Christopher Tries to Downplay China Incident : Asia: Secretary of state is irked that expulsions of U.S. attaches could hurt gains he made in talks with Beijing counterpart.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Thursday moved to limit the diplomatic fallout caused by the expulsion of two U.S. military attaches from China, saying there is “no reason this incident should have any effect on the forward momentum of this relationship.”

Christopher--clearly irritated that the spying episode might overshadow his moderately successful meeting Tuesday in Brunei with Qian Qichen, China’s vice premier and foreign minister--made it plain he hopes the Chinese will forget about the incident.

Asked whether he was planning to talk to Qian, Christopher, who is traveling in Asia, told reporters here: “I don’t feel any need to contact him with respect to this incident, unless he should have some questions about it.”

Christopher said he is looking forward to another scheduled meeting with the Chinese foreign minister at the United Nations in New York in September.

The secretary of state and his aides were distressed about the poor timing of the incident. A senior State Department official acknowledged that Christopher had taken time, in the midst of a day full of meetings in Malaysia, to telephone CIA Director John M. Deutch.

The official refused to discuss the details of the call. “They [Christopher and Deutch] talk all the time,” the State Department official said. “He [Christopher] has made a number of calls to people in Washington on a variety of issues over the last couple of days.”

The two military attaches were dispatched from the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong in late July on a mission that seems to have been aimed at gathering intelligence about People’s Liberation Army activities in southeast China. The army has been test-firing missiles and conducting military exercises in the region in a show of force apparently meant to impress Taiwan.

A State Department official traveling with Christopher confirmed that the two men were detained in Fujian province, the part of China directly opposite Taiwan, which was the focus of the recent Chinese military exercises.

China says its security forces arrested the attaches on Saturday, just three days before Christopher’s meeting with the Chinese foreign minister at the annual conference of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations.

The timing raised questions about whether Chinese military or security officials may have detained the two attaches--or deliberately made the incident public--to undercut the impact of the meeting between Qian and Christopher.

But it also raised questions about why the two U.S. military attaches were permitted to pursue their mission at such a delicate time, giving Chinese authorities the opportunity to create the incident.

On Tuesday night, within an hour or two of the start of his meeting with Qian, Christopher learned from the State Department’s operations center in Washington that the attaches were missing and out of contact with the Hong Kong Consulate.

Although State Department officials assumed that the two men had been detained, they decided not to raise the issue in the meeting in Brunei with the Chinese. Instead, they left the matter to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. On Wednesday morning, the embassy was officially informed that the two men had been detained and that they were being expelled from the country.

The two arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday, and Christopher told reporters here that “they are in good condition and in good health.”

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After arriving in Hong Kong, the two attaches were debriefed by U.S. consular officers, including Consul General Richard Mueller. “The guys were detained. They were questioned over a couple of days. And then they were released,” reported a senior State Department official here who got a brief summary of the debriefing.

China’s handling of the incident was less severe than it could have been. It could have made the detention of the two attaches public earlier, thus embarrassing Christopher and Qian before their meeting.

Instead, authorities in Beijing waited to announce the detentions until Wednesday, the day after Christopher’s meeting. Qian and the rest of the Chinese Foreign Ministry delegation had flown home to Beijing early Wednesday from Brunei.

On the other hand, China’s behavior was not as mild as it could have been. Beijing decided to make a public announcement about the detentions and expulsions rather than quietly kicking the two attaches out of the country.

A State Department official said Wednesday that Christopher had no advance knowledge that the two attaches were planning to make their trip into China.

“The secretary knows we have defense attaches and that these kinds of activities [gathering military information] go on worldwide,” the aide to Christopher said. “But he [Christopher] had no knowledge” about their mission.

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In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon conceded that the two officers--riding bicycles and dressed in civilian clothing with video and still cameras concealed in backpacks-- were observing Chinese military activities when detained.

“Military attaches are a very normal part of life,” Bacon said. “In every country, there are military attaches who observe military operations and file reports back. This happens all the time. That’s what these gentlemen were doing.”

Bacon implied that the Pentagon considered the activity to be so routine that no one thought to call it off to avoid overshadowing the scheduled Christopher-Qian meeting. “They travel on a regular schedule, and their travel schedule is cleared both by the consulate in Hong Kong and by the embassy in Beijing,” Bacon said. “They travel according to their ability to get out of Hong Kong and make their observations in China. It is perfectly normal.”

Nevertheless, the incident clearly gave the Chinese military and security services an opportunity to send another message to Washington that, regardless of what the Chinese Foreign Ministry might say, U.S.-China relations are still strained.

The United States has had diplomats collecting intelligence in China since the early 1970s. The first one was James R. Lilley, then a CIA official who worked--with China’s knowledge--in the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing before the two countries had diplomatic relations. He later became U.S. ambassador to China.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.