Clinton, Jiang Air Their Differences

After almost eight years of meeting periodically, President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin are said to know each other well enough to hold “frank and friendly” conversations that go far beyond the menu of official talking points that frequently passes for diplomatic dialogue.

But on Friday, the two leaders demonstrated a wide gulf of misunderstanding on an issue that has become a major irritant in Sino-American relations: religious persecution.

According to a senior administration official who attended the two leaders’ 90-minute meeting at the U.N. Millennium Summit, Clinton admonished Jiang about persecution of Tibetan Buddhists, Christians who refuse to join state-sanctioned churches, members of the Falun Gong sect and others.

Jiang insisted that China does not repress religion, only illegal cults. Then, the U.S. official said, the Chinese president asked Clinton if “America is primarily Protestant,” prompting Clinton, a Protestant himself, to describe the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States.

“Some of this is really just kind of ‘get to know the other country better’ type discussion,” said the official, who was made available to reporters by the White House on the understanding that he would not be identified by name.

The official also said Jiang told Clinton that Christianity was brought to China by Westerners who dominated the closing years of the Ching dynasty a century ago.

“What I interpreted him as trying to convey . . . is that you’ve got to understand [that] Christianity, among China’s religions, has a certain baggage among the Chinese because it is very much associated with Western humiliation of China over the last couple hundred years,” the official said, stressing that he was not using Jiang’s exact words.

Clinton and Jiang also discussed a full range of issues such as relations between China and Taiwan, missile proliferation, Washington’s plans for a missile defense system, Tibet, and negotiations between North and South Korea.

The official said that neither man apparently changed his mind on any of the issues but that the talks helped to clear the air.

Summarizing what he said was Clinton’s opinion of the U.S.-China relationship, the official said it was “wide-ranging, complex, very much in the interest of both countries to handle well, but we do bump into some problems that can be very tough.”

“We’ve gotten to the point we can discuss those problems frankly without the whole relationship going off a cliff,” he added. “That’s been one of the real accomplishments over recent years.”

Clinton tried to defuse China’s bitter opposition to U.S. proposals to build a missile defense system. The president last week left to his successor a key decision on whether to proceed with the project, which China fears will blunt its nuclear deterrent force.

The president told Jiang that he would “encourage his successor to engage in serious dialogue with the Chinese and others” before making the final decision on whether to go ahead with the defense system.

Talking to reporters with Jiang at his side before the start of the meeting, Clinton said he was confident that the Senate will soon pass legislation giving China permanent normal trade relations, or PNTR.

The official said Clinton later reminded Jiang that the legislation requires the U.S. president to certify that China has opened its markets to American goods and taken other steps to qualify for membership in the World Trade Organization.

“He pointed out some issues that they have to really be mindful of, to make sure that that occurs,” the official said of the certification process.

But Clinton rejected suggestions that China’s trade status be linked to the country’s human rights record.

“We weren’t saying, do better on human rights to get PNTR,” the official said. “We were saying, do better on human rights because it’s in the interest of you and the Chinese people that you do better on human rights. . . . They’re going to get PNTR, we believe, within a couple of weeks. We want the human rights agenda to remain long afterward.”

Despite U.S. criticism of Beijing over perceived deficiencies on human rights, religious freedom and political democracy, China is too populous a nation for Washington to ignore.

Shortly after Clinton’s talks with Jiang, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with leaders of three other countries that the United States has often snubbed because of flawed elections and authoritarian politics--Peru, Haiti and the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Albright, in her talks with Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, “emphasized the importance that she and the president attach to democracy in this hemisphere and, in the case of Peru, the importance of carrying out the [Organization of American States] democracy initiative.”

Earlier this week, Fujimori’s government promised an OAS delegation that he will take steps to restore democracy and human rights in his country, where he won a third term in May in disputed elections. Albright warned the Peruvian leader that it will be impossible for the United States to maintain normal relations with his nation unless Fujimori lives up to those commitments.

On a recent trip to South America, Albright pointedly refused to visit Peru to protest the election.

Meeting with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Albright “raised some very specific issues of human rights that we would like to see resolved,” a senior State Department official said. He did not elaborate.

* TRACKING FREEDOM

The State Department has issued its second report on global religious persecution. B2