The US Seventh Fleet commander yesterday said he was not worried about a major conflict in Asia, but about small incidents with unpredictable consequences in areas such as the South China Sea.
Vice Admiral Scott Swift said military-to-military dialogue between Washington and Beijing was taking place at the highest levels of command and both sides shared a desire to minimize tensions.
“I think we are in a very positive place with China and the vectors are moving in the right direction,” he told reporters in Hong Kong, where the USS George Washington aircraft carrier was making a visit. “We need to be as transparent as we possibly can.”
However, he said areas such as the potentially resource-rich South China Sea, where several countries, including China, have territorial and maritime claims, required greater cooperation to avoid dangerous flare-ups over minor incidents.
“In general terms, I’m concerned about any tactical trigger with strategic implications,” the commander of the US Pacific fleet said.
Swift said ASEAN has made “significant progress” in encouraging dialogue between the rival claimants to the sea, which stretches off China’s southern coast into vital sea lanes.
“There’s not much that keeps me up at night and I’m not worried about a major conflict breaking out anywhere in the region,” he said. “I do have concerns about a specific brush-up that could result in a tactical miscalculation, but I think rapid compromise will prevail and those incidents will be appropriately adjudicated at the diplomatic level.”
Swift’s visit to Hong Kong comes as Washington talks up Asia’s strategic importance to the US.
In his first trip to the Asia-Pacific region since taking over at the Pentagon, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said last month that the US wanted to strengthen its presence in the Pacific.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the