Pentagon leader softens tone before Beijing visit

AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis laid out plans for a less contentious, more open dialogue with Chinese leaders as he travels to Asia, less than a month after he slammed Beijing at an international conference for its militarization of islands in the South China Sea.

Speaking to reporters on his plane Sunday en route to a stop in Alaska, Mattis avoided any of the sharp criticism of China that he had voiced recently. Instead, he insisted that he is going into the talks with Chinese leaders without any preconceived notions, and wants to focus on larger, more strategic security issues.

According to officials, a key topic of the discussions this week will be the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the role China can play, considering its long friendship with North Korea.

“I want to go in right now without basically poisoning the well at this point. I’m going there to have a conversation,” said Mattis. “I do not want to immediately go in with a certain preset expectation of what they are going to say. I want to go in and do a lot of listening.”

Mattis’ more diplomatic tack reflects the U.S. administration’s recognition of China’s crucial influence on Korea as negotiations move ahead to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

One senior U.S. official said that while Mattis will willingly lay out America’s position on China’s military buildup in the South China Sea and other points of contention, the Pentagon chief doesn’t want to open the conversations with “the irritants.” Instead, the goal is to have higher quality talks about the two countries’ military relationship, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last month, however, Mattis abruptly disinvited China from a multinational exercise in the Pacific that will begin in a few days, in retribution for Beijing putting weapEIELSON ons systems on manmade islands in the South China Sea. And days later he publicly threatened “much larger consequences in the future” if the militarization continued.

China recently has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, electronic jammers and other equipment on the Spratly Islands, and landed a bomber aircraft at Woody Island. China says it is within its rights to build up defenses on islands in the South China Sea that it believes are its sovereign territory.

Many nations fear that Beijing will use the construction on the islands to extend its military reach and potentially try to restrict navigation in the South China Sea.

It’s all but certain the Chinese will raise those issues with Mattis, as well as Beijing’s long-held opposition to increasing U.S. contacts with Taiwan. China claims the self-ruled island as its territory.