ASTANA, Aug 18: Chinese President Hu Jintao and Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev pledged to expand energy ties at a state meeting on Saturday at the end of Hu’s week-long tour of the region.

The leaders discussed a series of projects, including completing an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to western China and a gas pipeline linking Turkmenistan with China.

“We agreed that Kazakhstan should provide detailed and specific plans that will be financed from a joint Chinese-Kazakh fund,” Interfax cited Nazarbayev as saying.

The two met as Kazakh voters went to the polls in parliamentary elections, and was seen by analysts as Nazarbayev’s effort to remind voters of his international clout.

The Kazakh president, who cast his own vote before the meeting, said he hoped bilateral trade would reach $12 billion (nine billion euros) in 2008, up from an expected 10 billion in 2007, Interfax reported.

The pair were meeting for the third time in three days as part of Hu’s week-long tour of ex-Soviet states in the region.

On Thursday, the two leaders took part in a meeting of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek before attending military exercises organised by the group in Russia on Friday.

Major powers, including the US and Russia, are competing with China for influence over Kazakhstan’s vast oil reserves, estimated at 30bn barrels.—AFP