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Expected U.S. stopovers in coming weeks by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen are standard practice and China should not use them as a pretext for aggressive action toward the democratically governed island, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Tsai plans to transit through New York and Los Angeles as part of a trip to Central America, and sources have told Reuters that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy intends to meet her during the California leg of her visit.

China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, has said it is "seriously concerned" about Tsai's travel plans.

But the senior U.S. official told reporters on a call on Monday night that every president of Taiwan had transited through the U.S., and that Tsai has done so herself six times since taking office 2016, most recently in 2019.

She had met members of Congress during all of those visits, the official added, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic had limited her travel in more recent years.

"We see no reason for Beijing to turn this transit, again, which is consistent with long-standing U.S. policy, into anything but what it is. It should not be used as a pretext to step up any aggressive activity around the Taiwan Strait," the official said.

The official said Washington had communicated to Beijing that Tsai's stopovers are in keeping with past precedent.

"There is nothing new from our point of view," the official said.

Noting that President Joe Biden hoped to speak to Chinese leader Xi Jinping soon and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would like to reschedule a postponed trip to Beijing, the official said: "We urge the PRC (People's Republic of China) to keep these channels of communication open."

"In terms of contact with McCarthy's office, we offer briefings to members before engagements. We tend to do that before travel, before meetings. We've had some regular contact there," the official added.

Tsai's anticipated U.S. meeting with McCarthy is seen as a potential alternative to a sensitive visit by the Republican Speaker to Taiwan, a trip he has said he hopes to make.

China staged military exercises around Taiwan in August following a visit to Taipei by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Taiwan is China's most sensitive territorial issue and a major bone of contention with Washington, which maintains only unofficial ties with Taipei, but is required by U.S. law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

China believes the United States is colluding with Taiwan to challenge Beijing and giving support to those who want the island to declare formal independence.

Taiwan's government says the People's Republic of China has never ruled the island and so has no right to claim it, and that only its 23 million people can decide their future. (Reuters)

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Tuesday he would restore Japan's fast-track trade status after a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week, a move he called crucial for bolstering supply chains in key areas.

Yoon announced the decision at a cabinet meeting, saying South Korea and Japan should make efforts to remove obstacles that hinder developing bilateral ties.

"I will preemptively order our trade minister today to begin necessary legal procedures to have Japan back on our white list," Yoon told the meeting, which was televised live. "I'm sure Japan will respond if South Korea first starts removing the obstacles."

South Korea and Japan removed each other from the list in 2019 amid a decades-old row over a 2018 South Korean court order for Japanese companies to compensate forced labourers during Japan's 1910-45 occupation of Korea.

Tokyo criticised the ruling, saying the issue was resolved under a 1965 treaty that normalised relations, and the strained ties fanned concerns over U.S.-led efforts to bolster cooperation to counter North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

Yoon, who took office in May, has vowed to mend the bilateral ties and visited Tokyo last week for the first time in 12 years as a South Korean leader.

Yoon is pushing to resolve the forced labour feud through a plan unveiled this month under which a public foundation, funded by South Korean companies, would pay compensation.

The plan was welcomed in Tokyo but faced a backlash from some victims and South Korean opposition lawmakers, who accused Yoon of capitulating to Tokyo and inviting Japanese troops back to the Korean peninsula.

Yoon said that some people would seek political gain by fuelling "hostile nationalism and anti-Japan sentiment," without naming them, but that it was irresponsible to do so as the president.

He also accused his predecessor's government of leaving relations in a "quagmire" at the expense of crucial economic, security and people-to-people exchanges.

"I felt like I was trapped in a maze with no exit, but I couldn't just sit back and watch," Yoon said.

Kishida told him at the summit that he would uphold Japan's past apologies for wartime atrocities, including a 1998 declaration focusing on colonial rule, Yoon said, adding that now is the time for the two neighbours to go beyond the past.

"The relationship is not a zero-sum one where one side gains and the other side loses as much. It can and must be a win-win," he said.

Better ties would help build stable supply chains in high-tech industries such as semiconductors by linking South Korea's manufacturing technology with Japan's edge in materials, parts and equipment, he said.

The U.S. has called for greater trilateral cooperation with its key two Asian allies on economic security.

