World Tibet Network News Monday, June 29, 1998

WASHINGTON, Monday, June 29, 1998 (Reuters) -- The U.S. and Chinese presidents are engaging in a "remarkable" series of meetings in which there is no attempt to "paper over" thorny issues and discussions are increasingly frank, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Sunday. Interviewed from Beijing by CBS' "Face the Nation," Albright, part of a large delegation accompanying President Clinton on a nine-day trip to China, said the "Chinese are being very helpful and important" on the issues such as tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Asian economic crisis and nuclear testing by Pakistan and India. She also said the uncommonly forth right public exchange between Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin Saturday was "something nobody expected" and was important because it was heard by about 600 million Chinese. She said it was an opportunity for vast numbers of Chinese citizens to hear American views about human rights and freedoms. "I think we'll have to see, frankly, what the reverberations are, bu

t if one could say this, Beijing is talking about the press conference, that's for sure," Albright said. She said the closed-door meetings between Clinton and Jiang were even more candid than Saturday's news conference.

"What you saw in the press conference is there in even greater strength when they talk to each other in private and they raise these very difficult issues," Albright said. "The presidents have begun a dialogue in these meetings now, they've seen each other seven times and I was not in the first meetings, but I can tell you in the last three or four there really has been just an incremental increase in the kinds of subjects they talk about, the frankness with which they talk about the subjects and the way that they deal with each other," Albright said. She said the two sides are not just holding polite talks. "We don't agree with the Chinese on everything. They are quite a different society from ours. That is evident in these discussions. What I find interesting is that there is not an attempt to kind of paper over differences or just have polite discussions," she said. She said Clinton has pushed forward U.S. views on political dissidence and other human rights issues.

"The president (Clinton) makes very clear what our stands are on freedom and the need to deal with the dissidents, the need to have a political expression in China, as well as obviously the Tibet issue," she said. "In the past they've (the Chinese) said it (dissidence) was an internal issue. But in the current series of meetings, the Chinese have been talking about such issues, Albright said." But they listen, they talk at great length, there's quite a lot of conversations about Tibet. And that's why I find it very interesting that President Jiang is the one that came back and actually said 'I need to explain what I mean about Tibet'," she said. Important military and economic issues are also being discussed, she said. "What I found very important and useful is that they actually had a strategic dialogue. The Chinese are being very helpful and important in terms of dealing with the issue of the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan," she said. "They are very helpful when we talk about what to do on the Korean

Peninsula. We also discussed the Japanese financial crisis and the fact that the Chinese are going to keep their money stable, their currency stable," she said. She said the United States had not done as well as it had hoped on getting China to free up its trade relationship with the United States. This had been touted as a key objective of the business leaders accompanying Clinton. "We didn't do as well as we wanted on the trade issue," Albright said, without elaboration.

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