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Answer the questions:
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What landmark agreement was reached by China and Taiwan? Where was this agreement signed?
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In what areas does the deal aim to foster cooperation between the two parties?
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Since what time have Chinese-Taiwanese relations been improving?
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Why is this accord considered to be significant?
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When and why did the relations between China and Taiwan deteriorate?
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What other Taiwanese areas is the agreement expected to give a boost to?
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Translate the following article into Russian using active vocabulary: Russia and u.S. To sign civilian nuclear pact
MOSCOW: Russia and the United States will sign a long awaited civilian nuclear cooperation pact on Tuesday that will allow firms from the world's two biggest atomic powers to expand bilateral nuclear trade significantly.
The deal will be signed in Moscow on the last full day of Vladimir Putin's presidency, a Russian official said on condition his name was not used.
The deal will open up the booming U.S. nuclear market and Russia's vast uranium fields to firms from both countries. Without a deal cooperation was severely limited and required official consent.
"The potential value of this agreement is the value of all the contracts which could be signed between the two countries' firms in the nuclear sphere, which is obviously billions of dollars," a Russian source said.
At the 2006 Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg, U.S. President George W. Bush and Putin asked their governments to move forward on the deal but it has faced opposition from some U.S. congressmen because of Russia's cooperation with Iran.
"It is symbolic that it will be signed on the last day of Vladimir Putin's presidential term," the Russian official said.
The Russian source said the deal would be signed by Sergei Kiriyenko, chief of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, who is leaving Moscow to take up the No. 3 post in the State Department.
A 123 agreement, so-called because it falls under section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, is required before countries can cooperate on nuclear materials.
Some U.S. politicians have said nuclear cooperation with Russia should be shunned because Russia is helping Iran build an atomic power station in Iran, but the Bush administration is keen to have the pact approved this year.
Once the agreement is signed Bush will have to send it to Congress, which has 90 days to act. If Congress does nothing, the agreement goes into effect. If lawmakers want to block it, they must pass a resolution of disapproval.
Russia's parliament, which is controlled by Putin's party, must also ratify the Treaty.
Russia, one of the world's biggest sellers of enrichment services, has been trying to break into the prosperous nuclear markets of the United States and European Union.
Tuesday's deal creates a legal base that will allow companies to make agreements themselves on trade in nuclear materials.
"You cannot overestimate the importance of this agreement because it opens up the giant north American market for nuclear materials to Russian companies," Vladimir Yevseyev, a senior researcher at the Moscow Centre For International Security.
Putin, who steps down on Wednesday, has reformed Russia's nuclear sector to boost competition and open it up to world atomic firms such as Japan's Toshiba Corp, which owns U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric.
Russia has crafted a nuclear behemoth called Atomenergoprom -- which officials say is an atomic version of Russian gas giant Gazprom -- to compete with the biggest nuclear companies on the world market.
Competitors include the partnership between France's Areva and Germany's Siemens AG; Japan's Toshiba; and GE Hitachi, the nuclear venture of General Electric and Japan's Hitachi.
Russia has about 870,000 tonnes of uranium in reserves and more than 1 million tonnes if joint ventures abroad are included. That excludes a strategic reserve of highly enriched uranium and plutonium whose size is a state secret.
Russia already sells to the United States only uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons under a programme known as megatons to megawatts. Sales are made through USEC Inc.
06/05/2008, International Herald Tribune