A senior defense official said the Chinese in the past have set aside the idea of a direct, permanently manned telephone link between the US and Chinese defense ministers, but appeared to be giving it close consideration now.

"It seemed to us given our experiences with the EP-3, the tensions over Taiwan and a whole variety of other issues it made just simple common sense to establish a direct a direct link of this nature," said the official, who briefed reporters on the eve of the talks on condition of anonymity.

"We talked about it, and up to this point they have been unable to respond positively to it. We are going to be talking about that tomorrow, and pressing the issue, and hoping we can put something like this into place," he said.

Lieutenant Commander Greg Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the hotline proposal, which was first suggested two years ago, was put foward again at the meeting. The Chinese side said it was "still under consideration," he said.

US and Chinese heads of state have been able to communicate over a similar hotline since the late 1990s. Last year, a direct telephone link was set up between the US secretary of state and the Chinese foreign minister.

But the US and Chinese militaries have had a turbulent relationship puncutated by crises.

Ties between the two militaries were severed for nearly two years after the April 1, 2001 collision between a US EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter. Beijing infuriated Washington by holding the aircraft's crew for 11 days.

"You have routine communications and channels of communications there. But in a crisis situation, or on a weekend or something like that, you simply can't activate on five minutes notice," the senior defense official said.

The Chinese may have moved slowly on a hotline since it was first proposed two years ago because it conflicted with procedures within their military and government, the official said.

But, he said, "I think they are really trying to figure out the pros and cons of this."

Thusday's defense consultative talks were the third since December 2002, and the seventh since the talks were first held in 1996.

The Chinese delegation was led General Xiong Guangkai, the deputy chief of the general staff of the Peoples Liberation Army, who in 1998 made a veiled threat of a nuclear attack on Los Angeles if the United States intervened in Taiwan.

Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, led the US delegations, which included representatives from the National Security Council, the State Department and the Joint Staff.

The push for better communications in a crisis coincides with growing tension over what may happen next in North Korea, which on February 10 declared it had nuclear weapons.

The US delegation urged their Chinese counterparts to think through the implications for China of having a self-declared nuclear state on its borders, and explain them to their government, officials said.

"The consequences of a nuclear weapons state suggests it is going to be willing to test, it is going to be willing to demonstrate the capabilities of being able to deliver a nuclear weapon, namely a ballistic missile test as well as earlier threats that they are willing to proliferate," the official said.

He noted that the military claims to be the Chinese entity with the closest relationship with North Korea, one formed during the 1950-53 Korean war, and so should have the clearest insights into Pyongyang's decision-making and thinking.

The US side also used the talks to question the Chinese about a defense white paper released by Beijing in December, which vowed to "crush ... at any cost" any attempt by Taiwan to assert its independence from China, officials said.

The Chinese were expected to explain the rationale for the Anti-Secession Law threatening the use of force against Taiwan if it attempts to secede, they said.

The Americans also noted a strong differences of opinion on how much money Beijing actually spends on its military versus what it reports in its budget.

The official said there was "a very large gap that has to be closed in terms of transparency in their objetives, their methodology, their budgeting and such related things."

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