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Change Your Life! |
After winning in Geneva, China appears conciliatory to US |
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April 21, 2000
BEIJING, APR 20 (AP) - After defeating a U.S. effort to censure China for human rights abuses before a U.N. commission, Beijing on Thursday held out the prospect of renewed talks with Washington on protecting civil liberties.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said China hoped to resume an official dialogue on human rights with the United States if Washington first takes "concrete actions" in that direction.
Sun did not elaborate, but the communist government has been angered by Washington's public criticisms.
China severed the dialogue on human rights, as well as contacts between the Chinese and U.S. militaries and talks on security issues and arms proliferation following NATO's attack on the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia nearly a year ago. China has resumed or agreed to resume all the exchanges, except human rights.
Senior U.S. officials, after meetings in Beijing last month, said China was unwilling to renew the human rights talks as long as Washington backed censuring China at the annual session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
After fiercely lobbying developing nations on the commission for weeks, China managed to use a technical maneuver to quash the U.S. resolution without discussion on Tuesday. Chinese officials castigated Washington for engaging in "anti-China farce."
Sun noted that there had been "setbacks" to relations in the past year, although he did not mention the embassy bombing nor its political fallout. He said progress in repairing ties has been made, and he cited a landmark agreement on China's entry to the World Trade Organization.
"Relations between the two countries face both opportunities and challenges," Sun said at a media briefing. He said if both sides took a long-term view and if the United States stuck to previous agreements over Taiwan "then China-U.S. relations can be improved and developed."
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