Pacific military chief
plans China visit

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Associated Press

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, will visit China in December, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

He will be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to visit China since a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in April 2001.

Beijing has also agreed to let a U.S. Navy ship visit a mainland port this month, and the United States will host a group of Chinese generals next month.

Those three events will be the first of their kind since U.S.-Chinese military relations were ruptured by political fallout from the EP-3 incident.

In addition, the Pentagon announced that senior-level defense talks not held since November-December 2000 will resume Dec. 9 in Washington.

The decision to proceed with those talks was made during President Bush's meeting in Texas last month with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, but no date had been set.