DEFENCE Minister Stephen Smith says a US official is aggrieved about being deeply misrepresented when newspapers quoted him as saying the US was concerned about Australian defence budget cuts.
Mr Smith said the suggestion that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta were coming to Australia to express concerns about Australian defence spending was nonsense.
He said talks at the Australia-United States Ministerial (AUSMIN) consultations in Perth on Wednesday were likely to be entirely consistent with other talks with Mr Panetta before and after the budget.
"It's quite straight forward. We are all under financial pressure when it comes to defence budgets," he told reporters.
Mr Smith said Mr Panetta was managing cuts from the US defence spending of half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
If the so-called "fiscal cliff" confronting the US was not resolved, Mr Panetta would have to manage a $1.2 trillion reduction over the same period.
In the May budget, a total of $5.5 billion was pared from the defence budget over the next four years.
Last week Fairfax newspapers reported US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, as saying the US was concerned and that would be raised at AUSMIN.
But Mr Smith said Mr Campbell had expressed concern about how he had been reported to Australia's ambassador to the US, Kim Beazley.
"Ambassador Beazley told me that the first thing that Assistant Secretary Campbell did was to tell Ambassador Beazley how aggrieved he was that he had been grievously misrepresented in the papers over the weekend," he said.
"I think that puts it in its appropriate context."
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