SYDNEY -- A new regional security mechanism involving the United States, Japan and Australia that risks offending China is high on the agenda of Australian Prime Minister John Howard for his Tokyo visit.

Closer, more flexible coordination of diplomatic and military responses between the partners, expected to gradually incorporate South Korea, is part of the Bush administration's new regional approach outlined in Canberra this week.

Talks between Australian government ministers and Washington officials headed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell have cleared the way for formulating joint tactical responses to any alert in East Asia. It is the depth of involvement that Howard wants to discuss with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Some Australian analysts are warning that the Canberra agreement this week could draw the proposed four-nation alliance into a NATO-style operation for military contingencies that would hugely embarrass the Asian partners and be taken by Beijing as a direct challenge.

The long-planned Howard trip to meet Koizumi, who is seen here as the best hope in decades of pulling Japan out of economic lethargy, is timely. It coincides with moves to open a free-trade agreement between Washington and Canberra as well as wider moves to persuade U.S. President George W. Bush against letting the U.S. slip into unilateralism.

On the surface the visit is designed to reinvigorate the long, happy but stale partnership between resources-supplying Australia and top customer Japan. As in past visits, the prime minister comes to praise, not to harangue.

Election-ready Howard is keen to establish a rapport with Koizumi, fresh from his Upper House victory. The two need to talk over boosting trade and investment benefits that have languished during Japan's interminable recession, the more so since Australian business has been deepening links with China.

The latest polls, putting Howard's Coalition party ahead of Labor as likely to be returned to government at a general election late this year, give the Liberal Party leader fresh zeal for further market-place reforms. This is a time for Tokyo to reassure its Australian business interests, notably in such areas as the Mitsubishi car-making plant now threatened with closure. Canberra hopes a strong Koizumi administration will facilitate more beneficial economic links.

But it is from this week's Washington swing through East Asia where the Koizumi-Howard meeting will be most influenced, and possibly influential. Hence the higher priority Canberra is putting on this compared with past years' exchanges of Tokyo flatteries.

Canberra is still digesting the impact of the top-brass Washington visit. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called for closer joint military operations, though he shied away from declaring the Americans would expect Australia to join the U.S. in defending Taiwan against any attack by China. "More often that not," he opined, the two old allies made similar decisions.

The groundwork laid, Powell hit town for the Australia-U.S. ministerial talks, the first since Bush's adamant response to the Kyoto Protocol, missile defense and germ warfare shocked the world. Predictably, regional defense strategies got real-life treatment.

The agreed push for a tighter, more responsive Western Pacific pact stems partly from a failure last week at the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi. The Hanoi talks bogged down over methods for resolving disputes among the 21 member nations. Washington saw this as highlighting the need for a small, purpose-united forum.

What Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer found intriguing in Hanoi was the activism of his Japanese counterpart, Makiko Tanaka. Her contribution to the regional security talks gave Downer hope that Tokyo is ready for the proposed regional-response group.

Downer's plan raised with the Washington visitors is controversial, but less contentious than one put forward last year by U.S. academic Robert Blackwill, who suggested U.S. security alliances in the region be widened and deepened by bringing American forces together with Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Fears that even a carefully worded grouping may be seen as a NATO-style bulwark against China are being rejected by both Washington and Canberra. For Downer, it is "just an idea" at this stage, more like trilateral talks among senior officials. "So as not to allow a hare to rush away," he told reporters, "we wouldn't want a sort of architecture in East Asia which would be an attempt to replicate NATO or something like that."

Canberra was, however, quite open to Washington pressure for a new arrangement of its bases in Australia. Since the heady days of Star Wars satellite-tracker bases in Central Australia, the U.S. military has grown keener on the "interoperability" of both armed forces and the repositioning of military materiel in northern Australia, most notably Darwin.

A Darwin jumping-off point for a U.N. peacekeeping operation in East Timor during the freeing of the former Indonesian-occupied territory showed both Washington and Canberra the value of Australia in the event of a wider conflict.

Howard is anxious to reassure new Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Australia's willingness to help restore stability within the troubled archipelago. Canberra hopes its invitation to the new incumbent will be accepted and the visit will have lasting effect.

The importance of Indonesia to regional stability and security was stressed in this week's Canberra communique. The U.S. and Australia reaffirmed support for Indonesia's territorial integrity, with "a peaceful solution to regional grievances, including the current special autonomy negotiations in Aceh and Irian Jaya."

Earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had flagged the prospect of a resumption of U.S. arms sales to Jakarta, severed by Congress over military atrocities. Canberra will carefully monitor this move. Rumsfeld also played down suggestions of differences over links with Indonesia's powerful military.

Australia's military contacts with Jakarta are much less than they were before the 1999 Indonesian crackdown on East Timor. Though Downer conceded: "It makes sense to retain some network with the Indonesian military, given the importance of that military to the whole structure of Indonesian society."

Howard will raise the Indonesia issue when he visits Washington in early September. By then he will be clearer on Tokyo thinking on the evolving East Asian security scenario.

As in Tokyo, his Washington talks will be fairly issue-specific. Though with Bush, Howard knows he will get further with the concept of a bilateral free-trade agreement than with Koizumi. That one is too prickly for Tokyo.