CHINA HINTS AT POSSIBLE TALKS WITH U.S. MILITARY
Chicago Tribune November 5, 1999 Friday
By John Diamond, Washington Bureau. Six months after the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade cast a pall over Sino-U.S. relations, the two powers are close to resuming military-to-military contacts, a move designed to build confidence and prevent misunderstandings.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said Thursday that the Chinese had signaled a willingness to reopen contacts, which include regular meetings at the senior officer level, military simulations, naval port calls and officer-education exchanges.
China abruptly halted such contacts after a missile from an Air Force B-2 bomber destroyed the Chinese Embassy compound in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict. Beijing was deeply skeptical of repeated Clinton administration claims that the strike was a mistake due to a targeting error by the CIA and Pentagon.
"We do hope to re-establish the kind of military-to-military contacts that we had prior to the incident in Kosovo, and they have indicated that they would like to re-establish these contacts," Cohen told reporters.
"Having said that, however, there have been no concrete steps taken to re-establish the contacts. I am hopeful that they can come about soon," Cohen said.
The need for military-to-military contacts stems not from warm relations between the United States and China but from the potential for hostility.
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the contacts "are important to maintaining peace and stability in the area because they lower the chance of miscalculation by either side."
Contact in some form between the U.S. and Chinese military goes back as far as the Nixon administration's opening to China in the early 1970s.
During the Carter administration and the Reagan years, Washington set up electronic listening posts in China along the Soviet border. The posts were one symbol of the prevailing hostility between the two communist giants at that time and of the U.S. success in improving ties with Beijing through mutual hostility toward Moscow.
"The level of collaboration today is certainly substantially less than it was in the 1980s," said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based defense and intelligence think tank. The cooperation then was more geared toward a common goal than toward opening lines of understanding and communication.
"In the 1980s, we didn't need confidence-building contacts between the militaries because we were allies against 'the evil empire,' " Pike said.
Much of the contact between the U.S. military and the People's Liberation Army was suspended after the Tiananmen Square crackdown by Chinese authorities against pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. Then-Defense Secretary William Perry revived those contacts in the mid-1990s.
China abruptly suspended military-to-military contact after the May 7 embassy bombing, which left three Chinese nationals dead and several others injured. The Clinton administration said the strike resulted from faulty targeting information and methodology and out-of-date intelligence maps that failed to place the embassy in Belgrade at its current location.
Among other things, China canceled planned visits by Gen. Charles Krulak, then the commandant of the Marine Corps, and by Cohen.
The Chinese reaction to the bombing also halted numerous lower-level contacts, including officer-exchange programs, table-top military exercises involving disaster relief scenarios and navy-to-navy talks to develop rules for how the two navies deal with one another when they meet at sea.
Top-level U.S. and Chinese diplomats have been talking on and off since the bombing. For much of that time, the main issue was reaching an agreement for the United States to provide "humanitarian payments" to the families of those killed and injured.
The two countries also have been negotiating for Washington to finance repairs
to the bombed embassy if Beijing would pay for repairs to U.S. official
property in
China damaged in anti-American demonstrations that followed the bombing.
Copyright 1999 Chicago Tribune Company
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