Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov will commence a state visit to China today with his agenda likely to focus on speeding up a gas export deal between the two countries.

The Turkmen leader said last week that his country will start gas exports to China by 2009.

"Berdymukhamedov emphasized that this visit is aimed at deepening and dynamically developing Turkmen-Chinese cooperation and accelerating the pace of definite projects - in the first place, the delivery of Turkmen natural gas to China," the national newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan reported.

He is expected to hold talks with President Hu Jintao today and witness the signing of cooperative agreements between the two countries.

Among them, the nation's largest oil producer China National Petroleum Corp will sign a deal with Turkmenistan to develop a gas field in the central Asian country, an industry official close to the deal told Dow Jones Chinese Financial Wire.

This is Berdymukhamedov's first China visit since he assumed presidency in December last year.

(China Daily July 17, 2007)