Enlarged conference will discuss ways to maintain global safety

China is likely to informally discuss the fiercely contested US arms sales to Taiwan, and raise its ideas of global security cooperation at the Munich Security Conference starting tomorrow, Chinese experts said.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will join the world's top diplomats and military officials to chat out of the public eye in the 46th round of the annual meeting, which will last through Sunday.

Yang will be the first Chinese foreign minister ever to attend the prestigious conference, which has its roots in the Cold War and traditionally sticks to areas of common interest to Washington and Europe.

"I believe his talks will send important and clear signals to Washington," he said.

The meeting, is greatly enlarged this year mirroring increasing security concerns around the world. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will also attend.

The US will be represented by its special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, chairman of the US Senate foreign affairs committee, as well as former Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates are also expected.

The guest list also includes senior representatives from India and Pakistan. It is not clear if Iranian officials will attend though they have in previous years.

Nuclear nonproliferation is eyed as the top priority of the conference, while a week after the international Afghanistan conference in London, Afghanistan is also expected to be high on the agenda.

The meeting has captured increasing global attention since a 2007 speech by, then Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which criticized the policy of the US in unusually harsh terms.

Its status was further enhanced when US President Barack Obama sent Vice-President Joe Biden, the highest-level American official to visit Europe after Obama's inauguration, to the meeting last year. At the conference Biden vowed that Washington would humbly listen to Europe on its world security strategies.

Li Wei, director of the center for counter-terrorism studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the involvement of China's top diplomat in the meeting reflected the rise of global security threats such as the rampant piracy off Somalia waters in the past year.

At his debut at the world's most security focused talks, Foreign Minister Yang is likely to introduce China's security ideas and say that world security should not depend on certain countries and just on military force.

"From my personal view, that is an important task for the Chinese foreign minister. There will be no cooperation in the new era if there is no widely accepted security ideas." Li said.