US and Chinese defence leaders meet in Hanoi (Roundup)

Oct 11, 2010, 14:40 GMT

Hanoi - US Defence Secretary Robert Gates met with his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie in Hanoi on Monday, the first such meeting since China suspended senior defence contacts over US arms sales to Taiwan earlier this year.

The two sides pledged to improve military-to-military contacts, but China emphasized that US arms sales to Taiwan were the main stumbling block in the relationship.

'The biggest obstacle impeding defence relations between China and the US is US arms sales to Taiwan,' Guan Youfei, deputy chief of foreign relations at the Chinese Defence Ministry, told reporters after the meeting.

Guan said the tensions had 'nothing to do' with conflicts over maritime territory in the South China Sea, the issue which has overshadowed the multilateral defence meeting that brought the two sides to Hanoi.

Gates and Liang met on the sidelines of a regional defense forum, the ASEAN Defence Ministerial Meeting Plus (ADMM+), which brings together the ten members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations along with China, the US, Japan, South Korea, India, Russia, Australia and New Zealand.

The meeting has drawn attention because of tensions between the US, China, and South-East Asian nations over conflicts in the South China Sea. China claims most of the sea as its own, and has seized hundreds of Vietnamese fishing boats in recent months.

Earlier in the day, Gates met with Vietnamese Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh. The US has been seen as siding with Vietnam in its effort to persuade China to negotiate multilaterally with ASEAN over the territorial disputes.

Gates and Thanh pledged to increase bilateral military cooperation on search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, and other areas. The US and Vietnam are scheduled to send two military officers to study at each others' war colleges next year.

In a speech earlier at Vietnam National University, Gates stressed the multilateral approach to security issues.

'Increasingly, we find that relying exclusively on bilateral relationships is not enough - we need multilateral institutions in order to confront the most important security challenges in this region,' Gates said.

Gates's statement echoed those by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July supporting a multilateral approach to the South China Sea dispute.

Also on Monday, Japanese and Chinese defence officials met, agreeing to set up a liaison system to prevent further sea conflicts such as the one in the Senkaku Islands last month that led to the detention of a Chinese captain.

But an official at Japan's embassy in Hanoi, who asked to remain anonymous, described the outcome as 'limited.'

The main ADMM+ meeting is scheduled to take place Tuesday.

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