Obama and Xi agree on N.Korea, discuss cybersecurity at summit

U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on Saturday to apply more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, during a two-day summit where Obama aired U.S. complaints that China is engaging in cyber theft.

Obama and Xi had wide-ranging talks at a get-to-know-you visit that included an extensive discussion of how to rein in North Korea, whose belligerent rhetoric in recent months has rattled the Asia-Pacific region as well as the United States.

China has grown increasingly frustrated at North Korea over its nuclear tests and missile launches.
   
American officials came away from the Obama-Xi summit believing that China is ready to work more closely with the United States on North Korea than it has in the past, but there were no concrete measures made public.

White House national security adviser Tom Donilon told reporters that Obama and Xi "agreed that North Korea has to denuclearize, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and that we would work together to deepen cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization."

Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi told a separate news conference that Xi had told Obama that China and the United States were "the same in their positions and objectives" on the North Korean nuclear issue.

China is Pyongyang's ally but has become increasingly concerned at North Korean threats of war against South Korea.
   
CHINA STILL CLOSE TO NORTH KOREA

Still, Beijing has resisted full implementation of U.N. sanctions against its impoverished neighbor out of fear a collapse of the reclusive state could trigger chaos on China's border.

Analysts cautioned that it remained unclear and probably unlikely that Beijing had changed its fundamental calculus about North Korea, an old Cold War ally that serves as a buffer between China and democratic South Korea, which hosts 28,000 U.S. troops.

"Going back a very long time, China and North Korea have a lot of problems, and don't particularly like each other, but they've needed each other and in a certain real sense they still do," said Alan Romberg, director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center, a Washington thank tank.

The two leaders wrestled with how to handle China's rise on the world stage, more than 40 years after President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit to Communist China in 1972 ended decades of estrangement between Washington and Beijing.

In talks that may set the stage for U.S.-Chinese relations for years to come, Obama and Xi spent about eight hours together over Friday and Saturday at a sprawling retreat in the sun-baked desert near Palm Springs, California.

Their visit included a one-on-one session on Saturday morning and a stroll outside in the desert heat, and a Friday night dinner of lobster tamales, porterhouse steak and cherry pie prepared by celebrity chef Bobby Flay. All that was an effort to inject some warmth into often chilly relations.

They had much to discuss, with tensions rising over U.S. allegations about Chinese hacking of industrial secrets, an issue that Donilon said Obama raised directly with his Chinese counterpart.
   
Obama described to Xi the exact kinds of problems the United States was concerned about regarding cyber thievery and said that if they were not addressed, it would become a "very difficult problem in the economic relationship," said Donilon.

Yang, briefing Chinese reporters, said Beijing wanted cooperation rather than friction with the United States over cybersecurity.
   
"Cybersecurity should not become the root cause of mutual suspicion and friction, rather it should be a new bright spot in our cooperation," Yang said.
   
Beijing insists it is more a victim than a perpetrator of cyber espionage.
   
Taking on another hot spot, Obama urged Xi to de-escalate a contentious territorial dispute with Japan over remote islands in the East China Sea and deal with the matter through diplomatic channels, Donilon said.
  
The dispute has escalated to the point where China and Japan scramble fighter jets and their patrol ships shadow each other. The United States, a formal security ally of Japan, says it is neutral about sovereignty over the islets, but opposes the use of force or unilateral efforts to change the status quo.
   
Obama and Xi agreed to cooperate in fighting climate change by cutting the use of hydrofluorocarbons, the White House said.
 
 
REUTERS