The United States urged Japan and China on Friday to improve strained ties,
but insisted that weekend security talks with Australia and Japan will not focus
on Washington's wariness of China's rise as an Asia-Pacific power.
Yet the inaugural top-level talks, to be held in Sydney on Saturday, have
highlighted a difference of opinion between close allies Canberra and
Washington, with Australia seeing China more as an economic opportunity than a
potential negative force.
As part of what analysts see as a difficult diplomatic balancing act,
Australian Prime Minister John Howard met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice on Friday, just weeks ahead of an expected visit to Australia by Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao.
At a news conference with Howard, Rice said China's rise needed to be
positive and urged Beijing and Tokyo to work on their ties, strained over a
range of disputes mainly stemming from Japan's occupation of much of China from
1931 to 1945.
"There's a lot to work with in the Japan-China relationship and we have
encouraged that relationship to get better and better," Rice told reporters.
"We want a region in which China is influential and is going to be more
influential over the next several years, is more open in domestic policies and
is more open in its face in the world."
Howard made no comment on the emergence of China and, while Australian
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has shown support for the U.S. bid to manage
the Asian giant, he has also assured Beijing it should not view this as an
attempt at containment.
Rice said the trilateral security talks were also likely to cover Iraq and
the nuclear ambitions of North Korea, adding that there was "plenty to talk
about."
"It would be wrong to leave the impression (that China) is the only thing on
the agenda when Japan, the United States and Australia get together, because we
share values, we share responsibilities, not just regionally but globally," she
said.