We investigate the power controlled short-range interactions between spacial optical solitons in the strongly nonlocal nonlinear media. For the short-range interactions, the trajectory of mass center of solitons will deflect because of the phase difference under the condition of momentum conservation. We verify by experiment that the degree of deflection depends on the ratio of the power of two solitons, and the case of equal power corresponds to the maximum deflection. Using the characteristics of power control on the interaction between solitons, we measure the photic-induced response time of nematic liquid crystals, and find that it is much shorter than the bias-voltage-induced response time.