US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has challenged China to deal with North Korean provocation and the longer-term issue of whether Beijing's military can establish more durable links with the US.
Asian nations cannot stand by in the face of North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean warship, Mr Gates said yesterday during an international security summit that was dominated by questions about Pyongyang.
"To do nothing would set the wrong precedent," he said.
The latest crisis with North Korea has highlighted the limited options to deter from attacks or dismantle its nuclear weapons program. The US and China are part of a diplomatic effort to buy out the North's nuclear program.
Mr Gates said North Korea seemed immune to many of the levers of international pressure, such as ostracism.
"How do you gain purchase with a regime that doesn't seem to care what happens to it?" he said in an interview with the BBC.
"As long as the regime doesn't care what the outside world thinks of it, as long as it doesn't care about the wellbeing of its people, there's not a lot you can do about it, to be quite frank, unless you're willing at some point to use military force. And nobody wants to do that."
China, the North's closest ally, has yet to lay blame for the explosion that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. China is the communist North's biggest patron, giving it economic and political pull over Pyongyang. Washington and Seoul want China to use its clout to rein in the North Koreans.
South Korea referred the sinking of its warship to the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions. China is one of five veto-holding members of the council.
At the summit, Mr Gates said: "The nations of this region share the task of addressing these dangerous provocations."
He asked China to resume the military co-operation with the US that Beijing suspended after the Obama administration went ahead with the sale of weapons to Taiwan worth more than $US6 billion ($7.2bn). The two powers cannot afford to misunderstand one another, Mr Gates told the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore.
Mr Gates joined South Korea in trying to raise world support for the conclusion that North Korea was to blame for the sinking of the South's warship, and should be held to account.
South Korean officials handed out pamphlets containing the results of an international investigation that found North Korea blew the warship Cheonan apart with a torpedo.
Mr Gates met South Korean officials several times over two days, including a three-way discussion with officials from South Korea and Japan. Washington is pledged to defend both nations as a legacy of US wars in the Pacific. Mr Gates said the three nations "have to have a united front to deter further provocation".
AP
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