SINGAPORE: The United States and China need to cooperate on security matters and maintain transparent military ties, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said here Saturday. "It is essential for the United States and China to find opportunities to cooperate wherever possible," Gates told a high-level security forum in Singapore."This includes maintaining a defence relationship marked by consistent and open channels of communication and contact," he said. "Likewise, it is essential that we are transparent -- both to each other and the rest of the world -- about our strategic goals, political intentions, and military development." China's support is widely seen as crucial to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis because it is one of the few states with an influence on the isolated Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. The United States, China and other UN Security Council members have been studying possible sanctions against North Korea over its second nuclear test staged Monday, which was followed by short-range missile exercises.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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