By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi talked on Thursday of ways to lift the faltering world economy and agreed to work to prevent further military confrontations at sea.
"The two agreed that China and the U.S. must work closely and urgently, as two of the world's leading economies, to stabilise the global economy by stimulating demand at home and abroad, and get credit markets flowing," the White House said in a statement after the meeting.
Tensions between the United States and China rose over a weekend incident in the South China Sea in which five Chinese ships jostled with a U.S. Navy survey vessel.
The United States has said its ship, the Impeccable, was in international waters. Beijing, however, has said the U.S. ship was in the wrong and Chinese naval officers have argued that it violated their country's sovereignty.
After meeting on Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Yang visited the White House on Thursday to meet with Obama and National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.
In the meeting with Obama, Jones raised the issue of the South China Sea incident, according to the White House statement. The statement said Obama "stressed the importance of raising the level and frequency of the U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue in order to avoid future incidents."
The White House has said the meeting with Yang had been scheduled prior to the ships incident and was a gesture of reciprocity after Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Clinton during her trip to Asia last month.
Ahead of next month's summit in London of the Group of 20 leading economies, the statement signalled that Obama and Yang were in sync on the message Washington has emphasized, calling on countries to use fiscal stimulus measures to revive growth.
Obama also emphasized to Yang his view that global trade imbalances needed to be addressed.
(Writing by Caren Bohan, additional reporting by Paul Eckert and Matt Spetalnick; editing by Todd Eastham)
