BEIJING (AFP) - China and the United States will resume military consultations this month that were postponed last year when Washington announced a planned weapons sale to Taiwan, state press said Sunday. The defence consultations will be held in Beijing on Feb 27-28, the People's Daily reported, citing an unnamed official with the US Department of Defence. "We want to continue exchanges with China and are seeking positive cooperative ties," the official was quoted as saying. The defence talks will resume only days after Hillary Clinton makes her first visit to China from Feb 20-22 as the top envoy of the new administration of Obama, the report said. The talks will take place once a year and could include discussions on the fight against global terrorism, it said. China called off high-level military exchanges last October after the Pentagon notified Congress that it planned to sell 6.5 billion dollars of military hardware to Taiwan. Beijing said the sales threatened Sino-US defence cooperation. But defence ministry spokesman Colonel Hu Changming said last month that China was willing to resume military cooperation with the Obama administration. "In this new period we hope that both China and the US could make joint efforts to create favourable conditions and improve and promote military-to-military relations," Hu said. "We call on the US to remove the obstacles to the growth of military relations between the two countries and to create favourable conditions for the healthy growth of military relations." Subsequently the navies of China and the United States have shared information in the fight against piracy off the coast of Somalia, where both nations have sent military vessels, the report said. Since the end of a civil war in 1949, China has viewed Taiwan as a breakaway territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, while the United States has pledged to defend the island.