U.S. defense chief in Seoul for talks on North Korea

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's defense chief begins a visit to South Korea on Monday in one of the strongest shows of support for its military ally locked in a bitter feud with North Korea over a deadly torpedo attack.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be joined later in the week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a high-profile meeting in Seoul to respond to the North and to discuss ways to deter it from any future attack.

But the unprecedented meeting of top diplomats and defense officials between the allies risks angering China, with an expected announcement of U.S.-South Korean military exercises that have set off alarms in Beijing.

Tension between North and South Korea remains high following the March sinking of the warship Cheonan, killing 46 South Korean sailors. Pyongyang has denied responsibility and escaped censure this month from the United Nations, which condemned the attack but, in deference to China, did not directly blame North Korea.

North Korea held the first meeting with U.S.-led United Nations Command last week to talk about the Cheonan incident. The two sides were expected to schedule a new session to set up a meeting of generals.

North Korea is also sending its foreign minister to a regional forum in Hanoi on Friday, attended also by the United States and China, where the South is expected to make another push for Pyongyang to admit responsibility.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the talks in Seoul were aimed at assessing the next steps with North Korea, including whether and how to resume stalled talks about Pyongyang's nuclear program. North Korea said this month it was willing to return to disarmament talks, in limbo since 2007.

But he stressed that an essential precondition for any new talks would be that Pyongyang cease its "provocative ways" and commit to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

The visit has symbolic overtones as a show of U.S.-South Korean unity 60 years after the outbreak of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Gates will on Tuesday meet some of the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

The trip will culminate Wednesday in the first talks between the U.S. and South Korean secretaries of defense and state. U.S. officials say the top-level event shows the importance President Barack Obama places on relations with South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy.

ECONOMIC TIES

Clinton also plans to discuss the U.S.-South Korea economic relationship, where Obama has vowed to push through a long-stalled free trade agreement, as well as South Korea's preparations to hold a G20 summit this year.

U.S. officials say the talks are likely to yield at least one concrete result: the announcement in Seoul of a series of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills over a period of months in both the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

"These are exercises that enhance our anti-submarine warfare capabilities. They will also, by extension, be a show of force to the North Koreans, and send a message -- what we hope to be a very strong message -- of deterrence," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

China, North Korea's sole ally, has voiced deep concerns about any U.S.-South Korean drills in the Yellow Sea, which separates China and the Korean peninsula, and urged regional powers to put the Cheonan incident behind them.

U.S. officials, briefing reporters ahead of the trip, dismissed those concerns, saying drills in international waters in the Yellow Sea or elsewhere were "routine."

"This is about sending a message to (North Korea). It's not about sending a message to the Chinese. And it should not be interpreted as such," Morrell said.

The U.S. military in Seoul said the 97,000-tonne aircraft carrier USS George Washington would visit the South Korean port of Busan on the day Gates and Clinton hold talks, with four destroyers from its strike group including USS John S. McCain making calls to other ports.