By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent
Reuters
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday 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 U.S. bilateral alliances, the Pentagon chief told defense 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 on Saturday, 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 neighbors, 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.
Randall Schriver, a China expert at the Armitage International consultancy in Washington, said Rumsfeld expressed "a more balanced view of China this year -- this is yet another attempt and invite them to be part of this dialogue."
Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee emerged from bilateral meetings with Rumsfeld saying that India and China had chosen to "engage ourselves in dialogue." But he declined to say whether India shared U.S. concerns about China.
IRAN A "STRANGE" PARTNER
Pentagon officials have urged Asian states to resist attempts to exclude the United States from regional groupings, such as last year's East Asia Summit of leaders in Malaysia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of China, Russia and their Central Asian neighbors.
"Our personal preference is for organizations that are inclusive and thereby have a better chance of being successful in addressing some of the critical and indeed dangerous problems that face the world," Rumsfeld said.
He cited the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit -- two groups that include the United States -- as useful arenas or cooperation.
Rumsfeld said multilateral approaches were key in tackling threats from "violent extremists and rogue regimes" as well as "blackmail" by regimes with ballistic missiles.
However, the Pentagon chief questioned the decision by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to accept U.S. foe Iran as an observer this year.
"It strikes me as passing strange that one would want to bring into an organization that says it's against terrorism one of the nations that's the leading terrorist nation in the world: Iran," he said.
Asked if India, also an SCO observer, shared the U.S. negative view of Iran's qualifications, Mukherjee said: &qu
