WASHINGTON — President Bush wants Chinese President Jiang Zemin to promise to help him restrain North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program when the two leaders meet Friday, according to a senior U.S. official.
The third meeting between the U.S. and Chinese presidents — at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas — also will feature discussions of Iraq, Taiwan and religious freedom, experts say. Bush and Jiang then will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Mexico over the weekend, which will focus on free trade and international security.
The brief meeting between Jiang and Bush had been expected to be little more than a photo opportunity. But North Korea’s recent admission that it has run a covert nuclear arms program, in violation of a 1994 agreement, has vaulted the issue “to the top of the Crawford agenda,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
China, North Korea’s only important friend, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aid to keep North Korea from economic collapse. Reclusive North Korea recently has started to reform its economy and open to the outside world, much as China began to do in the late 1970s.
On a visit to Beijing last week, two U.S. envoys, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, gave Chinese officials the message that help on North Korea “would make possible all kinds of new cooperation,” the official said.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Warren P. Strobel contributed to this report.
Falun Gong group
plans rally in Crawford
SAN ANTONIO — Their beliefs center on truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, but practitioners of the ancient exercise of Falun Gong are upset about the treatment that followers have received in China.
Falun Gong supporters said they expect more than 1,000 supporters to converge in Crawford when the president meets with his Chinese counterpart.
The Chinese government banned Falun Gong in 1999 and has cracked down on the group, claiming its spiritual and moral beliefs are a cover for subversive activity.
Amnesty International, the human rights organization, reports that followers of Falun Gong face detention, unfair trials torture and imprisonment as part of the Communist government’s repression.
Falun Gong supporters said they expect more than 1,000 supporters to converge in Crawford, where Bush’s ranch is located, when the president meets with his Chinese counterpart.
— Amy Dorsett,
Hearst Newspapers (U-WIRE)
