The US’ top military officer criticized China yesterday for cutting off military contacts with the US, saying dialogue could help dispel concerns over Beijing’s arms buildup.
Speaking to US troops in South Korea, Admiral Mike Mullen said China’s spending on high-tech weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, had raised questions about its intentions in the region.
However, the absence of a regular dialogue with China’s military made it difficult to address those concerns, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“It’s really important that we know each other in ways that we just don’t right now because our engagement with them is very much off-and-on,” Mullen told troops from the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division at Camp Red Cloud.
He said every country had a right to bolster its armed forces.
“But it’s the specifics of some of it, that you know I’d like to have a conversation to see where they’re going. Right now I can’t do that,” he said.
China suspended military relations in January after Washington unveiled a US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan. In May, China rebuffed a planned visit to Beijing in June by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Mullen said China’s military had made “a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment” including satellites, aircraft, anti-ship missiles and a planned aircraft carrier group.
He called the move a “strategic shift, where they are moving from a focus on their ground forces to focus on their navy, and their maritime forces and their air force.”
“I have moved from being furious about what they’re doing to being concerned about what they’re doing,” he said.
US officials worry that China’s more assertive stance in the Pacific Ocean and its anti-ship missile arsenal, capable of striking aircraft carriers, could undercut US naval power in the region.
Mullen’s comments came a day after he defended plans for joint US-South Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea in coming months, despite misgivings in China.
“Certainly the intent of those exercises, as clearly stated, is to focus on stability on the [Korean] peninsula. It is not intended one way or another to send the Chinese a message,” Mullen told reporters on Tuesday aboard his plane bound for Seoul.
“The Yellow Sea specifically is an international body of water and the United States has always reserved the right to operate in those international waters,” he said.
“I hear what the Chinese are saying with respect to that, but in fact we have exercised in the Yellow Sea for a long time. And I fully expect we will do so in the future,” he said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS