Obama: US goal is not to contain China

MANILA: President Barack Obama said today he had no desire to contain or counter China despite clinching a defence pact with the Philippines which will inject US forces close to the volatile South China Sea.
In the Philippines on the final leg of an Asian tour, Obama directly addressed leaders in Beijing, telling them that maritime territorial disputes needed to be addressed peacefully, not with "intimidation or coercion".
China's claims to various islands, reefs and atolls in the South and East China Sea have been a constant theme of Obama's tour of countries which fear being squeezed by the giant nation's emergence as a regional superpower.
"We welcome China's peaceful rise. We have a constructive relationship with China," he said at a press conference with Philippine President Benigno Aquino.
"Our goal is not to counter China. Our goal is not to contain China," Obama said, taking on suspicions in Beijing that his policy of rebalancing power towards the Asia-Pacific was tantamount to encirclement.
The US leader said Washington did not take a position on the sovereignty of disputed territories variously claimed by China, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Brunei and Vietnam.
But he said that, as an Asia-Pacific nation, the United States was interested in the freedom of navigation and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Obama backed Aquino's bid to take his country's territorial disputes with China – including over the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys – to international arbitration – a step Beijing opposes.
The new defence pact is a framework agreement that will pave the way for more US troops and ships to rotate through the Philippines, and for the US to place military hardware on Philippine bases. The pact would expand US access to airfields and ports to allow forces from the two sides to train together.
China bristled at the new US-Philippines defence pact. A dispatch carried by the official Xinhua news agency said the deal could "embolden Manila in dealing with Beijing".
"The Aquino administration has made its intention clear: to confront China with US backing," it said. – AFP