US, China pledge effort to avoid sea confrontations

[June 24, 2009]  BEIJING (AP) -- Top U.S. and Chinese military officials said Wednesday the countries will work together to avoid confrontations at sea that have sparked worries of a crisis in overall relations.

The issue was at the center of their first high-level military talks in 18 months after a series of recent naval encounters -- including a collision of a Chinese submarine and a U.S. sonar device -- that have raised concerns about poor communication between the two sides.

The military officials also discussed North Korea, which has threatened war with the U.S. and its allies in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed over its recent nuclear test blast.

On the U.S.-China naval encounters, People's Liberation Army deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, said China had reiterated its opposition to U.S. surveillance patrols in the South China Sea, during the two days of talks with the U.S. delegation led by Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy.

"Our two sides agreed to work together to avoid such incidents from happening again since such incidents will surely have a negative impact on our bilateral relations in general," Ma told a news conference at the end of the U.S.-China Defense Consultative Talks in Beijing.

Flournoy said specific incidents were not discussed, but added the sides had agreed in principle to hold a bilateral forum next month to discuss how to avoid future altercations.

"I think there is a strong desire on both sides to reduce the number of incidents as much as possible and when they do occur resolve them as carefully as possible," she told reporters separately.

Run-ins between the two militaries are becoming more frequent as the Chinese navy, after years of expansion, undertakes more missions, encountering a U.S. Navy used to maneuvering unchallenged. As its power grows, China is also pressing claims to the entire South China Sea and coastal waters and asserting that surveillance by the U.S. military there is illegal.

The U.S. doesn't take a position on sovereignty claims to the sea -- subject to dispute among various Asian nations -- but insists on the U.S. Navy's right to transit the area and collect surveillance data.

In the latest confrontation at sea between China and the U.S., a Chinese submarine earlier this month damaged a sonar array being towed by a U.S. destroyer. China called that an accident. The U.S. has confirmed only that there was damage.

Pentagon officials have said there were four incidents earlier this year where Chinese-flagged fishing vessels maneuvered close to unarmed U.S. ships crewed by civilians and used by the Pentagon to do underwater surveillance and submarine hunting missions.

The defense discussions were last held in December 2007. They had been suspended by Beijing in anger over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island China claims as its own territory.

Ma said that China had pressed the U.S. delegation on the issue of the arms sales, calling them a "central topic of the discussions."

"We told the American side that the issue of Taiwan arms sales is a major reason for the constant stop-start course of China-U.S. military relations," he said.

Flournoy said the Obama administration had not made any decisions on future arms sales to Taiwan.

The sides also discussed North Korea, which counts China as its closest ally, but no specifics of what was said were released. China had hosted now-stalled six-nation talks aimed at pressing Pyongyang to halt its nuclear programs in return for financial aid and diplomatic inducements.

"There is very much a shared objective in seeking to get North Korea to change course and return to a path of verifiable denuclearization," Flournoy said.

Flournoy was due to travel on to South Korea for talks on Friday. A U.S. destroyer is currently tracking a North Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit weapons to Myanmar -- the first test of the new U.N. sanctions.

[Associated Press; By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN]

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