Yang Jiechi

China blamed the United States on Tuesday for a naval confrontation in the South China Sea over the weekend, contending that an American surveillance vessel was illegally conducting activities in China's special economic zone. The U.S. Defense Department had complained that five Chinese ships surrounded and harassed the Impeccable, a submarine-surveillance ship, in international waters on Sunday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and a conservative official in Tehran found something they could agree on Saturday, as each dismissed the Iranian foreign minister's suggestion that a deal was near on Iran's nuclear program. Gates said he was disappointed in Tehran's response to a months-old proposal backed by the Obama administration in which Iran would exchange a limited quantity of low-enriched uranium for fuel plates to use in a Tehran medical reactor. "I do not have the sense we are close to an agreement," he said at a round-table meeting with journalists in Ankara, where he also suggested that Washington's patience had limits.

When Google threatened to pull out of China last month after hacker attacks on its networks, the Obama administration announced with some fanfare that it would lodge an official protest with Beijing. "We want some answers," an indignant Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said at the time. Soon, however, talk about the diplomatic protest ceased. U.S. officials raised the issue with the Chinese in private, they said, but have never delivered the written diplomatic message.

Earlier this month, the Clinton administration quietly settled upon a strategy for smoothing over frictions with China caused by the NATO air war against Yugoslavia and the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. According to senior officials, the strategy went like this: Don't hope for much until China's top leaders conclude a series of meetings next month at the Chinese seaside retreat of Beidaihe.

China lashed out Tuesday at the U.S. decision to sell the largest arms package in a decade to Taiwan and warned that it reserved the right to take retaliatory action. Only hours later, the Bush administration formally presented the arms offer, which includes four destroyers, eight submarines and a dozen aircraft, to a delegation from Taiwan. Chinese Ambassador to the U.S.

Staking out a middle ground between angering China and helping Taiwan, President Bush has decided to sell Taiwan older destroyers, diesel submarines, sub-hunting aircraft and a new version of Patriot air defense missiles--but not the advanced radar system sought by the Taipei government, U.S. officials said Monday. However, the president intends to reconsider Taiwan's request next year, according to a top Republican senator who was briefed by Pentagon officials.

As Robert Mugabe was inaugurated Sunday to a new five-year term as Zimbabwe's president, critics and analysts warned that his pattern of violent revenge against opponents could be repeated in coming months in an attempt to destroy his chief rival's party. The announcement of Mugabe's inauguration at the State House in Harare and the issuing of invitations were so hasty that both came several hours before the results of Friday's one-man presidential runoff were released.

The crew of a U.S. spy plane held in China is in "high spirits" and healthy, U.S. officials said Friday, amid reports that a letter was being drafted by both governments that could provide a face-saving end to the weeklong diplomatic standoff over a midair collision.

For the third time this month, Chinese authorities Tuesday convicted a scholar with ties to the U.S. of spying even as Washington was expressing its displeasure at the first two verdicts. A Beijing court found Qin Guangguang, a pharmaceuticals expert and former visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, guilty of spying for Taiwan and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday that it faced international pressure and increasing isolation unless it joined other world powers in sanctioning Iran to try to halt Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The admonishment from Clinton came on the same day the Pentagon announced more than $6 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, a move certain to infuriate Beijing and add a new complication to the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Clinton, speaking at a leading French military academy in Paris, said that China and five other leading nations had been united in trying to persuade Iran to halt uranium enrichment that they fear is aimed at developing nuclear weaponry.