U.S. Spars With Taiwanese to Keep Visit Low-Profile

When Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui was granted permission to speak at Cornell University’s reunion next week in a milestone trip to this country, Taiwanese officials at first wanted him to get to the Upstate New York college with a stop in New York City.

No way, said the Clinton Administration. Instead, it required Lee to fly into the smaller, more remote airport at Syracuse, well removed from the maelstrom and media attention of the Big Apple.

The battle of Syracuse was one part of the silent war now being waged between Taiwan and China--and between the Administration and Congress--over Lee’s visit to this country.

Virtually every stop and each event on Lee’s four-day trip, which begins with a brief stop Wednesday in Los Angeles, has been the subject of political and diplomatic maneuvering. The bickering is over what the Taiwanese president does and who will meet with him.

“This should be what they [Taiwanese officials] said it was--a trip to give a speech to his alma mater,” one senior Administration official said this week. “This is not going to be an expanded imperial tour” by the Taiwanese president.

But James R. Lilley, a former ambassador to China who is one of Taiwan’s staunchest supporters in Washington and an old friend of Lee, retorted: “The Chinese are throwing a classic tantrum. They’re trying to keep the Lee Teng-hui visit in a box, and they’re succeeding at doing that.”

Ostensibly, Lee is coming to the United States for a private visit as a Cornell alum, returning so he can sing with his classmates “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters.”

But no president of Taiwan--not even the United States’ onetime World War II ally, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek--has ever set foot on U.S. soil. And so Taiwanese officials are quietly trying to give the trip as high a profile as possible, hoping that it will boost their long efforts to break their international isolation.

The Administration is pushing in the opposite direction.

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan when it recognized China in 1979, and U.S. officials are concerned about the furious reaction to Lee’s visit here by China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province.

“We think we have a very good record of friendship toward Taiwan, and that will continue,” Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord said this week. “On the other hand, we have definite equities and commitments on the other side of the [Taiwan] strait, with Beijing.”

On Thursday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing once again upbraided the United States for allowing Lee’s visit, saying Washington has gone “further and further” by “repeatedly upgrading” its ties with Taiwan.

Last week, China postponed several high-level visits and talks with the United States.

This week, the Administration finally approved an itinerary under which Lee will stop in Los Angeles Wednesday night, fly to Cornell Thursday, spend Friday and Saturday in Ithaca and return home with a final stop in Anchorage.

But merely fixing the cities he will visit has not put an end to the maneuvering.

Some of it now involves Los Angeles, where Taiwanese officials want a dinner or reception at which city and state leaders can meet with Lee. Some Taiwanese supporters said they hoped that he will see Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Richard Riordan.

“I think you’ll find that he’ll meet with a lot of elected officials in Los Angeles,” said one of those helping to organize Lee’s trip.

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But to avoid lending any official recognition to Taiwan, U.S. officials have decided that throughout Lee’s visit, no State Department official or any other member of the executive branch of government will see him. He will not be allowed to visit Washington.

Lee will be met and accompanied by Nat Bellocchi, Washington director of the American Institute on Taiwan. The institute is the organization with offices in Washington and Taipei that was set up to handle ties between the United States and Taiwan after diplomatic relations were broken off. Most of its officials are U.S. Foreign Service officers on leaves of absence.

While the Administration will avoid him, U.S. officials acknowledged that Taiwan’s president can talk with members of Congress. Administration officials said they cannot stop such contact.

“This is a free country,” Lord said.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, is studying the possibility of organizing a special plane to escort members of Congress from Washington to Cornell to see Lee, congressional staff members said.

Dole--who has often sought to preserve good relations and Kansas wheat sales to China--apparently is responding to direct appeals from Taiwan. Supporters of Taiwan’s Nationalist government historically have been important in GOP presidential politics.

According to a congressional source, Benjamin Lu, head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Washington, wrote Dole last week, saying: “Anything you can do to make it easier for your colleagues [in Congress] to join us [at Cornell] would be appreciated.”

The Administration originally had opposed the idea of letting Lee into this country.

But Administration officials reversed course and granted him a visa after both the House and Senate voted by overwhelming margins in favor of letting him attend his reunion.

Last week, Yale University officials quietly sounded out the State Department about inviting Lee to appear on their campus after his Cornell visit. The Administration rejected the idea.

“It went from a high level at Yale to a high level at State, and they turned it down,” Lilley said.

At the State Department, Lord, who, like Lilley, is a Yale alumnus, refused to discuss the specifics of the Yale invitation. “We are going to make clear that this is an unofficial, private visit,” he said.

Times staff writer Jean Merl in Los Angeles contributed to this report.