By Jane Macartney

BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Reuter) - Leading Chinese dissident CHEN ZIMING was to start a hunger strike in prison on Saturday after officials failed to respond to his appeals for medical help and access to his bank account, his wife said. "He told me that if the authorities gave no response by October 13 then he would start a hunger strike, " Wang Zhihong said by telephone. "I can't contact him, but they have given us no reply and that means he is starting his hunger strike today," she said. "I call on the authorities to stop their illegal behaviour...and to give me and my family our rights," CHEN said in a statement read on his behalf by his wife.

CHEN, branded as a "black hand" behind the 1989 student-led pro-democracy protests and serving a 13-year jail term for "counter-revolutionary" activities, was appealing to the authorities to release him again on medical parole, Wang said. The veteran dissident was returned to the Beijing Number Two Prison by more than a dozen police who entered his home in northern Beijing on June 25, just a year after he was released on medical parole for treatement of cancer. In his statement, CHEN linked his arrest to summer chili in Sino-U.S. relations, wich CHINA said had plunged to their lowest point since they were established in 1979, and said police had not followed proper procedures in 1979, and said police had not followed proper procedures in rearresting him. His 1994 parole, granted after he was diagnosed as having cancer, hepatitis B, heart disease and other medical problems, helped CHINA to ward off moves to strip it of coveted U:S: trade privileges. CHEN was losing weight, had receveid no proper medical treat

ement and had not had access to costly prescription drugs needed to prevent the recurrence of chemotherapy symptoms since his return to jail, Wang said.

"His health is deteriorating," said Wang, adding that she would stage a 24-hour sympathy hunger strike on Sunday. The couple's bank account has been frozen since July 28, making it difficult to buy medicines, said Wang, whose last monthly visit to her husband was on september 25. CHEN was demanding access to the bank account and the return of his computer, fax machine and other items confiscated from his home by police when he was arrested on June 25, Wang said. She said she had contacted relevant authorities to beg for her husband's re-relaese on medical parole but all her pleas had been ignored. The couple was also demanding officials give them results of medical tests CHEN underwent last month, Wang said. Doctors gave CHEN a series of tests in early September when Wang was effectively detained and allowed to spend about a month with her husband in custody to prevent her meeting foreign visitors during the August 30-September 15 Beijing World Conference on Women. Chinese authorities detained Wang along wit

h several other dissidents during the conference to prevent any incident that could mar Beijings staging of its most prestigious international event since it earned international condemnation for its bloody 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators.

Reuter Limited 1995