China stirs speculation on canceled Navy visit

BEIJING -- China hinted Thursday that Congress' honoring of the Dalai Lama and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan led it to cancel a U.S. Navy visit to Hong Kong, an incident that could open a new rift in military relations that had warmed in recent years.

The Pentagon summoned a Chinese military attache to protest the decision, which the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called "perplexing." President Bush raised the issue with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi during their talks on North Korea, Iran and other issues.

Last week's incident has added an unusual twist to Chinese-U.S. relations, which have been strained in recent months by disputes over trade and Iran's nuclear program.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao did not draw a direct connection between any specific event and China's barring of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and its escort vessels from entering Hong Kong harbor for a planned Thanksgiving visit.

However, he said a report from Washington that quoted Yang as calling the incident a misunderstanding was "not in line with the facts." He said ties had been "disturbed and harmed" by U.S. actions.

The U.S. and China have been trying to forge military cooperation for more than a decade, but progress has been shaky. NATO's 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia and a collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in 2001 temporarily brought developments to a halt.

China has canceled U.S. Navy visits to Hong Kong in the past to register anger over incidents such as the Belgrade bombing. The spy plane accident, in which a Chinese pilot was killed, led to a freeze in military contacts that took years to resume.

Liu mentioned the awarding by Congress of its highest civilian honor to the Dalai Lama last month as an issue that had upset relations.