Australia, South Korea and Japan are the United States' key strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region, senior US administration officials said Monday.
Both US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that the United States was committed to maintaining its military, political and diplomatic presence in the region.
"The United States is a Pacific nation, has been a Pacific nation and will remain engaged in this region politically, diplomatically and with the presence of our military forces, let there be no doubt about that," Powell said.
While no nation advocated formalising closer security ties between the United States and Australia, South Korea and Japan, Powell said there would be closer informal links in the future.
"Since we have such common interests it might be wise to find ways to explore that on a more regular basis," Powell told a joint media conference.
While Australia and the US used bilateral talks here to emphasise the closeness of their relationship, Powell dismissed suggestions that Australia was Washington's "deputy sheriff" in the region as "nonsense".
The annual Australia-US Ministerial (Ausmin) summit also resulted in an ongoing commitment from Washington to support Australia's role in assisting the United Nations shepherd the former Indonesian province of East Timor to full independence.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said proposals for Canberra, Seoul and Tokyo to develop more formal security ties had surfaced during the talks, but ruled out "replicating" the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Asia.
"This is something we have discussed. We have informally discussed it with the Japanese as well," Downer said.
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld said both Washington and Canberra agreed on the need to maintain a dialogue with the Indonesian military while urging an end to human rights abuses in rebellious provinces, such as Aceh and Irian Jaya.
"I find the position of the US with respect to Indonesia, as far as I can tell, identical to that of Australia both in terms of human rights as well as with respect to military-to-military contact," Rumsfeld said.
The United States and Australia severed the bulk of their military ties with Jakarta after Indonesian troops were implicated in bloody attempts to crush the independence movement in East Timor in 1999.
Australia led a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force into the territory in September that year, heavily backed by US military logistical support.
Earlier Monday, Powell told commercial television here the US Congress would reassess Washington's restrictions on US military assistance to Jakarta if it could be satisfied human rights abuses by the Indonesian military had been curbed.
"Our Congress has in place certain restrictions on what we can do with the Indonesians, so we will approach the new Indonesian government with an attitude of helpfulness but with also an attitude of caution," Powell said -- CANBERRA (AFP)
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