US-China resume military ties, top officers says

[February 27, 2009]  BEIJING (AP) -- China's five-month suspension in U.S.-Chinese military contacts to protest Washington's arms sales to Taiwan has ended with the visit this week of a U.S. Defense Department official, a top Chinese officer said Friday.

However, in opening the discussions, the Defense Ministry's head of foreign affairs said military-to-military ties remained in a "difficult period," and demanded that the U.S. remove unspecified obstacles to improvement.

"We expect the U.S. side to take concrete measures for the resumption and development of our military ties," Maj. Gen. Qian Lihua was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Such routine calls are generally seen as a form of protest against U.S. military contacts with self-ruling Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland by force if necessary.

China put military exchanges on hold in October over a $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, including such advanced weaponry as Patriot missiles and Apache attack helicopters. China said the sale interferes with internal Chinese affairs and harms its national security.

Beijing canceled a U.S. visit by a senior Chinese general, other similar visits, and port calls by naval vessels. It also indefinitely postponed meetings on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Writing in the official English-language China Daily newspaper, Rear Admiral Yang Yi said formal contacts would resume with the exchanges Friday and Saturday between top Chinese officers and David Sedney, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asian security affairs.

However, Yang said Beijing would continue to protest arms sales to Taiwan and rejected U.S. criticisms over a lack of transparency in China's military buildup.

"China will not tolerate any infringement into its core national interests and will make no concession on this principal issue," Yang wrote.

"China's reasonable military development and military transparency has long been an outstanding issue in Sino-U.S. bilateral relations," he said.

Yang also contended that improved relations between Taiwan and China over recent months have "deprived the U.S. of any excuses for continued arms sales to the island."

Taiwan and China separated amid civil war in 1949, but decades of hostility have eased in recent years amid growing economic and civil links. That rapprochement has sped up since the election last year of China-friendly Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, although Ma has made clear his intention to maintain a robust military and rejects Beijing's calls for unification talks.

The U.S. Embassy said the two-day Defense Policy Coordination Talks being co-chaired by Qian and Sedney were closed to the media, but that a briefing would be held on Saturday.

Nearly 20 years of annual double-digit percentage increases in China's defense budget have raised concerns from the U.S. and China's neighbors, although Beijing says any worries are unfounded. That figure will be closely scrutinized when the national legislature opens for its annual session next month, amid from falling exports and declining tax revenues.

[Associated Press; By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN]

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