Mondale set to sign new pact with Peking

Press, 28 August 1979, Page 8

Mondale set to sign new pact with Peking

NZPA-Reuter Peking The United States VicePresident (Mr Walter Mondale) will sign a new SinoAmerican agreement in Peking today providing for vastly expanded cultural contacts between the two countries, American sources have said.

The sources said the pact gave details of cultural, educational, and sports exchanges scheduled for 198081 and expanded on the very brief cultural agreement signed earlier this year. “The cultural agreement is a good example of the way in which relations (between the United States and China) are moving forward from the general to the specific,” the sources said. “We are putting some muscle on the skeleton of normalisation.” Mr Mondale, who is the hig h e s t-ranking United States official to visit China since the two countries established formal diplomatic relations in January, arrived in Peking at the week-end.

Speaking at a welcoming banquet given by the Senior Chinese Vice-Premier (Mr Deng Xiaoping) Mr Mondale said he believed the SinoAmerican relationship “can emerge in the 1980 s as one of the major bulwarks of peace and justice in the world.” Mr Mondale will deliver a speech on Sino-American relations at Peking University which will be broadcast in its entirety on Chinese national television. “We understand this is I the first time a foreign'

leader has spoken directly to the Chinese people since at least the 19505,” the American sources said. They said the new cultural agreement would provide for a visit by a United States dance troupe to China next year, art exhibitions, and film weeks in both countries, more direct links between institutes of higher learning in both countries, and language training and sports exchanges. About 1000 human-rights activists demonstrated at Peking’s poster-covered “Democracy Wall” just before the welcoming banquet. The demonstration was held on Mr Mondale’s route between his guest house and the Great Hall of the People, where the dinner took place. The participants called for the release or public trial of several activists detained by the police in April. The detainees were arrested during the crackdown lon a sprouting “democracv movement."