Beijing: China today criticised as "groundless" a Washington statement that a Pentagon official had pleaded guilty to passing US military secrets to an agent working for Beijing.

Gregg William Bergersen, 51, faces up to 10 years in jail after admitting to one count of conspiracy to disclose national defence information to persons not entitled to receive it, the US justice department said in the statement. "There is some noise like this from time to time," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters.

"It's totally groundless and out of ulterior motives. The purpose is to stir up the China threat theory, which will not succeed," she said. According to the US justice department, Bergersen started handing secret information in March 2007 to Tai Shen Kuo, a Taiwan-born US citizen. Bergersen worked as a weapons systems policy analyst at the Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which implements the Pentagon's foreign military sales programme.

Unbeknown to Bergersen, Kuo was passing the information to an unnamed Chinese government official, the department said. The Department of Justice statement said Bergersen knew the documents, many of which were about US weapons sales to Taiwan, were classified and should not be shared with outsiders.

Source : PTI