PERTH, Australia: US and Australian ministers sought to bolster security ties at annual talks on Wednesday, as the American military seeks greater access to the country’s bases in a strategic tilt to the Pacific.

Anxious over China’s growing military might and territorial tensions with its neighbors, US officials are pushing for a more visible military role across the region.

This includes expanding exercises and deploying more advanced ships and hardware to Southeast Asia.

The US military will also station a powerful radar and a space telescope in Australia as part of a major refocusing of priorities towards Asia, the two countries announced on Wednesday.

Defense Minister Stephen Smith welcomed the deployment of US Marines this year in Australia’s north and said that he and counterpart Leon Panetta were looking at opening up access to more bases and ports for US aircraft and warships.

“We look forward today to discussions about the potential for enhanced aviation and aerial access to our Northern Territory RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] bases and also in due course advanced naval access to HMAS Stirling,” Smith told reporters, referring to the base south of Perth.

Smith said that holding the annual strategic discussions between the two nations in the western coastal city underlined the growing importance of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, home to vital shipping lanes and growing economies.

Smith also said that the transfer of the C-band radar “will add considerably to surveillance of space debris in our part of the world.” Panetta meanwhile described it as “major leap forward in bilateral space cooperation and an important new frontier in the United States’ rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region.”

Before Wednesday’s meeting, which gathers foreign and defense ministers from each country, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed that the US was fully committed to its pivot to Asia over the long term, despite crises in the Middle East and fiscal pressures at home.

Speaking Tuesday evening at the University of Western Australia, Clinton underlined America’s “expanding engagement” in the region.

“It’s important that we make absolutely clear we are here to stay,” she said, adding that it was important to see India become more involved in the region and that the US would welcome Australian-India joint naval exercises.

Although US and Asutralian officials privately worry about Beijing’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere, Clinton insisted that the US supported the peaceful rise of China.

“[We] hope to see gradual but consistent opening up of a Chinese society and political system that will more closely give the Chinese people the opportunities that we in the United States and Australia are lucky to take for granted,” she said.

The US-Australia talks are taking place as China’s Communist Party undergoes a once-in-a-decade leadership transition.

Clinton said on Wednesday the two governments also planned to confer on more detailed plans for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, with most combat forces due to depart by the end of 2014.

The annual talks follow the arrival of about 250 US Marines in northern Australia as part of an American “rebalance” toward the Pacific after a decade of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The move to station Marines—some 2,500 by 2016-17—represents a significant strategic shift by Washington and has irked Beijing.

A senior US defense official said that the Pentagon would like to “keep the ball moving” on the deployment of Marines as well as air force crews, hoping to slightly increase the number of boots on the ground.