Associated Press - November 14, 1996

BEIJING Chinese officials will discuss human-rights issues when U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher visits next week unless they feel the Americans are trying to meddle, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

Cui Tiankai said all disputes between the two countries can be resolved through negotiations on the basis of equality, and that China is willing to discuss human rights if that sense of equality is preserved.

"What we oppose is using the excuse of human rights to meddle in internal affairs," Mr. Cui added. "We do not approve of creating confrontations about this problem."

After months of acrimony over trade, Chinese war games aimed at intimidating Taiwan and other issues, Mr. Christopher's trip is a sign that Washington and Beijing are working hard to smooth over their differences.

"This is an important visit," Mr. Cui said. "We hope it will help move China-U.S. relations on a path of healthy and stable development."

When Mr. Christopher last visited China in 1994, Chinese authorities responded to his concerns about human-rights abuses by rounding up and detaining dissidents.

Virtually all of China's active dissidents who are not in exile have been put in prison or labor camps. Wang Dan, one of the top student leaders in the 1989 democracy demonstrations, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last month on subversion charges. Evidence used against him included his contacts with exiled dissidents and opinions he expressed in articles for the Hong Kong press.

Police Thursday were standing watch outside the home of Mr. Wang's parents and that of dissident Chen Ziming, who was released from prison last week on medical parole and is under house arrest.

Mr. Wang's mother, Wang Lingyun, said her son's appeal of his sentence will be heard by the Beijing Higher Level People's Court on Friday. She expects the appeal to fail.

Mr. Cui denied the police presence at the two homes had anything to do with Mr. Christopher's visit. "These cases involve Chinese people and not a single American," he said. "So there's no connection at all."

A group of six U.S. senators visiting Beijing this week said they raised human rights issues with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and others and expected Mr. Christopher to do the same.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D.,Vt.), appealed Thursday for the release of Ngawang Choephel, a 31-year-old former Fulbright scholar who teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. Mr. Choephel disappeared after traveling to Tibet in August 1995 and has been imprisoned by Chinese authorities, who accuse him of spying for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

"My concern is not that we want to interfere with Chinese law, but to point out that if Chinese law is capriciously applied, then it can have ramifications outside China," Mr. Leahy told reporters.

But others in the delegation said human rights should be just one part of the U.S. dialogue with China.

"It is fair to say human rights ought to be preeminent, but not exclusive," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, (D., S.D.)

The senators also mentioned the U.S. trade deficit with China, which rose to $35 billion in 1995.

"This trade deficit is unsustainable," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, (D., N.D.) "Our relationship seems like too much of a one-way relationship at our expense."