RAROTONGA, Cook Islands (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton on Friday pledged renewed American commitment to security in the
Asia-Pacific, where tensions are rising between China and its smaller neighbors
over territorial disputes and many nations face threats from climate change.
Speaking at a meeting of leaders
of South Pacific island nations, Clinton said the United States would not
abandon its long history of protecting maritime commerce in the region and
serving as a counterbalance to domination by any single world power.
However, she played down the idea
that the U.S was acting “perhaps as a hedge against particular countries.” She
said America wants to cooperate with China in the vast Pacific and encouraged
other countries, including those in the region, to do the same.
“The Pacific is big enough for
all of us,” she told reporters at a news conference with New Zealand’s Prime
Minister John Key, whose country handles defense and foreign relations for the
Cook Islands.
Yet she pointed out that China’s
interests in the region are not necessarily the same as others, a point she
also made clear earlier this month on a trip to Africa when she contrasted U.S.
goals for that continent as aimed at adding rather than extracting value. The
comment was a veiled shot at China, which some complain is using its overseas
investments to exploit resources at the expense of local populations.
“Here in the Pacific, we want to
see China act in a fair and transparent way,” Clinton said. “We want them to
play a positive role in navigation and maritime security issues. We want to see
them contribute to sustainable development for the people of the Pacific, to
protect the precious environment, including the ocean and to pursue economic activity
that will benefit the people.”
Earlier, at the meeting, China’s
Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said China was already engaged with the
region in a positive way.
“The thrust of China’s policy
toward the Pacific is to achieve peace, stability and development,” the Chinese
government’s Xinhua News Agency quoted him as saying. “China has done many
concrete things to support the economic and social development of Pacific
island countries, always in light of the needs and interests of the countries concerned.”
In her speech to the meeting,
Clinton said the U.S. would remain a big player in the region and pointed to
past accomplishments.
“We have underwritten the
security that has made it possible for the people of this region to trade and
travel freely,” she said, noting nearly a century of American military presence
in the Asia-Pacific.
“We have consistently protected
the Pacific sea lanes through which a great deal of the world’s commerce
passes. And now we look to the Pacific nations in a spirit of partnership for
your leadership on some of the most urgent and complex issues of our time.”
She noted that hundreds of U.S.
naval, Coast Guard and commercial vessels ply the Pacific and called for them
to play an enhanced role in maintaining free trade and combatting crime, such
as human trafficking and illegal fishing.
Clinton is the first secretary of
state to participate in the Pacific Island Forum and the first to visit the
sprawling but sparsely populated Cook Islands.
Her visit to the main island,
population 10,000, in the remote Cook chain has created a buzz of excitement
and she was welcomed on arrival by dozens of colorfully clad local traditional
dancers and dignitaries amid lots of drumming.
Signs of greeting dotted the main
street of Rarotonga, which runs around the 26-kilometer (16-mile) circumference
of the island. And well-wishers waved American flags outside the beachfront
restaurant where Clinton ate breakfast with other leaders before the meeting
that was held in the partly enclosed National Auditorium that doubles as a
basketball court.
Her speech, as well as those of
other participants, was occasionally punctuated by the crows of roosters, which
run freely through the island’s small communities and main town.
Clinton also announced a new
contribution of more than $32 million for programs throughout the region aimed
at boosting economic development while protecting biodiversity in the face of
rising waters attributed to climate change. The U.S. already spends $330
million a year on development in the Asia-Pacific.
Clinton is on the first leg of an
11-day, six-nation tour that keep her half a world away from U.S. politics at
the height of the presidential conventions but put her at the center of
maritime disputes between China and its neighbors.
Clinton will visit Beijing at the
midpoint of the trip, which will take her from the Cook Islands next to
Indonesia, the seat of the secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, whose members are sharply divided over how to deal with China’s
expansion of influence and increasingly aggressive claims on disputed
territory.
A summit of ASEAN leaders in July
failed to reach consensus on how to handle the disputes. Clinton will press
them to find common ground and hash out a framework for negotiating with China,
U.S. officials said.
China has bristled at the U.S.
claiming to have a national security interest in the resolution of the disputes
and maintains that they should be resolved between it and each of the other
claimants individually, a position that American officials and others say puts
the smaller nations at a disadvantage.
Later Saturday, Tokyo city
officials intending to buy tiny islands at the center of a longtime territorial
dispute with China left by boat to survey the area ahead of the purchase they
hope will bolster Japan’s claim.
The five uninhabited islands in
the East China Sea that are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and
Taiwan have become a major symbol of patriotic pride for some people in China
and Japan. They are near key sea lanes and are surrounded by rich fishing
grounds and untapped natural resources.
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