US AND CHINA REVIVE MILITARY TALKS

By MICHAEL WINES 

Published: February 28, 2009 - New York Times

BEIJING — Two days of military consultations between the United States and China ended Saturday with glowing reviews from the senior Pentagon official at the talks, who said that high-level meetings between the nations on military issues, suspended last year, would resume soon.

The official, David Sedney, the under secretary of defense for East Asia, described the talks at a news conference on Saturday as the best he had conducted in 18 years of military negotiations with Beijing.

“We had a very positive set of talks, very much in the context of this being a new administration,” Mr. Sedney said, describing the consultations as “intense, very productive and very useful.”

Dozens of American military experts accompanied Mr. Sedney to Beijing for the annual meeting, known as the Defense Policy Coordination Talks, which have often focused on improving understanding between American and Chinese military officials.

The Chinese, who opened the meeting with a public warning that military relations remain “in a difficult period,” had no comment on the discussions. The Chinese had suspended senior-level military contacts with the United States in October, protesting the Bush administration’s approval of a record $6.5 billion arms sale to Taiwan. This week’s discussions, while long scheduled, were the first top-level talks to occur since the Chinese ratcheted down military relations last fall.

Well before the talks began, China’s government had indicated an interest in restoring military ties with the new Obama administration. A Chinese government analysis released in January urged closer military relations between the nations, and Mr. Sedney said on Saturday that both nations’ navies had cooperated in recent months to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia.

Mr. Sedney said that the talks were grounded in an American conviction that China’s emergence as a military power was not a threat to American interests, but instead could be a stabilizing force in an uncertain world.

For many years, American officials, and especially the military, have expressed concern that China was buying weapons systems specifically designed to deny American access to the region should there be a conflict over Taiwan. There is no concern that China is a military threat to the continental United States, and great efforts have been made to make China a partner in regional stability, in particular regarding North Korea.

The two sides discussed the strategic situations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Somalia.

Western China borders on some of the most politically volatile territory in the world, and the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is of special concern to Beijing.

One reason that this week’s talks were so productive, Mr. Sedney suggested, was that both sides had realized during the China-imposed hiatus that their regular cooperation was vital to addressing common problems in places like Central Asia.