U.S. ’confident China has no invasion plan’

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 5

U.S. ’confident China has no invasion plan’

NZPA Washington President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser (Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski) has said that the United States is confident that Peking, after making a big foreign-policy change, is no longer intent on the armed conquest of Taiwan.

Mr Brzezinski said China’s expressed interest over the past eight years in closer ties with the United States is a fundamentally important new reality which should ensure a peaceful future for the Taiwanese people. In an hour-long appearance before a gathering sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association, a private non-partisan group, Mr Brzezinski also defended the secrecy with which the Administration negotiated its decision to shift diplomatic

recognition from Taiwan to Peking.

Mr Brzezinski, responding to criticism that the Administration failed to keep the Congress and the American people informed, said senior officials restated over and over again the United States intention to comply with the principles of the 1972 Shanghai communique. In that document, the two countries had pledged a mutual effort to move toward a normal relationship.

“I think the American people are mature enough to realise you can’t conduct negotiations and at the same time advertise every single step in the negotiating process,” he said. Mr Brzezinski contrasted the success of the secret negotiations on China with the widely publicised differences Israel and Egypt have had in

their abortive efforts to agree on a peace treaty. Elaborating on Peking’s changed global outlook, Mr Brzezinski said, “we are not dealing with the China of 1958,” referring to the year when the mainland and Taiwan almost went to war over offshore islands under Taiwan’s control. He said that American confidence in China’s intentions had been buttressed by the fact that China had refrained from repeating certain standard formulas regarding Taiwan recently. Mr Brzezinski was believed to be referring to China’s stated interest in the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland instead of liberation. Chinese authorities also have been telling visitors that Taiwan, after reunification, will be able to retain its political and economic system.