China Leader Optimistic on Soviet Talks : Zhao Ties Summit Prospects to Hanoi Pullout From Cambodia

Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, in remarks reported Wednesday, expressed optimism about prospects for a Sino-Soviet summit and endorsed the goal of preventing the Khmer Rouge from retaking power in Cambodia.

Zhao “said that the essential condition for holding high-level Sino-Soviet talks is that the Soviet Union should urge Vietnam to withdraw all its troops from Cambodia,” the official New China News Agency reported Wednesday.

‘Conditions Are Ripe’

He “said the key to whether and when the high-level Sino-Soviet talks will be held depends on whether the conditions are ripe,” the agency reported. “He expressed confidence that if the conditions are ripe, senior leaders of the two countries will surely meet someday.”

Zhao’s remarks, made Tuesday to the visiting president of Japan’s Kyodo News Service, are the clearest public indication China has yet offered that a Sino-Soviet summit may take place later this year or sometime in 1989, as Western diplomats have predicted in recent months.

It is not clear whether Zhao, as general secretary of the Communist Party, or Deng Xiaoping, as China’s paramount leader, would represent China in a summit with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, if such a meeting were held.

Zhao confirmed that China and the Soviet Union soon will hold talks about Cambodia at the deputy foreign minister level. The talks are expected to begin in Beijing on Aug. 27, according to Western diplomats.

Zhao repeated China’s position that the key to a Cambodian settlement is the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops--estimated to number about 120,000, according to U.S. officials--and that the three Chinese-backed resistance factions and the Vietnamese-installed regime of President Heng Samrin should join in creating a new quadripartite government headed by Cambodia’s former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

But in what constitutes unprecedented criticism of the Khmer Rouge--which engaged in a genocidal reign of terror when it controlled Cambodia from 1975 through 1978--Zhao described the possibility of the Khmer Rouge faction retaking exclusive power as a “danger” that must be prevented.

“The Khmer Rouge should not be allowed to assume power exclusively, and the Heng Samrin regime--a fait accompli created by Vietnamese aggression--must not be allowed to continue in power,” Zhao said. “I think both the dangers should be removed.”

Fear that the Khmer Rouge would return to power if Vietnamese troops leave Cambodia has been widely viewed as a major stumbling block in negotiating a political settlement to the Cambodian conflict.

The Khmer Rouge, to which China has provided weapons and political support for more than a decade, is the most powerful fighting force against the Vietnamese. In the past few weeks, since informal Cambodian peace talks were held in Jakarta, Indonesia, China has said it will continue to support the Khmer Rouge as long as Vietnamese troops remain in Cambodia. Vietnam has said it will withdraw by 1990, regardless of whether a political settlement is reached.

Called for Assurances

Zhao insisted in his remarks Tuesday that any effort to restrain the Khmer Rouge must be matched by assurances that the current Phnom Penh regime will be dismantled.

“Nowadays some people are only concerned about how to keep the Khmer Rouge from returning to power in Cambodia, to the neglect of how to prevent Heng Samrin from continuing in power,” Zhao said. “So far as I know, Heng Samrin’s forces are no weaker than those of the Khmer Rouge. Therefore, after the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, it is still possible that the Heng Samrin regime will continue to exist.”

Zhao “said that he held that, to fully realize the quadripartite coalition headed by Prince Sihanouk, it is necessary to remove the above-mentioned two dangers, and the Cambodian question cannot be properly solved by stressing one danger to the neglect of the other,” the news agency reported.