FORMER leading American diplomat Strobe Talbott does not think United States President-elect Barack Obama will devote a majority or even a great deal of his attention to the US-China relationship.

Some may find this disturbing, but not Mr Talbott, who heads policy think-tank Brookings Institution.

He sees it as good news that much of Asia did not figure significantly in the US presidential campaign.

'If countries figure largely in the election, that's usually bad news,' he said at a dialogue on Wednesday night.

By comparison, he sees the Obama administration devoting a significant amount of energy to West Asia, the Middle East and South Asia in a bid to avert a clash of civilisations.

Mr Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001, feels this effort will need great leadership from India and countries like Jordan and Egypt.

He also sees China and India inevitably playing a greater leadership role globally.

He was speaking to 100 scholars and policymakers at the first S.T.Lee Global Governance Conference which began on Thursday and ends on Saturday.

Organised by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, the event brings together top thinkers from Asia and the West to tackle issues like the financial meltdown, climate change, and pandemics.

Also speaking at the dialogue was Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo, who pointed out that the China-US relationship will be a key plank of global governance in the coming years.

But he also noted how America held an appeal for many people around the world. There is no substitute to American leadership, because the software of global governance is fundamentally American, Mr Yeo said.

But such leadership had to acknowledge the diversity of the human family, he said, relating an anecdote that an Indonesian minister shared about Mr Obama, who the minister knew and met recently:

'When Mr Obama saw the minister at a Washington reception, he shouted the Muslim greeting 'Assalamualaikum' to him. The minister replied, 'Alaikumsalam'.'

'Mr Obama said that not because he was Muslim, but because he understood the words - 'May the peace of God be with you'. Can there be a better greeting than that?'

Added Mr Yeo: 'When we talk about global governance, it has to be built around the greeting: respect for human beings, respect for the diversity of human beings.'