Powell to Keep Pressing Beijing

In a reflection of the wide gap that still divides Washington and Beijing, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that the Bush administration intends to follow up on the release of three scholars convicted of espionage by pressing China on the fate of other detainees with U.S. connections.

In his first talks in China on Saturday, Powell will also push the Communist leadership on broader human rights matters despite resolution of one of the thorniest recent issues between the two nations, he said at a news conference here Thursday.

“It’s not so much individual cases that should be our principal focus and concern but the system that occasionally might go after people who perhaps should not be gone after, or who are not being given the full protection of law, and their universal human rights might be trampled upon,” he told reporters.

Powell, who is on the second leg of a weeklong tour of Asia and Australia, said the United States is now reviewing other detention cases to see if there is a basis to raise them with Beijing.

He did not specify the detainees, but the United States has expressed concern about Wu Jianmin, a U.S. citizen held on suspicion of spying for Taiwan, and two permanent U.S. residents, Liu Yaping and Teng Chunyan. Liu was picked up because of a business dispute, and Teng was sent to a labor camp for her membership in the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.

“We will continue to monitor these individual cases in China and discuss them with our Chinese colleagues,” said Powell, who is in Vietnam for the annual summit of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations.

In front of the Asian and other foreign ministers assembled in Hanoi, Powell called on North Korea on Thursday to renew without preconditions the dialogue with the U.S. launched by the Clinton administration. The regime of Kim Jong Il has not yet responded to an overture from Washington that came after the Bush administration’s recent policy review. Powell said he also conveyed the message to North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ho Jong here.

“I made it clear to my colleagues and to the North Korean representative that the United States was anxious to move forward with a dialogue,” Powell said.

In a sign of how wide the gap is, Powell was not aware that Kim, the world’s most reclusive leader, is en route to Moscow. The secretary said, however, that he hopes Kim’s talks with Russian leaders go well.

But Powell also found the United States under criticism here because of its decision to abandon an international campaign to strengthen a 29-year-old treaty banning biological weapons.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday that the U.S. rejection was “an enormous setback” that undermined another global treaty. “Their argument is that because this verification protocol is not perfect, therefore it’s not acceptable at all. My point is that it’s not pure, but it’s an enormous step forward,” he told reporters at the same conference Powell is attending in Hanoi.

As with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming abandoned by the U.S., Downer said the international community should rally and persevere despite Washington’s decision. “We have just got to keep pushing on trying to get the [biological weapons] protocol negotiated,” he said.

Asked if the U.S. was going it alone too much, Powell countered that the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention will probably never be verifiable, adding: “From time to time, one or more [treaties] come along where we do not believe it serves our interest--[and] so we had to call it the way we see it.”

The secretary predicted that, over time, the world will see that the Bush administration is not unilateralist. When “the heat” has passed over U.S. rejection of international agreements on biological weapons, the International Criminal Court, global warming and other matters, “people will see that we do want to participate in the larger world community,” he said.

Powell wrapped up his three-day tour of Vietnam, his first visit since he fought here in the 1960s, by closing a chapter in his own life. In the morning, he met with the U.S. military team trying to account for the 1,474 Americans still missing in action a quarter of a century after the war ended. Powell set up the operation when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Powell also held talks Thursday with Vietnamese and Communist Party leaders, discussions he called “very successful.”

“The message that came across consistently is that they are pleased with the six years of progress that we have had since normalization. I heard it expressed in many different ways that the past is past and let it be. The war is over,” Powell said.

At the MIA event, Powell revealed that he had flown in Tuesday in the cockpit of his Air Force plane because he was eager for a glimpse of the countryside again.

Flying low over the verdant rice paddies and mountains north of the Red River, and hearing the accent of the air traffic controller directing the Air Force pilot, “brought back lots of memories,” he said.

Powell surprised both his staff and the Vietnamese by going on an impromptu walkabout Wednesday, drawing hordes of local journalists and getting stopped by Vietnamese on the street to chat.

“They wanted to talk,” he said. “If time had permitted, I would have had the opportunity to shop or sit down and have a cup of tea or Ba-ba-ba,” a reference to the popular local beer.

America’s top diplomat said his impression of Hanoi was of a “robust” place with a sense of small-entrepreneurial activity that is “pretty exciting” for one of the world’s last Communist countries. “So much has changed, of course,” he said, “but so much is the same.”

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Detainees in China

Among the people with U.S. ties still being held in China:

* Wu Jianmin: A U.S. citizen who wrote on Chinese politics for Hong Kong magazines, he was detained April 8 on suspicion of spying for Taiwan.

* Rebiya Kadeer: A Muslim businesswoman and ethnic Uighur from China’s Xinjiang province, she was sentenced last year to eight years in prison for mailing newspaper reports of anti-Chinese unrest to her husband in the U.S. and trying to give a list of political prisoners to U.S. congressional staff.

* Liu Yaping: A U.S. resident from Weston, Conn., he was arrested March 8 in the northern Chinese city of Hohhot. Liu went to China to start a business and is accused of tax evasion.

* Ngawang Choephel: A Tibetan musicologist and former Fulbright scholar, he is serving an 18-year prison sentence for spying for Tibetan exiles.

Source: Associated Press