China's Communist party boss in the northwestern region of Xinjiang has called on officials to intensify their fight against separatists and religious extremism, the semi-official China News Service said on Monday. It quoted party chief Wang Lequan as saying government and party officials should step up their campaign against "three forces," previously identified by state media as religious extremism, ethnic separatism and terrorism.

Wang's call came just days after U.S. rights envoy Lorne Craner visited the region, inhabited by Muslim ethnic Uighurs and growing numbers of migrant Han Chinese, to urge greater religious freedom and the release of political prisoners.

"Xinjiang will keep up the pressure in cracking down on the 'three forces' from beginning to end to maintain social stability," the news service quoted Wang as telling a party meeting.

Washington added a group campaigning for an independent Xinjiang, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, to its list of terror organizations this year.

The U.S. move sparked concerns from foreign rights groups that Beijing might use this to justify a long-running crackdown on dissent in Xinjiang amid suspicions among some Western diplomats that it was politically driven.

Beijing has thrown its weight behind Washington's war on terror and urged the international community to support its own fight against Uighur separatists.

China has accused Uighur separatists of joining forces with Osama bin Laden  and of bombings and other violence.

But rights groups abroad say innocent Uighurs are stripped of their right to worship freely and suffer persecution.
Craner, who met Chinese officials when he was in Xinjiang, said his talks on rights were cordial, but he had hoped they would be more productive.

He said reports of religious repression in Xinjiang remain of tremendous concern to Washington and he would welcomed future opportunities to engage more openly and frankly on such issues.

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Area: 1.6 million square kilometres
Population: 19.25 million
Xinjiang is enclosed by mountain ranges to the north, south and west. Much of the province is barren - there are large grazing lands, but also a vast desert and the Lop Nur dried-up salt lake which China uses for its nuclear test explosions. The mainly Muslim Uighur people now make up around half of the population. Once on the Silk Road trading route, there are now moves to revitalise the area.