Posted on 03/20/2005 3:54:54 PM PST by traumer
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has held talks in China on the final leg of her six-nation Asian tour.
President Hu Jintao told Ms Rice that its new law designed to limit Taiwan's independence ambitions promoted "peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits".
Washington has opposed the move, but Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, whom she also met on Sunday, told her he hoped the US would respect the law.
The US also hopes to persuade China to help curb North Korean nuclear plans.
The Bush administration wants China to do more to force North Korea to halt its nuclear programme and come back to the negotiating table.
Ms Rice will hold more talks in Beijing on Monday.
Pyongyang pressure
Last month, Pyongyang pulled out of six-party talks hosted by China on the issue.
But China says it has limited influence and the US should be more flexible.
Satellite image of North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Centre North Korea says it has nuclear weapons
"We need to resolve this issue, it cannot go on forever," said Ms Rice, before her arrival in Beijing.
It is a commonly held belief outside China that it holds the key to North Korea, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Beijing.
The logic is simple, he says - without Chinese grain, oil and coal, North Korea's economy would collapse in a matter of weeks.
The US secretary of state would like to see China using those levers to get the North Koreans back to the table and negotiating an end to their nuclear weapons programme.
Taiwan balance
Ms Rice met President Hu in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Sunday.
The US has made no secret of its opposition to the new Chinese law on Taiwan, which does not exclude force to achieve an eventual reunification with the island Beijing considers a renegade province.
"We hope the United States won't send any wrong signal to the Taiwan splittist forces," the president was quoted as telling Ms Rice.
Before arriving in China, Ms Rice said that the United States would maintain and modernise its own forces in the Pacific to ensure the military balance would be maintained.
The US is Taiwan's biggest supplier of arms.
EU concerns
Before setting off for Beijing, Ms Rice visited the South Korean capital, Seoul, where she expressed concern over rising Chinese military power and criticised the European Union for its plans to lift an arms embargo.
At a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, she said the EU "should do nothing to contribute to a circumstance in which Chinese military modernisation draws on European technology".
The EU imposed the embargo after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Last week's annual session of the Chinese parliament approved a 12.6% in military spending this year.
"There are concerns about the rise of Chinese military spendings, and potentially Chinese military power and its increasing sophistication," said Condoleezza Rice.
/all promised sovereign 'treaties'....for 'new' ones?
President Hu Jintao told Ms Rice that its new law designed to limit Taiwan's independence ambitions promoted "peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits".
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This is amusing. Their definition 'peace and stability' is "we will kill anyone who does not agree with us...".
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