Washington confused over China speech

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 8

Washington confused over China speech

NZPA-Reuter Washington

A speech by a senior United States official on American policy towards China has led to a high-level dispute in the State Department and caused confusion about the Carter Administration’s stance.

Mr Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, said last week that a policy of eve n-handed “triangular diplomacy” with Peking and Moscow was no longer an adequate framework in which to view relations with China.

Some news reports of the speech said he had formally buried the policy of balanced relations.

In, Peking, the Chinese Vice Premier (Mr Deng Xiaoping) reacted to a radio

report of the speech by expressing satisfaction, interpreting it as meaning that the United St'r.tes would give preference to Peking over Moscow in future dealings.

At the State Department, the reaction was confusion and anger that this signal should have been sent.

“It makes us look stupid once again,” one official said. '

The even-handed policy was espoused by the former President, Mr Richard Nixon, and his Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, from the time of Mr Nixon’s historic first trip to China in 1972. The Carter Administration first moved away from it last October when officials) disclosed a plan to drop! trade barriers against China,!

• but not against the Soviet Union. A clear “tilt” in United States policy has therefore been evident for at least eight months, Mr Holbrooke’s speech did not go beyond this policy literally and its key sentence was carefully phrased: “the famous triangular diplomacy of the early 1970 s is no longer an adequate conceptual framework in which to view relations with China,” he said. One senior official dealing with European affairs who studied the speech said, “I don’t know what that means. I don’t think we ever characterised relations with China at the time in this way.

“If there was a time when even-handedness was buried it was last year,” he said.

How the reference to triangular ’ diplomacy was transformed in. news reports into a statement Mr Deng welcomed as a policy change is explained in this way: An interpretation, of the sig* nificance of the phrase was given to reporters on “background,” that is, not for attribution to a named official. In an unusual bid to attract attention to a speech which otherwise might have gone unnoticed, aides told some reporters that Mr Holbrooke felt it was important and that he was willing to discuss it with them.

But by the week-end the “backgrounding” had become a source of embarrassment, and aides to Mr Holbrooke said they were unaware of any individual background briefings on the speech.