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

By Kevin Liffey

BONN, June 23 (Reuter) - Germany weighed its reaction on Sunday after a diplomatic snub from Beijing, which called off a visit by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel over a Bonn parliamentary resolution accusing China of human rights abuses in Tibet.

Bonn's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the news from Beijing. A spokeswoman said a statement would be released later in the day.

The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said, however, that the snub demonstrated the total failure of the China policy of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government and announced they would demand a parliamentary debate on the subject this week.

"The chancellor is personally responsible in Bonn for China policy," SPD foreign affairs spokesman Guenter Verheugen said in a statement.

"For years Kohl has excluded the human rights situation and the Tibet question from his China policy. 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."

The government has in the past faced criticism at home for being too cosy with Beijing, in particular after Kohl last November 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 had requested, though.

The resolution at the centre of the latest row, supported by all the main parliamentary parties, condemned a list of alleged Chinese human rights abuses in the Himalayan region.

It did not question Tibet'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 that the atmosphere was "clearly not appropriate" for Kinkel's planned visit, at the head of a trade delegation, from July 11 to 14.

However, Beijing held out the prospect for relations to recover before a visit pencilled in for late this year by German President Roman Herzog.