Published by: World Tibet Network News Thursday, January 15, 1998

by Philippe Debeusscher

PARIS, Jan 14 (AFP) - France is being forced into a difficult diplomatic balancing act this week in welcoming China's foremost dissident with due courtesy while trying not to offend Beijing ahead a visit there next week by Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

French parliamentarians rolled out the red carpet Wednesday for dissident Wei Jinsheng, who was greeted like any other foreign dignitary by speaker Laurent Fabius before he addressed the National Assembly foreign affairs committee and sat in on question-time in the public gallery.

But the executive arm of government kept Wei prudently at a distance, turning down his requests for meetings with President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

"Britain and France have adopted a joint stand," Vedrine, whose visit to China will be his first since the Socialists took office seven months ago, said in response to an MP's question about France's stand on human rights in China.

Wei would be meeting a junior minister Thursday, Vedrine said, in a replay of the scenario in Britain last week, where Foreign Seceretary Robin Cook also avoided the dissident. He insisted however that France remained committed to the defence of human rights.

Wei, who was released last November after spending all but six months of the previous 18 years in detention, held talks with President Bill Clinton on leaving China for the United States.

He was invited to visit France by Jack Lang, a former Socialist minister who heads the National Assembly's foreign committee and hopes to use it as a forum for the protection of human rights. Lang also intends to invite the Dalai Lama soon, a move almost certain to irritate Beijing.

Even before Wei railed into Paris from London, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a strong warning against holding any high-level meetings with the ailing 47-year-old dissident.

Condemning the warning as a "clear interference in France's internal affairs," Wei said he was surprised there had been no official protest from Paris. "What is even sadder is that the French government seems to be under the orders of the Chinese government," he said.

Moving to reassure Wei, Lang said "state to state relations cannot stop France, its parliamentarians and its organisations from fighting in favour of human rights in China."

And Fabius added: "China is a very great nation but the human rights cause is a very great cause that one must not forget."

In speeches and interviews in Paris, Wei stressed that despite continuing Communist Party rule, the situation in China was slowly evolving.

He authenticated a secret manifesto allegedly penned by senior reformist officials who want the regime to launch democracy through major political reform, and said there was almost unanimous support for democracy and human rights, even in the upper echelons of the ruling party.

"The manifesto was not a surprise because many people in China are pondering change," he said. "People within the (Communist) Party who are attached to democracy must work together."

France "must pressure the oppressors within the Chinese leadership to allow more Chinese to be freed and for human rights guarantees to be set in place," he added.

On Tuesday, Wei accused France and other western governments of kowtowing to Beijing's economic strength and forsaking the struggle for human rights in China.

At a press conference, Wei voiced his "profound disappointment" that Beijing's tactic of using its vast market as a "lure" to secure the silence of western countries over continuing human rights abuses was bearing fruit.

In April last year, as Chirac prepared to pay an official visit to China, France, followed by Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain, withdrew its traditional support for a UN motion censuring China's approach to human rights.