China eyes faster trade talks as trans-Pacific pact advances

By Aileen Wang and Nick Edwards

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will hold three rounds of trade negotiations with Japan and South Korea this year and step up talks with other trading partners, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday, as U.S. efforts to seal a trans-Pacific free trade deal gather pace.

China said the first set of talks on a three-way free trade agreement (FTA) with its two neighbors would be staged in Seoul, the South Korean capital, from March 26-28. They will then move to China, with a third leg to be held in Japan, ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a news conference.

The talks are seen by analysts as a two-pronged initiative by Beijing to engage with Japan after recent diplomatic tension over disputed island territory in the East China Sea, while also countering the "pivot" by the United States to reaffirm its role in Asia in the face of China's economic rise.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week that Tokyo would seek to join the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks that currently bring together the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

Bringing the world's third-largest economy into the negotiations would set the stage for a final agreement covering nearly 40 percent of world's economic output, but could also isolate China in the process.

"We will improve communications and talks with the related parties and push forward the progress of our own free trade areas," Shen told reporters when asked to respond to Japan's plan to join TPP negotiations.

"We always think that every economy in the world has the right to participate in the process of world economic integration and we always take an open and inclusive attitude for all efforts to push for regional and world cooperation," Shen said.

"We also think that any regional or bilateral free trade agreement should be only a complement to the multi-lateral trade system, not a replacement for it," he said.

Shen gave no dates for any of the later talks he said were planned as part of the three-way China-Japan-South Korea pact.

The three nations last held ministerial-level talks on a free trade deal four months ago during the East Asia Summit held in Cambodia.

(Reporting by Nick Edwards; Editing by Paul Tait)

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UN nuclear agency documents Iran atom advances

VIENNA (AP) — U.N. nuclear inspectors have counted nearly 200 advanced machines fully or partially installed at Iran's main uranium enrichment site, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday, confirming diplomats' accounts that Tehran has begun a major upgrade of a program that can be used in the making of atomic arms.

Iran denies it wants such weapons and says it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes under international law specifically allowing such activities. But because it hid its enrichment program — and other nuclear activities — for decades, many countries fear that it ultimately wants to enrich to weapons-grade level, suitable for arming nuclear warheads.

Iran announced last month that it planned to upgrade its Natanz enrichment facility, then said earlier this month that it had started doing so.

On Wednesday, diplomats told The Associated Press that upward of 100 enriching centrifuges had already been installed.

However, the IAEA report, circulated Thursday to the 35-nation agency board, was the first independent and on-record confirmation that the work had begun and was advancing. The confidential IAEA report, which was leaked to news media, said IAEA inspectors saw 180 of the high-tech IR 2m centrifuges fully or partially mounted at Natanz during a Feb. 6 inspection tour.

The advance is significant both in terms of technology and timing. The IR-2m centrifuges can enrich three to five times faster than the outmoded machines now being used at Natanz. For nations fearing that Iran may want to make nuclear arms that means a quicker way of getting there, should Tehran actually break out of its present peaceful enrichment program to openly work on a weapon.

The start of the upgrade is also of concern to six world powers that are preparing to open talks with Iran about its nuclear program on Tuesday in Kazakhstan. They want Tehran to cut back on enrichment, saying the installation of new machines instead sends the signal that the Islamic Republic is expanding that activity.

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