including the observers, like India," the official said.

Following the historic Russian-Chinese military exercises conducted of the Shandong Peninsula, Russia is contemplating a similar exercise with China in 2006, a Defense Ministry official said.

"We first have to analyze the results of the Peace Mission 2005 joint Russian-Chinese anti-terrorist exercise," the official said. "It has not been decided yet, but I think we will conduct another exercise with China next year."

Russia and China have started working on certain ideas regarding the exercise, including the possibility of the participation of other Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Mongolia, Iran and Pakistan have observer status, reports RIA Novosti.

According to Xinhua, Russia and China have no intention of establishing military alliance of any form. To maintain regional peace and stability is the common goal of the two countries as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, said Ivanov at a press conference jointly held with Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan.

"We have time and again stated that our joint military exercises are not targeted at any third party," Ivanov said."In recent years Russia has taken part in quite a few multilateral and bilateral military exercises, why can't we have such maneuvers with our Chinese friends?"

Ivanov spoke highly of the joint military exercises, saying they "fully reflected and proved the maturity of Russia-China military cooperation, and raised such cooperation to a new level."