Senior US diplomat on fence-mending mission

CHINA: A senior US diplomat was due in China Tuesday for talks aimed at getting Sino-US relations back on track, with tensions high over US arms sales to Taiwan and a White House visit by the Dalai Lama.

US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will also focus on efforts to bring North Korea back to stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations, and try to persuade Beijing to back new sanctions against Iran over its atomic programme.

Steinberg, who will be accompanied by Jeffrey Bader, Obama's top Asia adviser on the National Security Council, will head to Tokyo on Thursday for talks with Japanese officials before heading home.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Beijing and Washington needed to put aside their differences - over everything from Taiwan and Tibet to Internet freedom and the value of the yuan - to move forward.

"We've gone through a bit of a bumpy path here and I think there's an interest, both within the United States and China, to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible," Crowley told reporters on Monday.

The spokesman said the visit by Steinberg and Bader offered an opportunity to "refocus on the future" of relations between the US and China, the world's largest and third-largest economies.

When he took office in January 2009, US President Barack Obama promised to broaden the Sino-US relationship. In July last year, he said that relationship would "shape the 21st century".

The US president made his maiden official visit to China with much fanfare in November.

Beijing, Tuesday, AFP