China trip step towards peace: Reagan

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 6

China trip step towards peace: Reagan

NZPA-AP Honolulu President Ronald Reagan said yesterday that his mission to China "is another careful, yet sure, step towards peace and friendship between the Chinese and American people.”

He told an Easter audience at Hickman Air Force Base that he was beginning, “a long journey for peace.” He will arrive in China on Thursday.

The United States is resolved to avoid war. pursue peace, and to do so by remaining strong and remaining ready.

“Let the nations and peoples of the world renounce war. let us pledge ourselves to its permanent abolition, let us forsake its anquish and agony and live in love with one another.” he said.

Mr Reagan described the nation’s evolving relationship with China as “one of the critical developments in our country's post-war foreign relations," and one that had taken more than a decade to develop. “This week, we hope to continue the process of reconiliation,” said Mr Reagan who has long been a critic of the Communist People’s Republic of China and an ardent supporter of the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan. An official Chinese commentary, has rubbed salt into the* most sensitive issue that he will discuss in Peking: American support for Taiwan. China raised the issue of Taiwan on Sunday when the weekly “Peking Review” de-

manded concrete actions to fulfill the American pledge to reduce arms sales to the Nationalists on Taiwan — "pending the eventual repeal” of the Taiwan Relations Act.

The act was signed by the then President. Jimmy Carter, on April 10, 1979, four months after he recognised the Communists in Peking as the sole legal government of China and broke formal relations with Taiwan.

The law permits Americans to have “unofficial" contacts with Taiwan and provides for continued American arms sales to the capitalist island for selfdefence. What really rankles the Chinese is weapons sales to Taiwan, an island of 18 million people where the late Nationalist leader.'Chiang Kai-Shek, set up a rival regime in 1949. Under strong pressure from Peking, the United States pledged to reduce such sales gradually, leading to an undefined “final resolution” of the problem. Peking has offered Taiwan automony including its own defence forces, but the Nationalists in Taipei reject such offers as “poison” that would lead to Communist rule.

China’s official policy is peaceful reunification, but the Premier, Mr Zhao Ziyang, said during his United States tour in January that, “we cannot undertake a commitment to any foreign country that we will only use peaceful means because this is China’s internal affair.”