BEIJING – The United States and China could hold first-of-their-kind formal military talks in the first half of this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
The security talks would be a step beyond current contacts largely focused on maritime issues, and would cover nuclear and missile defense issues as well as cyber warfare and military uses of space.
China broke off lower-level military ties a year ago in protest of a huge U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, Beijing’s rival. Gates said he told Chinese officials that while the U.S. cannot promise not to make further sales, the U.S. might reconsider military support to Taiwan in the future.
That would depend on a lowering of tension between China and Taiwan, and “would be an evolutionary and long-term process,” Gates said. Taiwan considers itself independent from China, while China claims the self-governing island as a province. The United States officially considers Taiwan a part of China but also supplies it with defensive arms to deter a Chinese attack.
China conducted the first test flight of a radar-evading fighter jet hours before Gates was to discuss the proposal with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday. Gates told reporters afterward that he asked Hu whether the test was timed intentionally to coincide with Gates’ visit and that he took Hu “at his word” that it was not.
A senior U.S. defense official said Hu did not appear to know about the flight until Gates asked about it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the confidential meeting publicly.
Timing of the flight could be read two ways.
It answers U.S. calls to lower the secrecy around Chinese military developments, since China allowed members of the public to watch and post images of the radar-evading plane on the Internet. It was also an unsubtle reminder to the United States of China’s growing military prowess and potential as an arms manufacturer.
While still years from deployment, the J-20 plane could be an eventual rival to the U.S. F-22 Raptor.
Hu praised the renewal of lower-level military exchanges with the U.S. during his meeting with Gates. China made sure Gates saw the highest-level officials during a four-day visit that will also include a rare glimpse of China’s nuclear weapons command center.
Hu will visit Washington next week, and both countries wanted to repair damaged military ties beforehand.
The visit closes a rocky year in which China pulled out of military talks and withheld an earlier invitation to Gates in protest of a nearly $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan.
Gates’ long-delayed visit would be “very helpful in promoting mutual understanding and trust and facilitate improvement and development of military-to-military relations between our two countries,” Hu said during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of parliament in downtown Beijing.
Gates told Hu that President Barack Obama was looking forward to his visit. He said his meetings with Defense Minister Liang Guanglie and other Chinese officials had allowed him to “advance the objectives that you and President Obama set of a long-term improvement in the relationship between the U.S. and the Chinese military.”
The United States invited the wider military discussions, saying it would clear the air between the Pacific’s reigning military power and the rising one, and help prevent accidental conflict. China has publicly agreed only to consider entering what Gates calls a strategic security dialogue, but Gates said the country’s political and military leaders are “taking the proposal seriously.”
The People’s Liberation Army has been the Chinese institution least receptive to wider contact with the West and with the United States in particular. The reticence is partly the result of decades of training and dogma that cast the U.S. as an adversary and partly a desire to mask the huge gap between U.S. and Chinese military abilities.
Gates said the United States is drafting ideas for an agenda for the broader talks, and hopes to hold the first session in the next five months. He said he wants to hold it ahead of a separate gathering of Chinese and American economic, trade and other nonmilitary officials.
The nonmilitary meetings represent the widest regular engagement between the two governments. The security talks could have a parallel structure, drawing both civilian and uniformed leaders from several branches of government.
Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110111/ap_on_re_as/as_us_china_13
Category: Government Security Watch