CHINA VISIT ENDS ON AN UPBEAT NOTE

by Keith Richburg

The Herald Tribune, Thursday, July 11th, 1996

BEIJING - The U.S. national security adviser W. Anthony Lake, ended a visit to China that included wide-ranging talks with senior officials on an upbeat note on Wednesday, with both sides suggesting that after months of contention the Chinese-American relationship is back on track. Mr Lake, who met in cordial sessions with President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng on Tuesday, helped set the stage for reciprocal state visits by Mr. Jiang and President Bill Clinton. "Because of our recent progress, I would expect that there would be an exchange of state visits," he said Wednesday. A White House spokesman earlier said that any such visits would not take place this year. Mr. Lake told reporters here that improving relations will not come at the expense of Washington's commitment to human rights. "We have to understand that this is a long-term issue," Mr. Lake said. "In MY judgment, it's very unlikely that one meeting, or an effort to devise a trade-off between one issue and human rights, is going to produ

ce a giant. step forward." "I think that over time we will be making progress," Mr. Lake said, adding, "It won't happen overnight." Mr. Clinton campaigned four years ago on a get-tough policy with Beijing over its treatment of pro-democracy dissidents following the Tiananmen Square killings of 1989. The Clinton administration subsequently decided to sever the link between preferential trading privileges and China's human rights record, and is now trying to emphasize what officials here call the more positive aspects of the often-troubled relationship. "We should keep in mind a positive agenda," said Winston Lord, the assistant secretary of state for Asia. That agenda includes issues like nuclear non-proliferation, seeking Beijing's help in nudging North Korea into talks with the South, protecting intellectual property, and defining the role China will play as one of the world's largest economic powers moving into the 21st century. U.S. officials believe that as Washington can engage Beijing's Communist ruler

s across a broad range of issues finding areas of common ground wherever possible - China can increasingly be coaxed to take a more responsible role in the international arena, not only playing by the rules, but to "help develop the rules," as Mr. Lake put it. A major American policy goal now is to try to avoid a repeat of the deterioration in relations that took Washington and Beijing to the brink of confrontation in March, when China began a series of intimidating missile tests off Taiwan prior to Taipei's presidential elections and the United States responded by moving two aircraft carrier battle groups into nearby waters. The last U.S . national security advisor to visit China, Mr. Jiang pointed out to Mr. Lake, was Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser in the Bush administration, who came following the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Mr. Lake and other officials here adamantly insisted that their new tack in dealing with China does not represent any softening of the Clinton administration's

commitment on thequestion of human rights. "If it were a softening, then we would not be talking about human rights in every meeting," Mr. Lake said. "It's a practical way of doing our best to make progress on this issue," he said. "Being practical on this issue is not a soft approach." The policy of delinking human rights from other bilateral issues was made official in 1994, after administration officials conceded that the annual battle over China's trade privileges had failed to significantly alter the Chinese government's behavior towards its internal critics.