U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit China, South Korea, and Japan next week, the Pentagon announced Wednesday. The trip will be Gates' first to the three Asian countries since he took over as defense secretary last December. In the past, U.S. officials have sought to visit military facilities on trips to China, but Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates had no such plans. “I don't think he's desirous of seeing military facilities,” he told reporters. “He's going there to have meetings, and that's the purpose of the visit.” Despite U.S. concerns about China's increasing military spending, Gates said in March that he did not consider China a strategic adversary. But Gates and other U.S. officials have repeatedly urged Beijing to be more transparent about its military spending. Morrell declined to provide any more details of Gates' trip. But he said Tuesday that the talks in Japan would likely include the failure of Japan's government and opposition to agree on extending a naval refueling mission that supports operations in Afghanistan.
