Japan-U.S. ties vital, Manila says

Japan-U.S. ties vital, Manila says

MANILA (AFP): The United States and Japan should become equal
partners to counter-balance any possible Chinese expansionism
into the Asia-Pacific region, a top Philippine official said
yesterday.

President Fidel Ramos' national security adviser, retired army
general Jose Almonte, also said the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) should encourage the interdependence of
China's economy with those of the rest of the region.

He said that ASEAN views the United States as an
"irreplaceable fulcrum of an East Asian balance of power over the
foreseeable future," but that Washington should shed its "old
patron-client relationship" with Tokyo from a full partnership.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Client states must become genuine partners," said Almonte
during a speech at the Philippine Business Summit here.

"This transformation is most necessary in the Japan-U.S.
alliance ... because Beijing might misread the trade disputes
between Washington and Tokyo" as a sign of their inability "to
respond in unison to a Chinese assertion of power in East Asia."

He said that the United States "will stay in the region in its
own self interest," adding that Washington "cannot tolerate East
Asia's being dominated by a single power."

Almonte urged China's neighbors to discourage Beijing's
"lingering idea of itself as the Middle Kingdom" while
encouraging Beijing's economic interdependence with its
neighbors "to promote harmony and unity."

Almonte added that if nationalism replaced communism as
China's unifying factor, the regional giant would "become an even
more prickly neighbor than it is already."

Manila and Beijing are among six claimants to the potentially
oil-rich Spratly islands in the South China Sea along with
Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. The area has become the
focus of a sometimes acrimonious territorial dispute between the
claimants, notably China.