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U.S.
seeks flexible pact on ABM
Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published
8/2/01
The
Bush administration wants a "loose" framework with
Russia that would replace the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
and permit the United States to build a national missile defense,
White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said
yesterday.
[...]
On
other issues, Miss Rice said:
• The White House has not received
a visa request from Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic
of China (Taiwan), to visit the United States for a speech
to the National Press Club.
• U.S. Aegis-equipped warships
could provide a shield against missile attack in Asia, but
it is premature to decide whether such a system could be deployed
in a joint U.S.-Japan-Taiwan system, as suggested by Mr. Chen
in a recent interview.
"A lot frankly depends
on what the Chinese do with their missile capability across
the Taiwan Strait," she said.
[...]
The
administration's strategy on Beijing is to integrate China's
economy internationally with the goal of eventually causing
its political dictatorship to reform.
"Now that said, everybody
would agree that China's a rising power in the Asia-Pacific
[region] and therefore we have a number of security issues
in conflict with the Chinese," Miss Rice said, including
China's resentment of the U.S. presence in the region, differences
over Taiwan and human rights, and Beijing's weapons and missile
sales.
"They believe that China
ought to be the major power" in the region, she said.
"That's what the EP-3 incident was all about. It was
not about some reconnaissance plane."
The U.S. surveillance plane
was bumped by a Chinese jet fighter April 1 over the South
China Sea and the incident led to a confrontation over the
detention of the U.S. air crew in China.
Miss Rice stated that the administration
has consciously stopped using a slogan from the fall presidential
campaign to describe China as a "strategic competitor."
She said, however, that unquestionably "there are strong
elements of competition in our relationship with China."
The phrase is not adequate to
the complexities of U.S.-China relations, she said.
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