Pentagon proposes China-US military hotline

　　The Pentagon has proposed that the United States and China setupa crisis hotline between their military establishmentsinhigh-level defense talks being held in Washington, USdefenseofficials said.

　　A senior Pentagon official said on Thursday the Chinese inthepast have set aside the idea of a direct, permanentlymannedtelephone link between the defense

ministers, but appeared tobegiving it close consideration now.

　　It seemed to us given our experiences with the EP-3, thetensionsover Taiwan and a whole variety of other issues that itmade commonsense to establish a direct link of this nature, saidthe official,who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

　　We talked about it. We are going to be talking aboutthattomorrow, and pressing the issue, and hoping we can putsomethinglike this into place, the official said.

　　US and Chinese heads of state have been able to communicate overasimilar hotline since the late 1990s. Last year, a directtelephonelink was set up between the US secretary of state and theChineseforeign minister.

　　Ties between the two militaries were severed for nearly twoyearsafter the April 1, 2001 collision between a US EP-3surveillanceplane and a Chinese fighter.

　　We have routine communications and channels ofcommunications.But in a crisis situation, or on a weekend orsomething like that,you simply cant activate on five minutesnotice, the seniordefense official said.

　　Thursdays defense consultative talks were the third sinceDecr2002, and the seventh since the talks were first held in1996.

　　The Chinese delegation was led General Xiong Guangkai, thedeputychief of the general staff of the Peoples Liberation Army.DouglasFeith, undersecretary of defense for policy, led theUSdelegations, which included representatives from theNationalSecurity Council, the State Department and the JointStaff.From:Agencies