US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter kicked off his first
Asian tour on Wednesday with a stern warning against the militarization of
territorial rows in a region where China
is at odds with several nations in the East and South
China Seas ,
including the Philippines .
Mr. Carter’s visit to Japan
coincides with growing US
concern over China ’s land
reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing has rival claims with several countries including
the Philippines and Vietnam .
US and Philippine troops will take part in annual military exercises this month near the Spratlys in the largest such drills since the allies resumed joint activities in 2000.
Asked whether the beefed up US-Philippine exercises were a response to China’s moves, Mr. Carter said Washington and Manila had shared interests in the region, including a desire to ensure there were no changes in the status quo by force or that territorial rows were militarized.
“We take a strong stance against the militarization of these disputes,” Mr.
Carter told a news conference after talks with his Japanese counterpart,
Defense Minister Gen Nakatani.
Chinese reclamation work is well advanced on six reefs in the Spratlys,
according to recently published satellite photographs and Philippine officials.
In addition, Manila
has said Chinese dredgers had started reclaiming a seventh.
While the new islands won’t overturnUS
military superiority in the region, Chinese workers are building ports and fuel
storage depots as well as possibly two airstrips that experts have said would
allow Beijing to project power deep into the
maritime heart of Southeast Asia .
While the new islands won’t overturn
The commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Harry Harris, told an Australian think
tank last week that China
was using dredges and bulldozers to create a “great wall of sand” in the South China Sea .
China
claims most of the potentially energy rich waterway, through which $5 trillion
in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines ,
Vietnam , Malaysia , Brunei
and Taiwan
also have overlapping claims.
TIGHTER ALLIANCE TIES
TIGHTER ALLIANCE TIES
Mr. Carter also welcomed progress toward the first update in US-Japan defense cooperation guidelines since 1997, a revision that will expand the scope for interaction between the allies in line with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to ease the constraints of
“It’s going to give first of all Japan, but also our alliance, much greater scope to provide security in the region, and for that matter elsewhere outside of the region,” Mr. Carter said as the talks began.
Mr. Abe’s move to allow
In January, Mr. Thomas said the
Mr. Nakatani told the news conference with Mr. Carter, however, that the new guidelines did not target any particular region including the
Neither
In a written interview with
“We are especially concerned at the prospect of militarization of these outposts. These activities seriously increase tensions and reduce prospects for diplomatic solutions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “We urge
Mr. Carter also repeated Washington’s opposition to any “coercive unilateral” actions by China to undermine Japan’s administrative control of disputed islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
Mr. Abe’s government plans to submit bills to parliament in the coming months to ratify his cabinet’s decision last year to allow
http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Nation&title=us-warns-vs-militarization-of-territorial-disputes&id=105765
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