"The Australian" Tuesday August 12

Australia was preparing to raise the plight of individual dissidents at bilateral human rights talks with the Chinese Government which began in Beijing yesterday.

The closed-door talks between senior officials from both countries are also likely to cover issues such as Tibet, and possibly also Australia's own record on anti-Asian racism and Aboriginal living conditions.

The Australian delegation will conduct tours of several legal, cultural and judicial institutions today and tomorrow, before pressing the Chinese for further talks on Thursday.

It is not known which dissident cases Australia would attempt to raise.

Australia Tibet Council president Alex Butler said before the talks that the Canberra delegation should press for details about Tibetan political detainees.

In a letter to [Foreign Minister] Alexander Downer, she also called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to all prisons in China and Tibet.

The Chinese reponse to Australia's questions is not known, but in the past, under pressure from Western governments, Beijing has sometimes given out limited information on the health of political prisoners.

Beijing's traditional response to Western demands on human rights was sketched out in a dispatch from the official Xinhua (New China) news agency yesterday.

Quoting Chinese human rights expert Fax Guoxiang, Xinhua said a "reasonable attitude" should be adopted to differences, rather than "endless arm-twisting".

"Well-organised attacks with a view to forcing political resolutions run counter to the objective of promoting human rights," the article said.

"Shouldn't we, on the basis of mutual respect, calmly explore the origin and scope of different views?"

Beijing agreed to the bilateral talks earlier this year after Australia declined to back a US resolution at a UN forum condemning human rights abuses in China.

The vice minister-level dialogue was proposed by John Howard during a visit to China in April.

Australian human rights delegations have travelled to China in 1991 and 1993, but neither visit was made in the framework of an official dialogue.