Toasting The Dragon

THE first US visit by a Chinese head of state after more than a decade has heralded a diplomatic thaw, with Washington offering Beijing more atomic power reactors costing several billion dollars; in exchange, China is said to have promised in writing that it would sever nuclear ties with Iran and even perhaps with Pakistan. Striking the last-minute deal, US President Bill Clinton said: "This is a win, win, win agreement. It serves American national security, environmental and economic interests."

바카라 웹사이트And as Clinton hosted his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin with a 21-gun salute, he ended Beijing's confinement in the US diplomatic doghouse. China is expected to spend $50-60 billion until 2015 to meet its energy needs, making it by far the fastest growing nuclear market. The Clinton-Jiang accord could mean billions of dollars in new sales to firms like Westinghouse, ABB and General Electric, which lobbied vigorously for lifting China's pariah status. Boeing got things going by signing a $3-billion deal for 50 aircraft.

Clinton's controversial decision to certify China for US nuclear exports rapidly came under fire from non-proliferation experts and members of Congress. "We have a right to view China's assurances (on non-proliferation) with great scepticism," says Thomas McNaugher, an expert on Asian security issues at the Rand Corp, a Washington think tank. "I am very nervous about the summit driving this to a hasty conclusion."

바카라 웹사이트Citing China's murky track record on proliferation, critics predicted that the deal would trigger intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Congress now has 30 legislative days to debate the agreement. "It is too soon to conclude that China has changed its policies sufficiently to merit access to US nuclear technology," senators Richard Shelby and Jesse Helms wrote to Clinton as he prepared to receive Jiang at the White House. Shelby, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Helms, who presides over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cited Beijing's "long record of proliferation" and history of "deception, evasion, and lying". "We cannot look the other way just because it's about commerce," Shelby said.

Interestingly, a recent CIA report found that "China was the most significant supplier of weapons of mass destruction-related goods and technology to foreign countries" in the second half of 1996. This included nuclear and ballistic missile assistance to Iran and Pakistan, it noted. A "top secret" 1996 CIA memorandum stated that Islamabad planned to use "false end-user certificates" for sales of Chinese nuclear technology to an unsafeguarded facility and that the 'subterfuge' would require the approval of high-level Beijing commissars.

Hence, with the Chinese pledge not to aid the regimes in Iran and Pakistan sure to come under severe scrutiny on the Hill, Pakistan's nuclear programme is likely to be hit. Says Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank: "Islamabad can't feel happy about this nuclear rapprochement between the US and China. " He predicted that if the Chinese record on compliance—not aiding Pakistan and Iran—did not improve vastly, "there would be a groundswell of action against China vis-a-vis trade". Therefore, he said, one could expect the Chinese leadership to maintain strict vigilance over its military industrial complex from violating the assurances given to Washington.

Meanwhile, administration sources say Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen discussed India and Pakistan on October 30. The talks covered the neighbours' nuclear programmes and Albright reportedly told Qian that on the agenda for her South Asian trip this November were efforts to encourage New Delhi and Islamabad to defuse tensions and to press for nuclear non-proliferation. Incidentally, prior to the Sino-US summit, Clinton had said: "As a neighbour of India and Pakistan, China will influence whether these great democracies move toward responsible cooperation, both with each other and with China."

As for human rights and Tibet, Qian warned the US not to mess with Tibet, asserting that the region was a domestic matter for Beijing. "Tibet is a part of China," Qian said. "Other countries may disagree but they cannot interfere." His boss went a step further and defended China's human rights record in Tibet by comparing its suppression of an uprising in 1958 with the emancipation of American slaves. "Today's Tibet is developing prosperously and people there are living and working in happiness and contentment," he claimed. "Before adequate food and clothing is ensured for the people, the enjoyment of other rights would be out of the question."

바카라 웹사이트This left Albright, who was planning to nominate a "special coordinator for Tibet", none too happy. "I am disappointed," she said. "But I think that this is not a one-issue summit." Maybe so, but it has definitely been a controversial one.