Article Posted on : - Dec 11, 2010

US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy with Chinese General Ma Xiaotian. A file photo.

WASHINGTON (PTI): The US and Chinese military officials held "positive" talks as they discussed regional security including the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a top Pentagon official said Saturday.

"I feel that the tone of the discussions was more positive, more frank. We are more able to discuss our differences in a very professional and substantive and, frankly, for me, enlightening way. And that's a step forward," Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy told reporters at a Pentagon news briefing here.

Flournoy led the US delegation in talks with Chinese General Ma Xiaotian held at the Pentagon, which is considered as re-start of US-China military-to-military relationship.

Ma is the deputy chief of the Peoples' Liberation Army's General Staff. It was the 11th round of the US-China Defence Consultative Talks.

"We discussed the relationship itself, which was an integral part of our positive, cooperative and comprehensive bilateral relationship with China," she said.

"We also discussed avenues of cooperation across a broad range of regional security issues, including Africa, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran," she said.

"We reaffirmed seven points of consensus that Secretary Gates and Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman General Xu achieved when General Xu was here in the United States last year. And we discussed how to develop a more durable framework to shift the military-to-military relationship to a more sustained and reliable and continuous footing," Flournoy said.

"We discussed the importance of maritime safety and of maintaining communication when incidents arise, and we agreed to continue making progress under what we call the MMCA, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement," she said.

The two delegation exchanged views on the US Nuclear Posture Review and their Ballistic Missile Defence Review reports, both of which were published earlier this year.

"We discussed the importance of China continuing to make progress in improving its openness and transparency in defence matters," she said.

Flournoy said they also discussed the upcoming visit to China by Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the state visit to the United States by President Hu Jintao.

"We believe that today's meeting will help contribute to setting a positive tone and creating success in both of these events," she said.

She said they also discussed the importance of getting North Korea back on a path to demonstrating its willingness to denuclearize. "It was a very productive comparing of notes, if you will, on the situation, recognizing that that dialogue will also be happening in other nonmilitary channels as well."

Flournoy said the US has seen some gradual increases in China's transparency and also in their candor with the Pentagon on a variety of topics.