(AFP) — China warned Tuesday it would take unspecified countermeasures if the United States goes ahead with plans to deploy ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.
The comments came days after U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Washington is free to deploy the weapons after its withdrawal last week from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia.
“China will not stand idly by and will be forced to take countermeasures should the U.S. deploy intermediate-range ground-based missiles in this part of the world,” said Fu Cong, the director of arms control at the Chinese foreign ministry.
“And we also call on our neighbors, our neighboring countries, to exercise prudence and not to allow a U.S. deployment of its intermediate-range missiles on (their) territory,” he added, naming Australia, Japan and South Korea.
"That would not serve the national security interest of these countries."
Fu said it was important to recognize that the United States is proposing to install the weapons at China's “doorstep.”
“Especially for a country that has experienced the Cuban missile crisis, I think the American people should understand China's feelings,” he said.
Australia on Monday ruled out the possibility of the missiles being deployed on its soil, saying Canberra had not even been asked to host them.
South Korea's defense ministry said it had not had any discussions with the United States about the deployment of intermediate missiles.
“We have also not internally reviewed the issue and have no plan to do so,” ministry spokesperson Choi Hyun-soo told reporters.
The INF treaty was a cornerstone of the global arms control architecture but the Trump administration said the bilateral pact had given other countries — namely China — free rein to develop their own long-range missiles.
Esper, the new Pentagon chief, said Saturday that Washington would like to deploy the missiles “sooner rather than later,” speaking to reporters on a plane to Sydney at the start of a weeklong tour of Asia.
But he said later that any actual deployment of missiles was “quite some ways away.”
“It is going to take, again, a few years to actually have some type of operational, capable missiles, whether they are ballistic, cruise, you name it, to be able to deploy,” he said.
The announcement was the latest U.S. plan to irk China, which is vying with Washington for influence in the region, but Esper said Beijing should not be surprised.
The rise of a militarily more assertive China has worried traditional U.S. allies such as Australia and New Zealand, and Beijing's actions in the South China Sea have alarmed neighbors with competing territorial claims to the strategic waterway.
Esper did not specify where the United States intended to deploy the weapons but experts say the most likely location is the island of Guam, which hosts significant U.S. military facilities.
Fu said that any deployment in Guam — around 1,875 miles from Shanghai on China's east coast — would be viewed as “a very provocative action on the part of the U.S. and it can be very dangerous.”
The Trump administration withdrew from the INF treaty on Friday after accusing Russia of having violated it for years.
Under the pact signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington and Moscow agreed to limit the use of conventional and nuclear missiles with a range of 500-5,000 kilometers (300-3,000 miles). But its unraveling had been on the cards for months amid worsening ties between Russia and the United States.
Fu said the United States talking about any Chinese and Russian violations was “pure pretext.”
“The real purpose of the US withdrawal, as many of the experts have said, is to free its hand and to develop missile capabilities,” he said.
© Agence France-Presse
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