Visiting U.S. Ships Won’t Carry A-Arms, China Says

Chinese officials said today that Washington has agreed that U.S. warships will not carry nuclear arms when they make their first call at a Chinese port in 36 years.

Such an agreement apparently would break a longstanding U.S. policy against disclosing whether any ship is armed with nuclear weapons. A U.S. Embassy official in China would neither confirm nor deny the report.

The disclosure was made by Vice Foreign Minister Zhu Qizhen and Hu Yaobang, Chinese Communist Party general secretary, during an interview with Australian reporters.

Official U.S. sources, who spoke on condition that they remain unidentified, said discussions on the Chinese port calls have dealt with technical details such as size of ship, time of year for calls and berth depth. But they conceded that the nuclear question was not unforeseen.

China and the United States agreed last year that warships of the U.S. 7th Fleet could make their first port calls to China since the 1949 Communist takeover. The inaugural visit was tentatively set for Shanghai in April or May, but neither country has specified a date.

When Hu was asked about the visit, he deferred to Zhu, who said: “The time of the visit is still under discussion. It is an informal visit. The visit will be a conventional warship.”

Asked if “conventional” meant the U.S. ships would not carry nuclear weapons, Hu replied, “That is the way it should be understood.”

Pressed to say whether the Americans had given assurances to that effect, Zhu said, “That is already understood between China and the United States. There is agreement.”