Pressure mounts over Peking visit

Press, 13 December 1989, Page 13

Pressure mounts over Peking visit

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States President, George Bush, has created a storm of criticism over a high-level conciliatory mission to China six months after the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square, but has won no visible concession from Peking. Mr Bush rejected charges that the surprise visit to China last weekend by his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and the Deputy Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, represented a resumption of normal relations or signalled lessening United States concern about the Tiananmen assault in June.

Mr Bush said yesterday the mission was sent to report on the super-Power summit in Malta on December 2 and 3. But Mr Scowcroft, in a dinner toast in Peking on Satur-

day, said he aimed “to bring new impetus and vigour” to United StatesChina ties. Members of Congress, human rights groups and the news media have denounced Mr Bush for kowtowing to a Chinese

leadership that has shown no remorse for the violent crushing of protests in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people died. China puts the death toll at 200 civilians and scores of soldiers. “At a time when America’s bipartisan commitment to freedom is bearing fruit in Eastern Europe, the last thing he (Bush) should be doing is wavering in our commitment to freedom in China,” the House of Representatives’ Democratic leader, Richard Gephardt, said yesterday. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a Democrat and chairman of the House of Representatives’ subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs, said the trip underscored the need for prompt enactment of economic sanctions against China. But Mr Bush, a former United States envoy to China who reluctantly im-

posed sanctions in June, said he did not want to take “any further steps that are going to hurt the Chinese people.” Mr Bush banned highlevel exchanges with Peking after the killings in Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, but said yesterday China had “a strategic position in the world that remains important to us.”

He insisted his commitment to human rights was firm, but suggested United States policy toward China would not be governed solely by such concerns.

“We have contacts with countries that have egregious records on human rights, so I’m going to keep looking for ways to find common ground,” Mr Bush said.

He hoped Chinese leaders would begin to “redress some of the grievances that continue to exist.”