Obama presses Asia Pacific on security challenges

BRISBANE, Nov 15 (AP): President Barack Obama challenged Asia Pacific nations to choose between "conflict or cooperation," singling out North Korea's rogue nuclear program and China's tense territorial disputes with its neighbors as matters that could threaten progress in the fast-growing region.
  "The question we face is which of these futures will define the Asia Pacific in the century to come," Obama said during remarks at a university in Brisbane, Australia, where he arrived Saturday for the Group of 20 economic summit.
 Australia is Obama's final stop on a weeklong trip that included visits to China and Myanmar. He arrived here determined to show leaders that his weakened political standing in the U.S. would not affect his efforts to deepen American engagement in the Asia Pacific, which he sees as a core part of his foreign policy legacy.
 In a tacit acknowledgement of the questions in the region about his commitment to that effort, the president declared that "American leadership in the Asia Pacific will always be a fundamental focus of my foreign policy." He noted that America's commitment to the region was cemented by the generations of Americans who have fought and died in wars to ensure that "the people of the Asia Pacific might live free."
 Much of Obama's Asia-Pacific policy has centered on boosting U.S. economic ties with the region, including through a massive free-trade agreement that would include 11 other nations. But security issues have increasingly become a focus for the U.S., particularly as Beijing has stepped up its aggression in conflicts with Japan, South Korea and other nations over territory in the South and EastChinaSeas.
 Obama said Saturday that those disputes "threaten to spiral into confrontation."
"Any effective security order for Asia must be based not on spheres of influence, or coercion or intimidation where big nations bully the small but on alliances for mutual security, international law and norms that are upheld, and the peaceful resolution of disputes," Obama said.