US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sternly warned European allies on Monday that they ‘‘should do nothing’’ that alters the military balance of power in Asia through sales of sophisticated weapons to China, suggesting that those arms ultimately could be directed at Americans.
‘‘It is the United States—not Europe—that has defended the Pacific,’’ Rice said at a news conference in Seoul before she flew to Beijing for talks with Chinese officials.
The European Union had appeared all but certain this year to lift an embargo on weapons sales imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of democracy demonstrators. US officials have expressed dismay over the decision, especially after China passed a law this month authorising the use of force against Taiwan if it moves toward formal independence.
Rice also held talks this weekend in Japan and South Korea, both of which fear China will improve its military capabilities. Rice cited US concerns about rise of Chinese military spending and the increasing sophistication of Chinese military power.
‘‘The European Union should do nothing to contribute to a circumstance in which Chinese military modernisation draws on European technology or even the political decision to suggest that it could draw on European technology,’’ she said.
‘Khan also supplied bomb technology’
WASHINGTON: Nuclear investigators from the United States and other nations now believe that the black market network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan was selling not only technology for enriching nuclear fuel and blueprints for nuclear weapons, but also the engineering secrets needed to fabricate nuclear warheads. The secrets range from how to cast uranium metal into the form needed at the core of a bomb to how to build the explosive lenses that compress the core and start the detonation. —NYT