Japan, Australia and US hold security talks

By Sue Pleming and Michelle Nichols

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Foreign ministers from the United
States, Japan and Australia began talks on Saturday aimed at
bringing the three countries closer on issues such as China and
how to tackle its growing military strength.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Australia for
a three-day visit, is concerned that China will become a
“negative force” unless the emerging superpower is more open
about its military build-up.

“We want conditions in which China’s rise is a positive
force in the region,” said Rice on Friday at a news conference
with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

China’s 2.3-million-strong People’s Liberation Army is the
world’s largest standing force. Its official defense budget is
set to rise 14.7 percent to 283.8 billion yuan ($35 billion) in
2006, Beijing has said.

While denying that the United States has a “containment
policy” toward China, Rice’s language underscored differences
with close ally Australia which views Beijing more as an
economic opportunity than a military threat.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who also
attended Saturday’s Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, spoke of the
“very good and constructive” relationship his government had
with Beijing but has played down any possible differences in
approach to China by Australia and the United States.

“We have had a very good chat about China. I think — to
use an Americanism — we absolutely read from the same page,
even if we don’t use the same words,” Downer told Australian
radio on Friday.

Downer said he did not believe the United States was
alarmed by the rise of China, just “very focused,” because
historically the rise of new powers had created a lot of
tension.

Some analysts disagreed.

“Australians are concerned that the United States is
looking at this as another cold war,” said Dana Dillon, an Asia
expert with the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

JAPAN TENSIONS

Tokyo also has strained ties with Beijing, with a range of
disputes stemming mainly from Japan’s occupation of much of
China from 1931 to 1945.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who met Rice privately
before the three ministers began their talks, wrote in an
article in the Wall Street Journal this week that China’s
return to center-stage in East Asia was welcome as long as it
evolved into a liberal democracy.

Like Rice, he urged Beijing to fully disclose its defense
spending which he said “remained opaque.”

Aside from China, the three countries will also look at the
stalemate in six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program,
deadlocked since Washington imposed financial restrictions on
Pyongyang.

While Japan is directly involved in the talks, Australia
has used its alliance with the United States and rare
diplomatic ties with Pyongyang to encourage negotiations.

The six-way talks between North Korea, the United States,
South Korea, Japan, China and Russia began in 2003 to try to
break the nuclear deadlock.

Iraq is another topic on the agenda. The United States has
more than 130,000 troops in Iraq and Australia has about 1,300
soldiers in and around the region, some of whom are providing
security for Japanese teams involved in reconstruction.

After the meeting, called the Trilateral Strategic
Dialogue, Rice was to return to Washington following a nine-day
trip that also took her to Chile for the inauguration of that
country’s first woman president and to Indonesia.