(ADDS details of rights statement, background)

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (AFP) - US Vice President Al Gore should suspend his plans to visit China because of the deteriorating human rights situation there, a leading human rights organization said Tuesday.

Going ahead with Gore's visit "would send a signal that the Chinese authorities can step up arrests, impose harsh sentences for peaceful dissent, curtail civil liberties in Hong Kong and muzzle human rights criticism," Human Rights Watch/Asia said.

Gore is expected to come to China in late March or April, for a trip seen by both sides as the precursor to an exchange of state visits by Prsidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin.

The watchdog called on Gore to avoid setting a concrete date for the visit until China had shown concrete human rights progress, in the form of "significant releases" of arbitrarily detained prisoners, increased access to Tibet and allowing foreign observers into political trials.

The rights group also stressed that in a vice presidential trip "symbolism will outweigh substance," and that pressing international issues of mutual Sino-US concern such as the Korean peninsula could be discussed at a lower level.

Gore's visit "will be a sending a message that no matter what the Chinese government does to its own citizens, the US will turn a blind eye.

"The Chinese government will conclude that if it protests loudly enough, as it has on human rights, it can force any country to make concessions," the group said, warning that such messages had implications for trade and security, as well as human rights.

The group pointed out that Beijing had completely ignored requests for human rights improvements made by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher when he visited China in November.

"Instead, in China and Tibet there were more arrests and trials, a complete flouting of reforms to the criminal justice system ... the silencing of political and labour activists, and a widening anti-crime campaign resulting in hundreds of thousands of summary arrests and thousands of executions."

According to Human Rights Watch/Asia, the US "indifference" to human rights abuses signalled by Gore's visit was further underlined by the Clinton administration's unwillingness to mount an early campaign to sponsor an anti-China resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva in March.

Since 1989, China and its allies have voted down six attempts by the commission to discuss a resolution critical of China's human rights record.

The rights group accused Clinton of dragging his feet over Geneva because of a feeling in Washington that pressuring China on human rights wasted valuable leverage and damaged US economic and security interests.

"This approach is dangerous, short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating," the group said, adding that the United States should step up pressure on Beijing ahead of this year's National People's Congress in March and crucial Communist Party Congress in October.