World Tibet Network News Thursday, June 25, 1998

WASHINGTON, June 24 (AFP) - President Bill Clinton criticized as "a big mistake" Wednesday China's decision to bar three Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporters from covering his nine-day state visit there.

In a swift retaliation for Beijing's last-minute cancellation of their visas, Clinton spoke to the US government-funded broadcasting service in an exclusive interview hours just before he was to leave for China.

"Our problem is that you were denied visas, we believe, for the wrong reasons," RFA quoted Clinton as saying. "I think they made a big mistake."

"But keep in mind, that's not the same thing as negotiating over nonproliferation or economic issues or anything else because every nation reserves to itself the complete and unilateral right to decide its visa

policies," he said.

Clinton also pledged to ask Chinese leaders to stop jamming RFA broadcasts and said he was advocating "autonomy with integrity" for Tibet, the remote Himalayan territory annexed by China in the 1950s.

But the president was noncommittal when asked whether he planned to meet with any dissidents during his visit, saying only that he would meet "with as many different people as I can."

Other senior officials have sent mixed signals about whether Clinton would meet dissidents during the trip.

And Clinton, who has drawn sharp criticism for his planned welcoming ceremony in Tiananmen Square, suggested that the 1989 crackdown on democracy protestors there should be viewed in historical context.

"It is important to distinguish here between hundreds of years of history that has occurred at that spot and within those walls of which what happened at Tiananmen Square (in 1989) is definitely a part, but it's not the only thing that's ever occurred there," he said.

The three reporters were notified by Chinese embassy officials that they would not be allowed to cover Clinton's visit. The reason given, said RFA spokeswoman Pat Lute, "was because we're RFA."

The president's words were restrained, but Clinton's decision to give the interview amounted to a decisive slap at Chinese authorities, whose authoritarian style prompted congressional criticism of the trip.

"I want to send a clear signal that we don't believe ideas need visas and that we support freedom of the press in our country," Clinton told reporters earlier Wednesday.

China and other closed Asian countries to which RFA broadcasts news and other programming have objected to its short-wave transmissions as unwarranted meddling in their internal affairs.

RFA, a private corporation funded by Congress, broadcasts daily to Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, North Korea, Tibet, and Vietnam in Burmese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, Tibetan, and Vietnamese.