US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is embarking on his first trip to Asia since taking office in July. The former CIA director will first head to Indonesia before going on to Japan and South Korea.

His trip is part of the Obama administration's attempts to shift more of its national security focus toward Asia, where fears of China are on the rise.

Indonesia is the first stop of Panetta's week-long tour. He will attend a meeting of defense ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the resort island of Bali. US President Barack Obama will also be visiting Bali next month to attend an East Asia summit meeting after a trip to Australia.

Apart from maritime security and reforms in the Indonesian military, Panetta is expected to discuss prospects for further increasing cooperation between the US and Indonesia's special forces (KOPASSUS), which resumed last year after a decade of severed ties over alleged human rights abuses. In 1999, Washington had broken off all ties with the Indonesian military after troops rampaged through East Timor but the ban was lifted in 2005. Rights groups have accused KOPASSUS of being linked to the disappearance of student activists in the late 1990s.

Defense issues and arms sales

From Indonesia, the US defense secretary will then go on to Japan, where he is expected to meet senior government officials to discuss a series of defense issues. These include a long-stalled plan to move the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on the southern island of Okinawa to a less-crowded area of the island. So far, the US has not been able to proceed with plans to move some 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam because of Okinawan opposition.

Arms sales to Japan will also be high on the agenda. The US Congress has banned export sales of the new US stealth fighter, the F-22, which Japan was interested in, but a decision is expected soon on the sale of the Lockheed F-35 fighter or Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet to Tokyo instead.

Some 50,000 US troops are currently stationed in Japan and Washington remains Tokyo's main ally.

Bolstering diplomacy

Panetta will end his Asia tour in South Korea where he is scheduled to meet his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-jin, as well as President Lee Myung-bak and Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan. Relations between the two countries are particularly high after the recent approval of a free-trade deal.

The defense secretary's visit to Asia coincides with direct talks between the US and North Korea in Geneva to lay the ground for reviving nuclear disarmament negotiations.

A senior US official has told AFP that the defense chiefs will examine what steps to take to bolster diplomacy but also how to be prepared in case North Korea "chooses to undertake a provocation." He said that Panetta's talks would serve to examine how serious Pyongyang is about living up to its commitments in the six-party process.

Author: Anne Thomas (AFP, AP)
Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan