Rumsfeld to tell Asian nations: don't leave US out

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a news
conference at the Asia Security Summit in Singapore,
June 2, 2006. (Tim Chong/Reuters)

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

Jun 2, 2006

Yahoo News

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will urge Asian nations at a security meeting in Singapore to resist attempts to exclude the United States from regional groupings.

As the U.S. defense chief arrived in the city-state on Friday for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, an aide said Rumsfeld would laud the inclusiveness of the forum in a region that has seen moves over the past year to leave Washington out in the cold.

"There are some efforts and systems that leave us out, and we obviously favor institutions that are inclusive rather than exclusive," said a senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rumsfeld later told reporters that the "United States is very much a Pacific nation" and that he would meet as many as nine Asian defense chiefs in bilateral talks at the forum and would then travel to Vietnam and Indonesia.

Washington was uncomfortable with moves last year that pointedly excluded the Americans, including the holding of an East Asia Summit of leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations along with China, Japan and South Korea.

We were a little bit nervous, but a lot of other countries were nervous about it, as well -- friends of ours," the official said of the December summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

But he added: "The event came and went without doing great harm."

U.S. hackles were also raised when the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also includes Russia and Central Asian states, lobbied to push U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

"The Russians and Chinese seem to be putting pressure on these guys, and that's something we're concerned about," the official said, referring to Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian states where the U.S. military has bases or access to facilities.

ASIA'S STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE

The Chinese and Russians also did not invite U.S. observers to watch large joint war games held in China last summer.

Rumsfeld's address to the weekend forum sponsored by London's International Institute of Strategic Studies "makes a positive point about inclusiveness and it doesn't criticize anybody," the official said.

"We're not beating people over the head on this," he said.

At the same forum last year, Rumsfeld pointedly raised concerns about China's rapidly growing military spending, drawing an angry response from Beijing.

He repeated that refrain when he visited China last October and urged his hosts to be more transparent about their arms budget and strategic intentions, themes driven home in major Pentagon policy papers on China in recent years.

The Rumsfeld aide said that this year, however, "We don't expect to be belaboring the military power question."

Pentagon officials will head to Beijing next week for consultative defense talks with the Chinese, one fruit of Rumsfeld's trip last year, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said Rumsfeld's third appearance at the Shangri-La forum underscored the strategic importance of Asia and close U.S. bilateral ties with countries ranging from Australia to Vietnam.

The aide said Rumsfeld's message to Asian counterparts would be: "While we're busy in the Middle East, we have not forgotten that there are other strategically important things going on."