World Tibet Network News Thursday, June 25, 1998

WASHINGTON, June 25 (AFP) - Just hours before his scheduled arrival Thursday in China, President Bill Clinton was criticized by two leading US dailies as being too accommodating to Chinese demands.

The New York Times urged Clinton to use his official reception at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Saturday to honor the memory of the hundreds of people who were killed or arrested there nine years ago as China crushed pro-democracy rallies.

Clinton can do this by "describing their sacrifice," the paper said.

China would like the venue to serve not as a reminder of the June 4, 1989 tragedy, but as "a way of saying farewell to a relationship strained by that memory."

But Clinton, it said, should not accept that definition.

"A show of presidential will would not disrupt the trip. It might even make it memorable," the Times said in an editorial.

The Washington Post was even harder on the US president, listing recent occasions it said had created "an atmosphere of US accommodation to Chinese demands."

Among other things, Clinton is criticized for going to Tiananmen Square, for barring Voice of America from adding a second correspondent to its Beijing bureau to avoid offending China's rulers, and for not finding room in his entourage of roughly 1,000 for the State Department's top coordinator on Tibet.

The daily also was critical of the White House's response Wednesday to reports that China may have stolen sensitive technology from a US satellite that crashed in China two years ago. Officials said the national security threat was minimal since the technology was not the latest.

But above all, the Post slammed Clinton for what it called a bland reaction to China's last-minute travel ban against three Radio Free Asia reporters. The paper said this infringed on "the president's right to travel with a delegation and press corps of America's choosing.

"One would have hoped, too, that the president would have fought harder for that right -- at least canceling the tourist portions of his visit in protest.

"Instead, Mr. Clinton acquiesced in China's slight," the Post said in an editorial..