World Tibet Network News Thursday, April 30, 1998 (I)

by H. Asher Bolande

BEIJING, April 30 (AFP) - China talked tough with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Thursday, demanding an end to all sanctions imposed after the Tiananmen massacre and refusing to discuss the sensitive issue of Tibet. [...]

When she tried to raise the sensitive issue of Tibet during her meeting with Jiang, the president squelched dialogue with a 15-minute soliloquy on the history of religion in China, a senior US official said.

"What we urged was dialogue with the Dalai Lama," Albright said in summarising her talks with top leaders, including meetings Wednesday with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Vice Premier Qian Qichen.

She said the US remained concerned about Tibet's ability to retain its distinctive culture and religion under Chinese rule.

Chinese troops took control of the Himalayan region in 1951, and Beijing bristles at any foreign country's attempt to discuss Tibet, which it considers a purely internal affair.

But Albright insisted that there was more straight talking between the two sides on the full range of issues than ever before.

"One of the real benefits of the kind of dialogue that the US and China are developing is that it allows officials of both countries to be quite frank, even in public, without disrupting our joint efforts to improve relations," she said.

She said she spoke "quite directly" with leaders on religious freedom, Tibet, freedom of political expression and the "still large number of prisoners of conscience." [...]