HANOI, Oct 30, (RTRS): China told the United States on Saturday it would not withhold rare earth minerals and Washington offered to host three-way talk to ease Sino-Japanese tension, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Clinton’s talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Hanoi — to be followed by a meeting with Chinese State Council Dai Bingguo on Hainan Island — appeared to ease a dispute over the minerals vital for many high-tech products.
However, the two countries did not appear to make much headway on a series of other disputes, including the US desire to see China put more pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear programmes and to improve relations with the South.
The United States has been uncomfortable about China’s decision to slash rare earth export quotas generally and to cut shipments to Japan, with which it is embroiled in a territorial dispute over islands they both claim in the East China Sea.

While Chinese officials have recently said they will not exploit the high-tech ores used in lasers, superconductors, computers and other electronics for leverage, prices have spiked and firms are rushing to develop sources outside China.
“Minister Yang clarified China has no intention of withholding these minerals from the market,” Clinton told a news conference after she met Yang on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Hanoi.
She said the United States, Japan, Europe and other allies would search for more sources of supply of the minerals.
“So, although we are pleased by the clarification we have received from the Chinese government, we still think that the world as a whole needs to find alternatives.”
Clinton also urged China and Japan to cool fresh tension over an overlapping claim in the East China Sea and offered to hold three-way talks.
“We have certainly encouraged both Japan and China to seek peaceful resolution of any disagreements,” she said.

“We have recommended to both that the United States is more than willing to host a trilateral where we would bring Japan and China and their foreign ministers together to discuss a range of issues.”
US officials said Clinton and Yang had discussed North Korea, next month’s G20 meeting and Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the United States in January, but provided no details. Yang had agreed to visit the United States to prepare for Hu’s visit but no date was set.
Clinton said she had also discussed North Korea with President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.
“This is a matter of great concern to all of us and we continue to urge the North Koreans to return to the negotiating table, pursue what they began in 2005,” she said, referring to a North Korean agreement to abandon its atomic programme.
North Korea has twice conducted nuclear tests despite the 2005 agreement.
North and South Korea, which technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, exchanged gunfire across their heavily armed land border on Friday, the South’s military said.

The rare exchange of fire took place a fortnight before the leaders of the world’s 20 top economies meet for the G20 summit in Seoul, not far south of the border. It was not immediately clear what was behind the skirmish, but in the past the North has carried out provocations around the time the South has hosted prominent international events.
North-South relations sank to their lowest point in years with the torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 South Korean sailors. Seoul and Washington blamed the incident on Pyongyang, which denied responsibility.
Fearing tension could easily escalate, the United States would like to see China exert greater pressure on the North to improve relations with the South and to do more to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programmes.