US reopens defence dialogue with China

China and the United States have concluded their first round of defence talks since Beijing suspended military ties with Washington in late 2008.

The continuing crisis on the Korean peninsula topped the agenda at the 23-24 June meeting, which was held in the Chinese capital, along with the issue of the recurrent and potentially destabilising naval incidents involving US and Chinese vessels.

While neither party disclosed much about the nature of the discussions - which were the first defence consultations since late 2007 - the talks were significant as the first high-level Sino-US defence meeting to have been held since the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The US delegation, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, sought to establish "a framework for US-China military-to-military relations", according to the Department of Defense, with a view to each side clarifying their regional intentions and strategies.

For the Chinese delegation, Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), said his country was looking to the US to "take substantial measures to remove the barriers that hinder our military relations", in what was essentially a reference to the Taiwan issue.