The Pentagon is seeking a meeting between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart in Singapore next month, people familiar with the matter said, as US President Joe Biden’s administration tries again to restart military contacts, despite China’s earlier refusal.
The people with knowledge of the US outreach to Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu (李尚福) asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.
The US Department of Defense and the Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: EPA-EFE
If Beijing accepts, the meeting between Austin and Li would be the most senior in-person meeting between the two sides since an alleged Chinese spy balloon transited the US in February and sent relations to a new low.
China has rebuffed multiple requests for Austin or General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, to speak by phone with their Chinese counterparts since then.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) visit to the US to and from Central America in recent weeks only added to strains.
The proposed Austin-Li meeting would take place on the sidelines of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum in Singapore. Austin met Li’s predecessor, Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和), at the same event last year.
Biden has repeatedly stressed the need to place “guardrails” around the increasingly combative relationship, but China says those efforts are not genuine. A long-anticipated call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has yet to take place.
Any meeting would be awkward for both sides. The US slapped sanctions on Li in 2018 for allegedly aiding in the transfer of Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 missile system equipment from Russian arms seller Rosoboronexport to China.
It also puts China in a difficult position. Beijing has sought to use access to its top leaders as leverage, insisting that the US must adopt friendlier policies first, although refusing to meet in Singapore would risk irking other countries in a region that are pressing both sides to ease tensions.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS