BEIJING, Feb 25, 1997, (Reuter) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright left China Tuesday after her first talks with the country's post-Deng Xiaoping leadership, saying she was satisfied with the meetings but foresaw no breakthroughs.

Albright departed for Washington as Chinese security cleared Beijing's Tiananmen Square for an official memorial service for Deng, the communist patriarch who died last Wednesday aged 92.

Albright told a news conference late Monday she was touched by the warm reception China's new generation of leaders gave her in the middle of their official mourning period.

But she said that on key issues straining Sino-U.S. ties such as human rights and arms proliferation, there appeared to be little sign of any immediate breakthroughs.

"I was received with the greatest kindness and interest. I am very well satisfied with the atmosphere as well as the substance of the talks," she said after four hours of separate meetings with President Jiang Zemin, Premier Li Peng and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen.

Albright broke tradition by including Beijing as the last stop on her first overseas trip since taking office, a whirlwind nine-nation tour that included Asia for the first time.

Albright, calling China a key to stability in the nextcentury, said her visit underscored China's importance and theU.S. role as a global power.

Her meetings "reaffirmed America's commitment to our strategic dialogue in Beijing," she said. "That dialogue may not remove all differences in our relationship. But it is expanding areas of cooperation and that serves the interest of both countries and the world."

China's leaders echoed her sentiments, declaring themselves committed to working relations with the United States.

"Dialogue, instead of confrontation, is beneficial to both sides," the official Xinhua news agency reported Premier Li Peng as saying.

Albright said expert level talks on missile, nuclear and chemical issues, a serious point of friction, would take place next month. Vice President Al Gore would visit Beijing next month as well but dates remain to be set, she said.

The two countries expect to hold summits in each other's capitals by the end of 1998.

U.S. officials said Jiang, who with Deng's death has become unarguably the most powerful man in China, was "sober, statesmanlike (and) very positive about U.S.-China relations" during his half-hour meeting with Albright.

"Jiang is the core of the leadership," one senior official said.

Jiang, who clearly relishes the prospect of a state visit to Washington, said he was "willing to make concerted efforts" to improve bilateral relations, Xinhua said.

Albright's human rights discussion with Li Peng "was a bit sharp," one senior U.S. official said, but the hardline premier was not "sarcastic, acerbic or dismissive" as he often is.

At the news conference, Albright said she made good her promise to "tell it like it is" on U.S. criticism of China's human rights record "and they made clear their position."

"It is an issue on which we have a difference," she said. U.S. officials said she spoke generally about dissidents, Tibet, freedom of expression and religion.

She said that in the absence of human rights progress Washington would proceed with a resolution faulting Beijing"s record at the March-April U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva, and her spokesman Nicholas Burns later said the United States did not expect "any imminent breakthrough in China's human rights views."