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Clinton also said she wanted to work with Australia to diversify sources of rare earth minerals that are key to the global high-tech industry. China is the source of about 97 percent of those metals and caused alarm last month when it appeared to begin restricting their export to Japan in the midst of the maritime dispute. Chinese officials last week assured Clinton that China would remain a reliable supplier of rare earths. But Clinton made clear that countries like Australia and the United States, which largely abandoned rare earth production in favor of cheaper exports from China, need to act to protect the supply. "The slowdown or the potential (of a slowdown) of the supply coming from China ... raised questions in many of our minds," she said. "It does have direct military and defense pertinence how best we can work together to ensure that there is a broad-based global supply of these critical minerals." In addition, Clinton and Rudd agreed that the United States and Australia would step up assistance to help fight violence against women, particularly in the South Pacific where some nations have sky-high incidents of rape and domestic abuse. Australia is the final foreign stop on Clinton's current seven-nation trip to the Asia-Pacific that has taken her to Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. She is to make a brief stop in American Samoa on Monday before returning home.
[Associated
Press;
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