US army chief of staff General George Casey said Monday he wished to improve ties with China's military and would draft plans for a joint disaster relief exercise.
Casey, who reportedly had a tense meeting with Chinese military leaders last week, said humanitarian missions should be one of the ways to enhance ties between Washington and Beijing.
"It is a way to begin discussions between our two countries," said Casey, who is visiting Japan this week for meetings and seminars involving military leaders and senior officials from Asia-Pacific nations.
"We had some good discussions (with) my Chinese counterparts about our future with our military-to-military relationship," he told a press conference at the Tokyo event focused on disaster relief.
"And one of the areas they suggested was to work on a humanitarian assistance-disaster relief exercise that we will do bilaterally.
"When I return, I intend to begin the process of building an exercise like that," he said.
A meeting last Thursday between Casey and General Ge Zhenfeng, deputy chief of the People's Liberation Army's general staff, "turned rancorous", the New York Times reported.
Ge gave a "sharp lecture on the failure of the United States to respect China's interests" and Casey rebutted the argument, the newspaper said, citing a witness and a report by the Xinhua news agency.
The Tokyo event, designed to discuss international military cooperation in the area of disaster relief, included a conference for Asia-Pacific army chiefs and a separate seminar programme for senior military officials.
China sent participants to the senior officials' programmes, but not to the army chiefs' event.
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