Obama meets with Chinese premier amid disputes

NBC News and news services
BALI, Indonesia - President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao conferred Saturday in a surprise meeting on the sidelines of a major Asian summit, discussing the value of China's currency as well America's interests in the South China Sea, a White House official said.

The session was not a formally planned moment of diplomacy but rather a late add-on to let the two men continue their conversation from a group dinner the night before, a senior Obama official said.


"The principal focus of the meeting was on economics,'' Tom Donilon, Obama's top national security adviser, told reporters in the Indonesian island of Bali during the East Asia Summit that Obama is attending.

"It was a good engagement,'' Donilon said of the brief meeting. He said the United States is interested in ensuring freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce in the South China Sea and the peaceful resolution of disputes there.

The meeting comes in the wake of tension between the two nations after Obama pressed China to "play by the rules" in speeches and in a bilateral meeting last weekend with President Hu Jintao in Hawaii.



Obama wants China to make its currency policy more flexible to help balance trade, and he demanded the country crack down on intellectual property violations.

The U.S. also is eager for China to follow "international norms" regarding maritime rights on the South China Sea.

Hu has said China is in the process of modernizing its economic policy, and his aides have pushed back on the U.S. position, questioning the need for Obama to send Marines to Australia for training and exercises starting next summer.

Photographers and a videographer were allowed in at the start of the meeting, where the two men exchanged small talk. They were not expected to make formal statements.

The meeting came on the last leg of Obama's nine-day Asia-Pacific trip, in which he has focused on bulking up America's presence in the region, including setting up a Marine task force in Australia, in moves largely seen as hedges against China's rise.

China has also been angered by the U.S. stand that it has a stake in security and unhampered international commerce in the disputed territorial waters of the South China Sea. Wen had told a meeting of Southeast Asian nations on Friday that "external forces should not use any excuse to interfere" in territorial disputes in the sea.

China claims all of the sea, while several Southeast Asian nations claim parts.

Obama is the first U.S. president to attend the East Asia Summit, a regional bloc of Southeast Asian countries plus eight dialogue partners, including the United States and Russia this year.

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