Official Dilemma: Should Bush Meet China’s Li? : Politics: A get-together at next week’s U.N. summit could give ammunition to the President’s foes.

As the Bush Administration prepares for an international summit at the United Nations next week, officials are struggling with a sensitive problem: Whether the President should meet individually with Chinese Premier Li Peng.

Li is on his first trip to the West since he played a prominent role in bloody suppression of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations. According to U.S. officials, China has been pestering the White House with requests for a bilateral session between him and Bush.

“The political counselor (at the Chinese Embassy) calls the National Security Council every day,” one U.S. source says.

But, so far, no meeting has been set. “Li Peng is still being stiffed,” another U.S. source says, although he added, “I’d bet it’s going to happen.”

The meeting of heads of government of the U.N. Security Council is scheduled next Friday, and U.S. officials say the Chinese leader will remain in the United States on Saturday, a day when Bush has already scheduled a Camp David meeting with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

With the New Hampshire primary looming, the White House is not eager to give Republican challenger Pat Buchanan a new issue by meeting with Li--a man who was treated, at least until recently, as an international pariah and who will probably be greeted by Chinese demonstrators when he arrives at the United Nations.

Some U.S. officials worry that Li would use a meeting with Bush to raise his credibility inside China. “Why give Li Peng face?” asks one U.S. source who said he is personally opposed to such a meeting.

Yet American officials note that China carries weight as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. And a senior Administration official said a presidential meeting with Li would serve as recognition that some of China’s recent actions have been in the direction the United States would like to encourage.

“You understand the political downside to this,” the official said.

On the other hand, Chinese officials “have just signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and they have come up with an agreement with us (in a trade dispute) on intellectual property rights.”

The dilemma is not exclusively American. Other major powers too are trying to decide how to respond when Li comes calling. British diplomats said that Prime Minister John Major is expected to meet with the Chinese premier in New York. But French and Japanese officials said their leaders don’t plan to do so.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” a French official said. French President Francois Mitterrand “will arrive in New York in the morning and leave after lunch. . . . Just for security reasons, I don’t think we will be able to make it.” Like Bush, the French president has not met with the Chinese premier since the 1989 Chinese crackdown on protesters in Beijing.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said he has no information on the Chinese premier’s schedule.

Many China specialists say it is unfair to single out Li as the sole or principal perpetrator of the crackdown. They note that the crucial decisions to call the army into Beijing and to authorize the use of force in recapturing Tian An Men Square were made by China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, President Yang Shangkun and other senior leaders.

But Li is a convenient symbol for protest against the Chinese regime, not only because he is premier but because he has remained a fervent and outspoken defender of the decision to resort to force.

In the 2 1/2 years since he directed the imposition of martial law in Beijing, Li has made foreign trips to Moscow and through Asia and the Middle East. He has not visited the West until now, a journey that includes stops in Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal in addition to New York.

“Li Peng got lucky,” one U.S. official said. “They had this trip (to Europe) scheduled, and then Major called for this U.N. summit at just the time when he was overseas.”

Last year, Japan’s then-Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu and Major became the first leaders of major powers to meet with Li, doing so during trips they made to Beijing, not in their own countries.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III also sat down with Li during a visit to China last November. At the beginning of the session, while photographers were present, Baker kept a grim, unsmiling expression.