SINGAPORE (AP) – Declining to say whether America and its partners are winning the war on terror, Secretary of Defense Gates called Saturday for more focus on combating poverty and other underlying causes of extremism.

“I think we are still early in this contest,” Mr. Gates said in a question-and-answer session with attendees of a conference on Asian security, an annual gathering that took on an unusual dimension with the participation of a senior Chinese general who offered a pointed defense of his country’s military buildup.

In a speech to the gathering known as the Shangri-la Dialogue, Mr. Gates called on Asian nations to contribute more to the war on terrorism and to ensure that Afghanistan not be allowed to slip back into chaos. He touched only lightly on China, whose military buildup had been a central focus of previous conferences.

And while Mr. Gates mentioned the Iraq war and warned of security risks posed by the nuclear ambitions of North Korean and Iran, he focused more on broader themes of terrorism and American commitments in Asia.

“In particular, the challenge posed by terrorists inspired by radical ideologies cannot be overcome by any one nation – no matter how wealthy or powerful,” he said, alluding to American efforts to build a lasting coalition.

A member of the audience later asked Mr. Gates whether he thought America is winning the terror war.

He cited areas of progress, including the elimination in late 2001 of Afghanistan as a haven for Al Qaeda. But he also said the Islamic extremists have managed since then to expand their recruiting grounds.

“On the negative side of the ledger, I think we have not made enough progress in trying to address some of the root causes of terrorism in some of these societies, whether it is economic deprivation or despotism that leads to alienation,” he said.

He called for more “creative thinking” to address the root causes of Islamic extremism, but he added that even those efforts will not be the complete answer to winning what he called a long war on terrorism.

“One of the disturbing things about many of the terrorists that have been caught is that these are not ignorant, poor people,” he said. “These are educated people, often from professional families. So dealing with poverty and those issues is not going to eliminate the problem, but it certainly can reduce the pool of people prepared to give their lives for this cause.”

After Mr. Gates spoke, a Chinese general addressed the conference and said, in response to a question from the audience, that China expects a final agreement in September on a long-standing American proposal to establish a “hotline” between the two countries’ defense leaders for use during crises.

Lieutenant Genera; Zhang Qinsheng, deputy chief of China’s General Staff and the highest ranking Chinese officer to participate in the Singapore conference, said technical issues had held up a hotline agreement. He said he would be attending meetings in Washington in September where “we will finalize” a deal.

Asked about General Zhang’s remark several hours later by reporters traveling with him, Mr. Gates called it “just the next step forward” in improving military-to-military cooperation. And he said General Zhang’s overall presentation to the conference was “very matter-of-fact and dealt fairly directly with the issues before us.”

Although Mr. Gates spoke only briefly about China in his prepared remarks, General Zhang delivered a detailed refutation of American assertions that Beijing has been overly vague about the level and purposes of its defense spending and military modernization.

He said, for example, that of the $45 billion in this year’s defense budget — which the Pentagon last week said might actually be as high as $120 billion — $20 billion is consumed by pay raises and other improvements in living conditions for Chinese troops. Millions more are being spent on new uniforms, he said.

The published Chinese defense budget is “true and authentic,” he said, according to an English translation.

General Zhang said Beijing remains committed to peaceful cooperation with other Asian and Pacific nations.

“China shall never fire the first shot,” he said.

In his exchange with members of the audience – primarily government officials and security experts – Mr. Gates was asked how long American intelligence agencies think it will take Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

“The general view of American intelligence is that they would be in a position to develop a nuclear device probably sometime in the period 2010-2011 or 2014 or 15,” he said, adding that some think it could be as early as late next year.

“The reality is that because of the way Iran has conducted its affairs we really don’t know, and it puts a higher premium, it seems to me, on the international community coming together in terms of strengthening sanctions on Iran so that they begin to face some serious trade-offs in terms of their economic well being and their economic future, for having nuclear weapons.”

On Iraq, Mr. Gates spoke positively of the Bush administration’s new troop buildup and counterinsurgency effort.

“The immediate goal is to create the breathing room necessary to allow reform and reconciliation to go forward – steps that will give all of Iraq’s communities, majority and minorities alike, a stake in that nation’s future,” he said.

“Whatever your views on how we got to this point in Iraq, it is clear that a failed state in that part of the world would destabilize the region and embolden violent extremists everywhere.”