Talks With China Top Clinton’s APEC Agenda

Underscoring the United States’ role in the Pacific, President Clinton will meet today with key Asian leaders in a hectic series of one-to-one talks here in what is widely seen as the highlight of his 12-day trip through the region.

The most important of these meetings--an hourlong session with Chinese President Jiang Zemin--was expected to produce an announcement of high-level visits, with Vice President Al Gore going to China in the first part of next year followed by presidential summits in Washington and Beijing that would likely spill into 1998.

“An agreement has been reached that Gore will go to China in 1997 as the first part of a high-level exchange of visits,” a White House official said before the Jiang-Clinton meeting.

Speculation of a summit announcement was fueled by Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s successful trip to Beijing last week and the perception by both Washington and Beijing that high-level contacts are needed to stabilize a relationship that has seesawed dangerously in recent years.

“Both sides want the visits, but they need to discuss timing,” a senior U.S. official said. “A lot will depend on their discussions.”

Clinton is also scheduled to discuss trade and security issues with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and hold crucial talks with South Korean President Kim Young Sam that will be devoted to reviving efforts to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. Those efforts were severely strained when North Korea sent a spy submarine into southern waters in September, setting off a bloody manhunt that left more than two dozen soldiers and civilians from both sides dead.

But the Clinton-Jiang meeting--their fourth--clearly dominates the day’s agenda, analysts said, coming at a time when the U.S. president seems intent on polishing his credentials as a statesman.

In recent days, Clinton has pointed to the need for U.S. leadership “in places like Bosnia”; spoken out on the need for nations to cooperate in fighting air and water pollution; and flown here to discuss security and economic issues with other heads of state.

In addition to his bilateral talks with fellow leaders, Clinton will participate in the fourth summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, known as APEC.

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For Clinton--once taken lightly by some heads of state who preferred his older, more global-oriented predecessor, George Bush--the APEC summit is of special significance. In one of his first foreign policy initiatives, Clinton elevated the minister-level forum to summit status in 1993.

In the years since, APEC has developed an informal yet important political dimension, providing Pacific leaders a rare occasion to gather for individual meetings and larger sessions.

The Manila gathering takes place against a backdrop of extraordinarily tight security that has turned delegation hotels into fortresses and the city’s overcrowded streets into gridlocked parking lots.

Security measures were heightened in the wake of last week’s discovery of hand grenades at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport and a small pipe bomb at a Subic Bay telephone booth, sporadic anti-APEC street protests and a U.S. State Department warning that it had information that a terrorist group “may be targeting” American officials.

The summit will be held Monday 70 miles northwest of Manila at Subic Bay, a onetime U.S. military facility that the Philippine government is turning into one of the largest container ports in Asia.

The meeting between Clinton and Jiang comes as Sino-American relations appear to have recovered from a dangerous low point last year following a U.S. decision to issue a visa to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.

The move enraged Beijing, which launched a series of provocative military exercises earlier this year, including missile firings in the Taiwan Strait. When the U.S. responded by deploying two aircraft carriers to the area, the incident took on all the earmarks of a Cold War standoff. China considers Taiwan part of its territory.

Administration officials note that the two leaders established a good rapport during their previous three meetings and that Clinton plainly would like to build on it as he tries to draw the giant Asian power into peaceful relations with its Pacific neighbors.

One U.S. official described Jiang as someone who can be charming if he wants to.

“He can stop the interpreter and quote the Gettysburg address in English,” he said. “Clinton is a master at getting along with people, and there’s enough for him to work with in this meeting.”

Several positive developments in recent months have led to a new, albeit cautious, optimism about the future of Sino-American ties. Although U.S. officials believe an exchange of presidential visits would help consolidate this progress, human rights activists say they are appalled that Clinton has considered offering such intense high-level contact without first winning concessions from China to allow greater freedom of expression.

“He’s selling out on human rights; he’s abandoning it as an issue and getting nothing in return,” charged Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.

White House officials accompanying the president confirmed that human rights is among the issues that Clinton will bring up with his Chinese counterpart. Clinton and Jiang are also likely to touch on an array of other issues, including Beijing’s desire to join the World Trade Organization, a body that sets the rules of international commerce.

China would gain several benefits from membership, but the United States also sees advantages, including a chance to increase access to heavily protected Chinese domestic markets. While trade between the two countries is booming, it is heavily out of balance in China’s favor.

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Clinton was also expected to request Jiang’s help in reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula after receiving indications that China is prepared to participate in four-party talks with North and South Korea and the United States to formally end hostilities that broke out there 46 years ago.

That issue is also expected to be discussed later in the day when Clinton meets South Korea’s Kim in what one senior U.S. official called “more repair work” on one of America’s most important Pacific relationships. The South Koreans are still smarting at what they believe is a lack of U.S. support after North Korea’s submarine incursion.

In his meeting with Hashimoto, Clinton is expected to push for action to open up Japan’s insurance and civil aviation industries to outside competition and discuss turning over some U.S. military bases on Okinawa to Japan.