As a follow-up to the summit, Seoul's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it had normalised an intelligence-sharing pact, known as GSOMIA, with Tokyo to foster closer security cooperation on North Korea. (Reuters)

China's aviation regulator said on Monday that investigators were still looking into the cause of the crash of China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) Flight MU5735, almost a year after the plane came down, killing all 132 people on board.

The Boeing (BA.N) 737-800 crashed into a mountainous region in the southwestern Guangxi region on March 21, 2022, in China's deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years.

On the eve of the anniversary, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) issued a three-paragraph statement that provided little detailed information and no data from the plane's so-called "black boxes" that would offer clues into its sudden plunge from cruising altitude.

"Because the accident is very complicated and extremely rare, the investigation is carrying on in an in-depth manner," the CAAC said, adding that experts had inspected more than 100 pieces of wreckage.

"Following on this, the technical investigation team will continue to carry out work such as cause analysis, experiments and verification, and will release relevant information in a timely manner according to the investigation's progress."

International Civil Aviation Organization rules require countries probing plane crashes to make a final report publicly available within 12 months or if that is not possible, to publish an interim statement on each anniversary, detailing the progress of the investigation and any safety issues identified.

But Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor of industry publication FlightGlobal said the brevity of the CAAC's one-year statement was unusual, noting that one-year reports published by other Asian countries were often dozens to hundreds of pages long and included detailed analysis.

"The objective is not to attribute blame, but rather to improve the safety standards of the industry in general," he said.

While the MU5735 tragedy like all aircraft disasters was complex, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the aircraft were recovered days after the crash, he added.

"This data from this equipment should have yielded detailed insights into conditions with the aircraft and in the cockpit at the time of the crash."

TWO YEARS OR MORE

The Chinese regulator said investigations so far had focused on how key components were performing before the crash, and looked into air traffic control, the passengers and what the plane was carrying.

Investigators looking into the crash were examining the actions of the crew on the flight deck with no evidence found of a technical malfunction, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters in May 2022.

In a response to internet rumours of a deliberate crash, the CAAC said at the time the speculation had "gravely misled the public" and "interfered with the accident investigation work."

A final report into the causes of the crash could take two years or more to compile, Chinese officials said last year.

Boeing declined to comment and China Eastern did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A summary of a preliminary report issued last year before the jet's black boxes were analysed gave no indication of the focus of the investigation. It noted the crew were qualified, the jet was properly maintained, the weather was fine and no dangerous goods were onboard.

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) laboratory in Washington, a move Beijing had supported despite rising political tensions between the two countries. NTSB investigators also travelled to China.

The NTSB said on Monday it continued to support the Chinese-led investigation.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said last week the agency has had a "really good working relationship with China" during the investigation. "Our investigators went to China. We got what we needed," Homendy said.

The 737-800 is a widely flown predecessor to Boeing's 737 MAX and has been in service since 1997 with a strong safety record. (Reuters)

Sri Lanka will receive the first tranche of about $330 million from the International Monetary Fund in the next two days, and, going forward, disbursements would be tied to reviews that take place every six months, an IMF official said on Tuesday.

The IMF on Monday said its executive board approved a nearly $3 billion bailout for Sri Lanka, and the office of the country's president said the programme will enable it to access up to $7 billion in overall funding.

Economic mismanagement coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic left Sri Lanka severely short of dollars for essential imports at the start of last year, tipping the country into its worst financial crisis in seven decades.

Peter Breuer, Senior Mission Chief for Sri Lanka, Asia and Pacific Department at IMF, said debt sustainability was one of the key criteria for the IMF to approve a bailout for any economy.

International dollar bonds issued by the country soared following the IMF package approval. Bonds were up by 0.69 cents to 1.50 cents across tenors, with the March 2029 bond leading the gains.

The programme is expected to catalyse additional external support, with funding from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to the tune of $3.75 billion expected, IMF said in a statement.

The biggest bilateral creditors, including China, India and Japan, have guaranteed support to Sri Lanka in its efforts to put the economy back on track.

The island nation aims to announce a debt-restructuring strategy in April and step up talks with commercial creditors ahead of an IMF review of the bailout package in six months, its central bank governor told Reuters earlier this month.

"Significant austerity will bring further short-term challenges to Sri Lankans who are already battling eye-watering inflation, rising poverty and shortages of essential goods and services," said Katrina Ell, Senior Economist at Moody's Analytics. (Reuters)