No new US-China agreements

Mattis meets Beijing defence chief

SINGAPORE, Oct 18, (Agencies): US officials say they sense that relations with the Chinese military, after a rocky few months, may be stabilizing, although face-to-face talks between their respective defense chiefs Thursday produced no new agreements.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met for nearly 90 minutes, 30 minutes longer than scheduled, on the sidelines of an Asian security conference with his Chinese counterpart, Gen Wei Fenghe. A participant, Randall Schriver, the Pentagon’s top official for Asia-Pacific affairs, said Mattis described the talks as “straightforward and candid” and asserted that high-level talks are especially valuable during times of tension.

Schriver said the discussions covered numerous issues but focused especially on the disputed South China Sea, where Chinese military activity is viewed by Washington as irresponsible and Beijing complains of an inappropriate U.S. military presence. Mattis asserted that the US view is widely shared in the region and beyond.

“That’s an area where we will continue to have differences and talk through,” Schriver told reporters after the meeting.

Mattis and Wei discussed an existing US invitation for Wei to visit the US, but details remain to be worked out, Schriver said.

“There was a commitment on both sides to try to find a time” for such a meeting, he added.

China did not immediately comment to US media outlets at the conference after the meeting between Mattis and Wei.

Just weeks ago, Mattis had planned to travel to Beijing for talks with Wei, but that fell through when the Chinese made it known that Wei would be unavailable, one of several signs that tension in the overall US-China relationship was spilling over into the military arena.

Wei and Mattis were in Singapore this week for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

An outspoken former detainee in China’s internment camps for Muslims said Thursday his application for a visa to visit the United States was rejected despite an invitation to speak at Congress about his ordeal.

Kazakh national Omir Bekali was asked to travel to Washington in September by the chairs of the Congressional-Executive Committee on China. He said his application was rejected by the US Consulate in Istanbul on Oct 2 after he was questioned about his employment status.

Bekali was one of the first people to speak out publicly about his experience in a camp in China’s Xinjiang region, where an estimated 1 million Muslims, mostly from the Uighur and Kazakh ethnicities, are being detained.