Rumsfeld lauds growing Asian security networks

SINGAPORE, June 3 (Reuters) US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld today hailed an expanding network of multilateral security cooperation in Asia and called on China to ''demystify'' its military spending.

Joint actions against terrorism and piracy and disaster relief helped flesh out a system for an Asian region that has lacked institutions like NATO in Europe and instead relied on US bilateral alliances, the Pentagon chief told defence officials and experts in Singapore.

''Now we see an expanding network of security cooperation in this region, both bilaterally between nations and multilaterally among nations, with the United States as a partner,'' he said.

''We see this as a welcome shift,'' Rumsfeld told the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in this Southeast Asian city-state.

The Pentagon has built close ties with Asian countries ranging from Mongolia to Vietnam, reached out to China and dramatically overhauled America's linchpin alliances with Japan and South Korea, he said.

Rumsfeld used last year's Shangri-La forum to sound the alarm about China's rising military spending and secrecy about its budget and strategy, angering Beijing.

Revisiting that theme gently today, he said the Chinese had the right to spend on the military as they saw fit but would ''benefit by demystifying to some extent the reasons why they are investing in what they are investing in.'' With China's growing economic importance, ''over time it will be in their interest to be reasonably transparent'' and erase suspicions among its neighbours, he said.

Rumsfeld lamented that he had ''tried and failed'' to persuade China to send senior military officials to Singapore this year.

Sponsored by London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, the five-year-old Shangri-La talks have become Asia's premier security forum.

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