HANOI (Reuters) – The Vietnamese government on Monday gave a boost to the search for missing U.S. servicemen from the Vietnam War, telling visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta they would open three previously closed sites to permit excavation for remains.

Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh told Panetta of the decision during a meeting at his ministry, where they discussed the U.S. strategic shift toward the Asia-Pacific region, and its implications for their growing military ties.

HANOI (Reuters) – The Vietnamese government has agreed to open three previously restricted sites to help the search for and excavation of the remains of U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.

The agreement was unveiled at a meeting between visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Vietnamese counterpart Phung Quang Thanh, spokesman George Little said.

CAM RANH BAY, Vietnam (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited a deep-water Vietnamese port near the contested South China Sea on Sunday, calling access to such harbors critical as the U.S. shifts 60 percent of its warships to the Asia-Pacific by 2020.

Panetta flew to Cam Ranh Bay, one of Asia’s finest deep-water harbors located about 450 miles south of China, just a day after he spelled out details of a new U.S. military strategy that calls for a shift in focus to the Pacific after a decade of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

SINGAPORE, June 2 (Reuters) – The United States will move
the majority of its warships to the Asia-Pacific in coming years
and keep six aircraft carriers in the region, Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta said on Saturday, giving the first details of a new
U.S. military strategy.

Speaking at an annual security forum in Singapore, Panetta
sought to dispel the notion that the shift in U.S. focus to Asia
was designed to contain China’s emergence as a global power.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The United States will keep six aircraft carriers in the Asia-Pacific and move a majority of its other warships to the region in the coming years, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday as he offered details of a new U.S. military strategy for the first time.

Speaking to an annual security forum in Singapore, Panetta also sought to dispel the notion that the shift in U.S. focus to the Asia-Pacific was part of an American effort to contain China’s emergence as a global power.

MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) – The U.S. military is prepared for any action against Syria that may be necessary, but officials are still focused on more aggressive international pressure to bring about the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday.

Panetta, speaking to reporters en route to Singapore for a security conference, stopped short of advocating U.S. action without the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council, but said the international community needed to act more aggressively to obtain Assad’s ouster while there was time.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will brief allies on the U.S. strategic shift toward Asia and will seek to allay concerns that fiscal uncertainty could undermine Washington’s commitment to the effort as he begins a week-long visit to the region this weekend.

With the Asia-Pacific region unsettled by renewed tensions over competing sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, Panetta flies to Hawaii on Wednesday for briefings with the head of the U.S. Pacific Command before traveling on to Singapore for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate panel voted on Thursday to authorize $631.4 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year, blocking plans to cut the Air Force and ordering offsetting reductions in Pentagon civilian personnel to stay within the president’s budget limits.

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a defense policy bill that would authorize a base Pentagon budget of $525.8 billion along with $88.2 billion for the Afghanistan war and other overseas operations. The panel also authorized $17.3 billion for Energy Department nuclear weapons programs.

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) – Washington’s failure to
ratify the Law of the Sea Convention puts the U.S. military at
increasing risk of confrontation with rising powers like China,
U.S. officials said on Wednesday as the Obama administration
began a new push to join the 30-year-old treaty.

Senior defense officials told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that without the treaty, the U.S. military is forced
to base rights of navigation around the globe on customary
international law, or long-standing practice, wh i ch is subject
to differing interpretations.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Navy surveillance vessel stumbled into a nerve-racking confrontation with five Chinese ships in 2009 while conducting ocean mapping operations in the South China Sea.

Chinese ships bent on enforcing Beijing’s expansive view of its rights under the Law of the Sea Treaty tried to snare the USNS Impeccable’s towed sonars with a grappling hook, U.S. officials said.