Clinton softens her tone on China

International Herald Tribune

The U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, on Friday with students and officials at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. (Lee Jin-man/The Associated Press)

BEIJING: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the debate with China over human rights, Taiwan and Tibet should not be allowed to interfere with attempts to reach consensus on other, broader issues.

Shortly before arriving in Beijing on the last leg of her inaugural trip abroad as America's top diplomat, Clinton said that she would raise those contentious issues, but noted that neither side was likely to give ground on them.

Instead, she said, it might be better to agree to disagree on longstanding positions and focus instead on American-Chinese engagement on climate change, the global financial crisis and security threats.

Her comments drew immediate negative reaction from human rights advocates who were hoping for a repeat of the stance she took nearly 15 years ago when she was first lady and publicly took on and angered the Chinese government in a tough speech on this issue.

But in surprisingly candid remarks, she said that each side already knew the other's longstanding divergent positions on those matters and that progress might be more achievable by concentrating on other areas where Washington and Beijing could work together.

"There is a certain logic to that," Clinton said in Seoul, immediately before leaving for Beijing.

"That doesn't mean that questions of Taiwan, Tibet, human rights, the whole range of challenges that we often engage on with the Chinese, are not part of the agenda," she said. "But we pretty much know what they're going to say."

"We have to continue to press them," she added. "But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises. We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those."

In her remarks, Clinton stressed that she had never shied away from bringing up human rights issues with China, recalling her 1995 speech to the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing that so angered the authorities that they pulled the plug on live television coverage of it.

"I made a speech about women's rights and human rights," she said. "I have had firsthand experience with some of the reactions" to criticism.

Clinton will be in Beijing for two days of meetings with senior Chinese officials, with a focus on climate change, the financial crisis and efforts to bring North Korea back to disarmament talks.

Earlier Friday in Seoul, Clinton warned that as long as North Korea continued insulting South Korea, it would never improve relations with the United States.

Clinton also called the Communist government's rule a "tyranny" but repeated the new U.S. administration's offer to normalize relations, sign a peace treaty and provide major assistance if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons programs.

"North Korea is not going to get a different relationship with the United States while insulting and refusing dialogue with" Seoul, Clinton said at a news conference with the South Korean foreign minister, Yu Myung Hwan. "The most immediate issue is to continue the disablement of their nuclear facilities and to get a complete and verifiable agreement as to the end of their nuclear program."

Clinton's comment was expected to calm South Koreans who have grown increasingly uneasy over North Korea's recent harsh rhetoric against the South, including threats of naval clashes, and its reported preparations to launch a long-range missile. She called Pyongyang's saber-rattling "provocative" and "unhelpful," and praised the South Korean government for its restraint.

But her use of "tyranny" - a term often used by the Bush administration regarding North Korea - and her earlier public comments about a possible power struggle in Pyongyang to succeed the country's ailing leader, Kim Jong Il, were likely to anger North Korea.

There was no immediate North Korean reaction Friday to Clinton's comments.

Clinton met Friday with the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, General Walter Sharp, to assess the threat of the possible North Korean missile launch. She also had a meeting with the South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, during which the North's missile and nuclear threats loomed large.