SINGAPORE, June 2:US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday the United States is capable of meeting its security commitments in the Asia-Pacific region regardless of the situation in Iraq.
Mr Rumsfeld flatly rejected a suggestion that the Iraq invasion had hampered Washington’s ability to respond to emerging challenges in east Asia such as China’s growing military might.
He said the US military chiefs are responsible for ensuring that the United States has the capabilities to fulfil its assigned missions.
“And we do. That’s just a fact. They know it. The world knows it,” he told reporters here.
“Look what we did during the tsunami, look what we’re doing with respect to the earthquake situation here,” he said, referring to the assistance provided by the US military in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and last Saturday’s quake in Indonesia.
“We are a country that has capabilities and they are available to be used in helping in humanitarian activities and to function as an appropriate deterrent or defence as necessary,” he said.
Mr Rumsfeld arrived here from Washington to attend the Shangri-la Dialogue, an annual gathering of defence and national security officials and experts from around the region.
He is expected to remind the gathering in a speech on Saturday that the Asia-Pacific region remains a top strategic priority for the United States despite the turmoil in Iraq.
“While we are busy in the Middle East we have not forgotten that there are other strategically important things going on, particularly here,” said a senior US defence official travelling with Mr Rumsfeld.
His visit comes amid growing US concern about China’s military build-up and recent moves to form regional groupings that exclude the United States, still the dominant military power in the Pacific despite strains caused by the Iraq invasion.
An annual Pentagon report released last month underlined China’s stepped up efforts to develop both the means to project military power in the region and to put at risk US aircraft carriers and surface warships with longer-range missiles.
The report also cited such ‘key’ developments as a China-Russia war game last year that practised components of a Taiwan invasion plan, including off-shore blockades, para-drops, airfield seizures and amphibious landings.
Washington also has been angered by a call last year for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a Central Asian grouping sponsored by China and Russia.
Iran has recently been invited to join the group as an observer.
“It reflects what the problem is,” the senior defence official said.
The United States also expressed displeasure when it was excluded from a regional summit last year of leaders from Southeast Asia, China, Japan and South Korea.
The defence official said Mr Rumsfeld would address those concerns in his speech on Saturday ‘in a more positive, more philosophical way’.
Mr Rumsfeld made waves last year at the Shangri-la Dialogue by accusing China of hiding big increases in military spending that he said threatened to upset the military balance in the region.
“This time we’re not going to belabour that,” the defence official said.
Instead, Mr Rumsfeld will stress broader themes such as the US commitment to the region and its support for ‘inclusivity’ in regional security institutions.
“We touch on it lightly. The secretary’s speech doesn’t beat these things too hard. It makes a positive point about inclusiveness. It doesn’t criticize anybody. It expresses this positively,” he said.
It was unclear who China will send to the Shangri-la meeting. Last year a foreign ministry official represented Beijing. —AFP
