Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, June 24, 1996

By Kevin Liffey

BONN, June 23 (Reuter) - Germany said it regretted China's decision on Sunday to cancel a visit by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel in protest at parliamentary criticism of Beijing, but added he would not be put off addressing human rights issues.

China angrily withdrew its invitation to Kinkel following a resolution in the Bonn parliament, backed by all major parties, which accused China of a list of human rights abuses in Tibet.

Kinkel believed both sides must now "do everything to avoid any serious impediment to relations between Germany and China, which are so important," a Bonn Foreign Ministry statement said.

"It must also of course be possible to discuss human rights questions openly, as (Kinkel) has always done in the past and will continue to do," the statement added.

But the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said the snub showed how Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government had knuckled under to China, and announced they would call a parliamentary debate on the subject this week.

"For years Kohl has excluded the human rights situation and the Tibet question from his China policy," SPD foreign affairs spokesman Guenter Verheugen said in a statement.

"The government's constant yielding to Chinese pressure has led China's leaders to assume the government is only interested in business...(Kohl's and Kinkel's) consideration has been trampled on by the Chinese rulers."

Kohl has faced criticism before for being too cosy with Beijing, in particular last November when he became the first Western head of government to inspect Chinese troops since China's bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Critics said he was rehabilitating the army, but Kohl countered that he was simply promoting political liberalisation.

Earlier this month, after Chinese complaints, Bonn withdrew official funding for a conference in Bonn on Tibet attended by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader whom China sees as the leader of a separatist movement.

It did not ban the conference as Beijing requested, though. The resolution at the centre of the latest row, passed on Thursday with support from all the main parliamentary parties, condemned a list of alleged Chinese rights abuses in Tibet.

It did not question the Himalayan region's status as part of China, but called on the Bonn government to urge Beijing to open talks aimed at giving Tibetans more rights.China called the resolution "an open, flagrant violation of international law and a serious case of interference in China's internal affairs" and said it would harm relations.

It said on Sunday the atmosphere was "clearly not appropriate" for Kinkel's planned visit, at the head of a trade delegation, from July 11 to 14.

But it held out prospects for relations to recover before a visit pencilled in for late this year by German President Roman Herzog, saying it hoped Germany would act to improve relations.

A spokesman for Herzog, asked if the visit would go ahead, said on Sunday: "Everything is open."

Germany is China's biggest trading partner in Europe, and deals worth several billion dollars have been signed on high profile visits to Bonn in the last three years by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng, as well as on Kohl's visits to China last year and in 1993.