HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
Beijing Gearing for Potential Clash with U.S. <http://www.gvnews.net/html/DailyNews/alert571.html> By Chris Cockel The China Post WASHINGTON, Mar 21, 2002 -- In its training, mainland China's military is preparing for a possible future conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan, CIA Director George Tenet said on Tuesday. "Over the past year, Beijing's military training exercises have taken on an increasingly real-world focus. This is aimed not only at Taiwan, but also at increasing the risk to the United States itself in any future Taiwan contingency," Tenet told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington. This training, according to Tenet, emphasizes "rigorous practice, and operational capabilities, and improving the military's actual ability to use force." Nevertheless, "Taiwan remains the focus of China's military modernization programs," he said, during his testimony focusing on global threats to U.S. interests. Mainland China has become increasingly concerned in recent years of what it perceives as a continuing U.S. policy of containment, using Taiwan as something of a "bargaining chip" in the Asia-Pacific region. This fear on the part of Beijing has to some extent been heightened by the presence of increasing numbers of U.S. troops in Central and Southeast Asia and closer military cooperation with Japan since September 11. Beijing "fears that we (the U.S.) are gaining regional influence at China's expense, and it views our encouragement of the Japanese military role in counter-terrorism as a support for Japanese rearmament," explained Tenet. The CIA chief stated that last year the leaders in Beijing had become "complacent" on the issue of Taiwan, encouraged by the fact that increasing economic integration across the Taiwan Strait was "boosting Beijing's long-term leverage." He noted that the mandate of President Chen Shui-bian had been strengthened domestically by the results of last December's legislative and local elections, but warned of "a more confrontational stance" from Beijing if Chen was to use this mandate to move toward independence. Membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will prove to be a major challenge in terms of internal stability for the mainland, and particularly for the new set of leaders due to be named at the 16th Communist Party Congress in October, he stated. Tenet also highlighted U.S. concern over the mainland's continued proliferation of missile technology to countries such as Iran, Libya and North Korea. "We (the CIA) have deep concern that the Chinese are engaging in activities that continue to be inimical not just to our interests, but that their activity stimulates secondary activities that only complicate the threat we face, our forces face and our allies face," he cautioned. At a recent U.S.-mainland China conference on arms control and nonproliferation held in Washington, mainland officials were said to have been insulted by such accusations, which are hotly denied by Beijing. Senator Jim Bunning, a member of the committee, accused the leaders in Beijing along with those in Tehran of being "schizophrenic" in their approach to the war on terror. While offering assistance to the U.S., the mainland is at the same time "creating the tools of terror" which are then sold to so-called "rogue states" that may harbor terrorists, he said. Bunning and three other U.S. senators visited Taiwan in April last year and met President Chen, after canceling a trip to the mainland over the EP-3 spy plane standoff between Washington and Beijing. Proliferation by mainland firms is in some cases condoned by mainland China's government, according to Tenet. However, the threat to the U.S. and its allies is compounded by the combination of proliferation from mainland China, Russia and North Korea, which allows other states or groups to develop their own weapons capability. "So the line has to be drawn hard. We have to look at the regimes that are currently in place," he concluded. In his testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Carl Ford, U.S. assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, outlined the possibility that mainland China has maintained an offensive biological warfare program even after signing the 1984 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). However, mainland China maintains that it has never possessed any offensive biological weapons. "Many believe its (mainland China's) declaration under the BWC confidence-building measures was inaccurate and incomplete," he said. Nevertheless, Ford stated that no evidence exists that the mainland has engaged in the proliferation of biological or chemical weapons. ===== Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace. Weekly peace walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Starts & ends at the colonnade between Grand & Lakeshore Avenues, 3 P.M., every Sunday. Info: (510)763-8712, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or http://www.webwm.com/LMNOP __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
