World Tibet Network News Wednesday, June 24, 1998

WASHINGTON, June 23 (AFP) - China has revoked the visas of three Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporters who were to cover US President Bill Clinton's state visit to China, the US-funded service said Tuesday. The decision appeared to catch the Clinton administration by surprise, prompting meetings among White House officials on Monday, The Washington Times newspaper reported. Arin Basu, Patricia Heindman, and Feng Xiaoming were contacted by telephone Saturday by Chinese embassy officials who told them their visas had been withdrawn, the newspaper said.

The reporters had been scheduled to leave Wednesday for Xian, Clinton's first stop on a nine-day state visit. Press covering his trip were to leave Tuesday from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. RFA spokeswoman Pat Lute confirmed that visas for the three reporters had been granted, then abruptly cancelled. "One reporter got a call from the White House this morning ... saying 'do not come to Andrews, don't plan on getting on the plane,'" she said. "RFA is obviously very disappointed. We are a professional news organization and we were going over there to do our jobs," she said. The specific reason for the cancellation was unclear. But China, like other closed Asian countries to which RFA broadcasts, has repeatedly criticized the service as unwarranted meddling in its internal affairs.

And in a rare instance of agreement on China policy, both Congress and the White House favor increasing RFA's funding for broadcasts to the world's mostpopulous country. Given China's well-known dislike of RFA, "It's unlikely they will change their mind," one administration official said. White House spokesman Michael McCurry reportedly said the government was doing everything it could through the US Embassy in Beijing to resolve theissue. "Our view is that accredited journalists who are covering the president's trip ought to be free to report on the president's trip," McCurry said. "We don't think much of controls on the free press. "The issue angered some lawmakers, who said it boded ill for Clinton's summit with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. "It would be most unfortunate for this meeting if one of the first steps is (that) Chinese censorship of Radio Free Asia will prevail," said Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat for California. In Paris, the independent watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres fired off a

protest letter to Jiang, urging him to allow the RFA reporters, as well as banned journalists from the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily and Next Magazine, to cover the summit. "Reporters Sans Frontieres protests against these measures, which are incomplete contradiction with the Chinese authorities recent gestures,"general secretary Robert Menard said in his letter. RFA broadcasts daily by short-wave radio to China, Tibet, Myanmar, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cambodia in Mandarin, Tibetan, Burmese, Vietnamese,Korean, Lao, and Khmer.