By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 20, 1998; Page A11

Long before Billy Cohen of Bangor, Maine, realized that being a self-Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said today that he is satisfied Beijing will not continue sales of anti-ship missiles to Iran as he wrapped up a four-day visit here that underscored improving Sino-American military ties.

At a news conference before departing for Tokyo, Cohen described his meetings with Chinese officials as "warm and productive." Most notably, U.S. officials said, the Chinese military granted Cohen an unprecedented peek at a heretofore secret air defense command center and concluded its first formal agreement with the Pentagon – a protocol designed to avert clashes or accidents at sea.

Cohen declined, however, to say explicitly whether Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian had agreed to cancel any existing missile deals with Iran. China reportedly has sold C-801 and C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran in defiance of U.S. concerns that they could threaten Persian Gulf shipping, and it remains unclear if China has contracted to sell Iran any additional missiles.

Nevertheless, Cohen's sojourn here highlighted significant advances in one of Washington's most sensitive military relationships – between the world's most powerful country and its most populous one. Less than two years ago, a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group was facing off against Chinese forces on military exercises near the Strait of Taiwan, and tensions were high in both capitals.

Since then, U.S. and Chinese officials have labored to improve ties despite domestic opposition, lingering mistrust and strong disagreement over Taiwan – an island state of 21 million people that China considers a rogue province and the United States is legally bound to support. Cohen's visit here – the fifth leg of a seven-nation tour of East Asia – has built on a groundswell of good feelings engendered by the October meeting in Washington between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

At his news conference, Cohen held out the prospect that the U.S. embargo on military sales to China might someday be lifted – an embargo imposed in 1989, following China's bloody crackdown on student-led democracy demonstrations in Beijing. He said the Chinese had asked to buy spare parts for unarmed U.S.-built Blackhawk helicopters purchased in the mid-1980s.

On Monday, Cohen tried to calm Chinese concerns that strengthened U.S. defense ties with Japan, Australia and, recently, the Philippines and Singapore may be designed to contain China. "Today, China is an Asian power and rightfully so," he told an audience at the Academy of Military Science. "The United States does not fear this, nor do we view China as an adversary."

Defense Minister Chi responded that the United States also should not fear China's push to become a regional power. "It is groundless to describe the modernization drive of China's army, which is for the sake of the country's economic construction and of a defensive nature, as an unstable factor in the region," he said.

U.S. officials noted also that China has begun sharing some information on events in North Korea, where a food shortage and an unpredictable Communist regime have combined to raise fears for the stability of the Korean peninsula.

Military contacts between the two nations, nearly nonexistent in 1996, have ballooned to almost weekly visits by Chinese officers to the United States and vice versa, U.S. officials said. On Monday, Chinese army chief of staff Fu Quanyou invited Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to China later this year.

Still, the United States appears more eager than China to broaden the relationship. In recent months, U.S. military officials have suggested a number of initiatives on which the Chinese have either failed to respond or have watered down. Among other things, U.S. officials have asked that American and Chinese pilots be allowed to exchange visits; the Americans are particularly interested in flying China's new Russian-made SU-27 fighter jet. The Chinese have balked at the request, U.S. officials said. Cohen also called today for the two sides to visit each other's nuclear-weapons sites, and he noted that the Chinese were "studying" the request.

Cohen's visit to Beijing's Air Defense Command Center Monday was the highlight of his trip. Arranged just days before he arrived, the visit gave him and U.S. military experts a glance into the heart of China's defense structure. Cohen was accompanied by 14 other U.S. officials, including Adam. Joseph W. Prueher, commander of U.S. Pacific forces.

The eight-story building, fashioned Soviet-style from concrete, is situated in southeastern Beijing behind a lightly guarded gate, according to a U.S. official traveling with Cohen. Commanded by a lieutenant general, the center is responsible for defending the skies in a 200-mile radius around China's capital. It has the ability to coordinate surface-to-air missile batteries; to track thousands of military and commercial planes in the region daily; and, most significantly, to generate an integrated response to a potential crisis, the official said.

"It was an interesting mixture of old and new . . . of technology from the late 1950s and early 1980s," the official said. "Some places had computers with large displays. In other places, I smelled vacuum tubes" – electronic components that preceded transistors.

One of the murkiest areas of China's military scope is its sales of components of weapons of mass destruction. Last week, Clinton certified that China has stopped selling nuclear-weapons-related material – a problem that bedeviled U.S.-Chinese relations for years. U.S. officials say they are still concerned that China is exporting conventional missiles.

On Monday, Cohen departed from the advance text of his speech at the military academy to express pleasure that Chi had reiterated assurances that missile sales to Iran had been halted. That pledge was made just before the Washington summit meeting, but Cohen said on his arrival in Beijing Saturday that he intended to follow up on the matter.

U.S. officials said there was some confusion about whether China would fulfill existing missile contracts to Iran or cancel them as well, but Cohen declared: "I believe that we have assurances that such sales will not continue in the future."

At the same time, he warned that any disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf as a result of technology provided by the Chinese would have "a damaging effect on China's relations with many countries around the world, including the United States."