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Cohen to meet Chinese mly team in Pentagon

WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary William Cohen is to meet a senior Chinese military delegation at the Pentagon next week to try to revive military relations that were suspended after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year.

The talks on Tuesday and Wednesday come at a time of strains on a number of fronts, particularly Taiwan and US missile defence programmes, which have highlighted the dangers of estrangement between Washington and the Asian giant.

"It's an effort to rebuild contacts and discussions between the US and the Chinese militaries," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said last week.

He said the two sides will compare their strategic assessments for the 21st century, discuss geo-political conditions in the region, and talk about their respective military modernisation programmes.

"We'll also talk about what sort of military relationship we should have during the year 2000," the Pentagon spokesman said. "What sort of visits there should be; whether there are exchanges of leaders; whether there are ship visits, et cetera".

The Chinese delegation, led by Lieutenant General Xiong Guangkai, the deputy chief of the Peoples Liberation Army general staff, will make office calls in Washington on Monday before sitting down with their Pentagon counterparts on Tuesday, an official said.

Cohen will meet briefly with Xiong at the end of the talks, but the Pentagon side will be led by Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defence for policy. The commander of US forces in the Pacific, Admiral Dennis Blair, also was in town for the talks, officials said.

US-Chinese relations have been on hold since last spring when a US B-2 bomber accidentally struck the Chinese embassy during a raid on Belgrade killing three people and igniting anti-US protests in China.

Since then, tensions have flourished between Beijing and Taipei over statements by Taiwan's outgoing President Lee Teng-hui of a "state-to-state" basis for relations with the mainland.ÑAFP