BEIJING — Establishing the threshold for a new round of military escalation in the tense week leading up to Taiwan's first direct presidential election, Chinese Premier Li Peng on Sunday warned the United States to keep its warships out of the Taiwan Strait.
"If some foreign force makes a show of force in the Taiwan Strait, that will not be helpful but will make the situation all the more complicated," Li told reporters during a news conference at the Great Hall of the People here.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Independence is positioned off Taiwan's eastern coast to monitor ongoing Chinese military maneuvers. A second carrier, the Nimitz, is en route from the Persian Gulf and is expected to arrive in the area this week.
In December, the Nimitz, accompanied by other warships, led the first passage by a U.S. carrier group through the 100-mile-wide strait between the mainland and Taiwan since 1979, when the United States cut off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognized Beijing as the only government of China.
In acknowledging the December passage, U.S. officials had asserted that the carrier group made the trip only to avoid bad weather. But it amounted to an extraordinary show of U.S. naval power at a time of increasing tensions.
In Washington on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta refused to say whether the U.S. intends to defy Li's warning and order warships to enter the strait any time soon.
"There's nothing further to be said about where we will deploy those vessels," Panetta said on the CBS-TV news program "Face the Nation." "That's something I'm not going to tell you or the country at this point."
Panetta described China's military maneuvers near Taiwan as "reckless and frankly provocative." In contrast, he described the Clinton administration's reaction to the Chinese military activity as "prudent . . . cautious . . . and very clear."
China's Li did not specify what "complications" would arise if the United States did send any of its ships into the strait. But specialists on the Chinese military predict that such a move would lead to an expanded or extended wave of military exercises near Taiwan or to the firing of more M-9 ballistic missiles at targets near the island.
For more than a week, China has been conducting air and naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait southwest of Taiwan. During that time, the Chinese have fired four unarmed M-9 missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, at sea targets just off the Taiwanese coast.
