US security adviser to hold talks with PH, Japan, SKorean officials

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 15 ------ United States President Joe Biden is dispatching White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Tokyo this week for talks with his counterparts from Japan, the Philippines and South Korea.

Sullivan will also take part in "the first-ever trilateral meeting of the Japanese, Philippine and US national security advisers" while in Japan's capital, the White House National Security Council said in a statement on Tuesday. The White House offered scant details about Sullivan's two-day visit that begins on Thursday, saying Sullivan and his counterparts "will discuss ways to deepen collaboration on a number of key regional and global issues." Sullivan's visit comes after US, Japanese and Philippine coast guard ships staged law enforcement drills in waters near the disputed South China Sea earlier this month. Washington has stepped up efforts to reinforce alliances in Asia amid an increasingly tense rivalry with China. Washington lays no claims to the strategic South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysian, Taiwan and Brunei have been locked in tense territorial standoffs for decades. But the US says freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes in the busy waterway are in its national interest.

The White House confirmed Sullivan's travels after Biden, during a reception at the White House for US chiefs of diplomatic missions on Tuesday, made an offhand remark that US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel was not on hand because he was getting ready for Sullivan's visit. US-China relations have been strained throughout Biden's tenure. China launched military exercises last year around Taiwan after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-ruling island that China claims as its own. Relations became further strained early this year after Washington shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the continental US. Beijing also was angered by Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen's stopover that included meeting with Pelosi's successor Kevin McCarthy in his native California in April. And on Saturday, the White House confirmed that China has been operating a spy base in Cuba for some time and that it was upgraded in 2019 under the watch of then-president Donald Trump's administration.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday that the Trump administration had the "same access" to intelligence about China's spying operations as the Biden administration did. Former Trump administration officials, including former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe and national security adviser John Bolton, have pushed back against the assertion that the Cuba spy base was upgraded under their watch. "The (Biden) administration claims that the base was there in 2019, if not before, all I can say is I was in the White House for part of 2019 I was certainly unaware of it," Bolton said in an interview with SiriusXM's Potus channel on Tuesday. "I think I would have remembered it if it crossed my desk."

The White House confirmed the base after the Wall Street Journal reported last week that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the Caribbean island. Despite the tensions with Beijing, the administration has been eager to restart high-level communications with Beijing. Sullivan is currently in India meeting with officials ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Washington next week. He held talks on Tuesday with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval that focused on potential US-Indian collaboration on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and defense, the Indian Foreign Ministry said. Sullivan also addressed a conference of business leaders where he said the US was keen on doing away with regulatory obstacles that are holding back the two countries from deepening trade in areas like defense and high technology.

Source: manilatimes.net