Chinese President Hu Jintao took centre stage Thursday ahead of an Asia Pacific summit with trade and climate change high on the agenda of his talks with the leaders of Australia and the United States.
Hu's comments at a joint news conference after meeting host Prime Minister John Howard signaled that Australia's efforts to agree a flagship statement on climate change had run into trouble.
But the two men announced annual security summits, seen as a move to allay Chinese concern about being left out of regional diplomacy, although they gave no details of when they start.
Hu said the security agreement would "increase our dialogue and cooperation on major regional and international issues concerning peace and development," in comments through an interpreter.
Howard said the agreement proved Australia's trilateral security relations with the United States and Japan were not aimed at containing China's growing economic and military strength in the region.
"The trilateral security dialogue between Australia, the United States and Japan is not directed at anyone, any more than the strategic dialogue between China and Australia which I have just announced is directed at anyone."
Howard will meet with US President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a Saturday morning breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Hu and Howard also signed a number of agreements aimed at strengthening ties on extradition, prisoner exchanges and energy.
On climate change, however, developing countries like China are resisting pressure from Australia and the United States to commit themselves to do more to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Hu said China supported moves at the summit to tackle climate change but insisted the "main channel" for international agreement on the global problem should be the United Nations.
Any declaration at the summit needed to give "full expression" to this fact and to acknowledge that industrialised and developing countries had different responsibilities, he said.
China, one of the world's biggest polluters, has argued that tough cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases could hamper its efforts to bring its people out of poverty through economic development.
Hu was due later Thursday to meet Bush here amid concern in Washington over Beijing's growing influence and anger at a series of recalls of Chinese imports on safety grounds.
Bush acknowledged Wednesday after arriving in Sydney for the weekend summit of 21 Pacific rim economies that the two powers had a "complex relationship," and said he would be "darned sure" to raise contentious matters.
He said it would include climate change, saying any global policy would be meaningless without China at the table.
Meanwhile Bush met earlier Thursday with Kevin Rudd, the man tipped to be Australia's next prime minister after elections later this year.
While Howard is Bush's staunchest remaining war ally in Iraq, which the US leader made a point of thanking him for, Rudd has pledged to pull Australia's troops out of the country.
Afterward Rudd indicated that Bush had not managed to make him change his mind, saying he had repeated his well known position that he would implement a staged withdrawal if he wins the elections.
Global trade was another major topic at Hu's meetings, with APEC leaders expected to issue a formal appeal to trading nations to urgently conclude World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on liberalisation.
WTO chief Pascal Lamy has secured broad support for the call from trade and foreign ministers of the United States, Japan, China, and the 18 other Pacific rim economies attending the summit in Sydney at the weekend, officials said.Agence France Presse
