The spokesman would not comment specifically on a report by an Israeli television channel that Washington was angered because Israel took back a sensitive weapon system for upgrading that it had sold to China in the mid 1990s.

Israel's Channel Two television said the Pentagon had demanded the dismissal of Israeli Defense Ministry director general Amos Yaron over the deal.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said any differences between the United States and Israel were "based on policy not personalities."

"Any suggestion or accusation that anyone at the US Defense Department demanded the resignation of anybody in the Israeli government would simply be wrong," he told AFP.

"The United States Defense Department is not in a position to dictate to other countries who their officials should be. So that aspect of this story that I have seen is false," he said.

He acknowledged, however, longstanding US concerns about the sale and transfer of weapons systems or certain technologies to China.

"And we continue to raise those concerns with our allies and our friends, and we look for them to take responsible approaches to arms sales to China," he said.

Whitman said the United States had held discussions about its concerns with Israel as well as with the European Union, which is under pressure from France and Germany to lift a 15-year-old embargo on military sales to China.

US concerns center on the threat that China's military modernization program poses to US forces in the Taiwan Straits as well as its efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal and its growing inventory of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, he said.

He noted Israel's cancelation in 2000 of a planned sale of its Phalcon early warning radar to China after Washington objected.

"We continue to enjoy a strong bilateral relationship and where we have concerns, because our relationship is strong, we are able to express it in a very open and forthright manner," he said.

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