
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991                   TAG: 9103290274
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: BEIJING                                LENGTH: Medium

CHINA TOLD RIGHTS MAY BE TIED TO TRADE

As part of a continuing American effort to pressure China on its human-rights abuses, two U.S. congressmen said Thursday they warned Chinese Premier Li Peng that Congress was likely to link China's favorable trading status to improved treatment of Chinese political and religious dissidents.

In an hour-long meeting with Peng Thursday afternoon, the two U.S. representatives said that they gave him a petition signed by 110 congressmen, asking him to set free 77 Chinese who have been imprisoned, detained or put under house arrest for their religious activities.

They said that they also asked for a review of the cases of hundreds jailed for their roles in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and for China to end alleged coercive practices in its family-planning programs.

Reps. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., said that they stopped short of directly threatening Peng with an end to China's most-favored-nation trading status, under which its imports to the U.S. benefit from the same low tariffs as most other nations. But they said that they directly linked the human rights issue with Sino-American trade relations.

"We stressed . . . that respect for fundamental human rights is the cornerstone - is absolutely central - to improved U.S. relations," Smith said.

"U.S. concern over Soviet hegemony - the China card - has been replaced with human rights," he added. "Mutual economic cooperation in the '90s will be enhanced by adherence to or harmed by negligence to internationally recognized human-rights standards."

The congressmen said that Peng characterized the U.S. position as a "carrot and stick" approach and reiterated China's long standing position that such internal matters are not the affair of other nations. But they said that the premier agreed to give their inquiries to China's judiciary.

The two congressmen are only the latest American officials to deliver a roughly similar message directly to China's leadership.

In December, an assistant U.S. secretary of state asked Chinese officials for detailed information about 150 imprisoned dissidents. Last fall, another group of congressmen also lectured Peng on the link between human rights and trade.

by CNB