CHINA, JAPAN & US: Clinton Points to Possible Tensions With China

January 12, 2010

By MARK LANDLER

HONOLULU — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, embarking on her first diplomatic trip of 2010, will try to ease tensions with Japan, America’s most important Asian ally, over a stalled agreement to relocate a Marine base on the island of Okinawa.

But she acknowledged that relations with the region’s other major power, China, may be entering a rough period, as the United States pledges to sell weapons to Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, and President Obama plans a meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, over the objections of Beijing, which considers him a separatist.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters Monday on her plane, said the United States and China had a “mature relationship,” which she said meant that “it doesn’t go off the rails when we have differences of opinion.”

“We will provide defensive arms for Taiwan,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We have a difference of perspective on the role and ambitions of the Dalai Lama, which we’ve been very public about.”

Mrs. Clinton was traveling to Hawaii, her first stop in a nine-day trip that will include Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia. In Honolulu, she is scheduled to give a speech on United States security strategy in Asia, and to meet the Japanese foreign minister, Katsuya Okada.

Japan has frustrated and angered the Obama administration with its refusal to carry out a 2006 agreement to move a Marine Corps air station in Okinawa to a less populated area of the island.

Mrs. Clinton sought to play down the dispute, saying the alliance was “much bigger than any one particular issue.”

Japanese-American relations have been unsettled since August, when voters in Japan swept out the long-entrenched Liberal Democratic Party in favor of the slightly left-leaning Democratic Party, led by Yukio Hatoyama. Mr. Hatoyama spoke of forging closer ties to Asian neighbors like China, prompting concerns in Washington that Japan was pulling away from its close relations with the United States.

President Obama tried to reduce tensions when he visited Tokyo in November. But after he left, Mr. Okada pushed for a government inquiry into secret agreements with the United States in the 1960s and 1970s that allowed American aircraft and ships with nuclear weapons to enter Japan.

Most of the tension is rooted in the dispute over Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. The Obama administration wants Japan to honor a 2006 agreement to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. But Mr. Hatoyama campaigned to move it off the island or even out of Japan.

Mrs. Clinton said the bumps were aftershocks from Japan’s political earthquake. “You can imagine what it would be like in our own country, if after 50 years a party that had never held power, actually held it,” she said.

In her first visit to Beijing as secretary of state last February, Mrs. Clinton played down human rights concerns and emphasized cooperation on issues like trade and climate change. But on Monday, she took a tougher line, saying that Washington was a necessary counterweight to Beijing.

“People want to see the United States fully engaged in Asia, so that as China rises, there’s the presence of the United States as a force for peace and stability, as a guarantor of security,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She also called on China to use its influence to force North Korea back into negotiations on relinquishing its nuclear weapons. North Korea said Monday that it would not return to those talks unless sanctions against it were lifted, and it was able to negotiate a formal peace treaty with the United States to replace the 1953 truce that ended the Korean War.

Returning to those multiparty talks, she said, was a precondition for dealing with other issues.

Starting her second year as the nation’s chief diplomat, Mrs. Clinton spoke more about pressure than diplomatic engagement.

Speaking of Iran, she said the United States and its allies were discussing financial sanctions that would appear to be aimed at the Revolutionary Guards and other political players in the country, should diplomacy fail.

“It is clear that there is a relatively small group of decision makers inside Iran,” she said. “They are in both political and commercial relationships, and if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions, we think that is a smarter way to do sanctions.”

But she added, “All that is yet to be decided upon.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company