United States military officials are to visit China this week to begin hammering out a plan to allow the US Navy to continue sending its ships to Hong Kong after the handover.
The technical team will arrive in Beijing early in the week for the talks, a Defence Department spokesman said.
The delegation will be made up of one official from the China desk in the Pentagon and several others from Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii.
The trip follows the agreement in principle announced by Defence Secretary William Perry and his Chinese counterpart Chi Haotian during his Washington visit last month - Beijing's first indication that ship visits could continue.
But the task now facing Washington is not only to keep as many of the current average of about 70 annual visits as possible, but also negotiate an acceptable mechanism for securing China's agreement in each case.
According to an administration official, the Defence Department's preferred plan would involve not Beijing, but local officials in Hong Kong giving the green light when requests are made. Washington would also like an agreed number of visits to be set in advance so that it did not have to get advance permission for each individual visit.
