Bush, Hu Produce Summit of Symbols
Protester Screams At Chinese President
By Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 21, 2006; Page A01
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President Bush pressed China’s visiting President Hu Jintao yesterday to open up markets, expand freedom and do more to curb nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea but came away with no specific agreements in a summit emphasizing symbolism over breakthroughs.
Hosting the first White House visit of a Chinese president in nine years, Bush welcomed Hu with pageantry, marching bands and a 21-gun salute in a sun-splashed South Lawn ceremony, then escorted him inside for polite talks on a range of long-standing issues. In return, Hu offered vague assurances that he will address U.S. economic concerns while resisting tougher action on Iran and North Korea.
The one off-script moment in an otherwise meticulously choreographed day came when a member of the Falun Gong religious sect that is suppressed in China screamed at Hu for several long minutes as he addressed hundreds of Bush aides and ticketed guests on the lawn. ”President Hu! Your days are numbered,” she shouted. ”President Bush! Stop him from killing!” A startled Hu paused until Bush leaned over and encouraged him to continue. ”You’re okay,” Bush assured Hu.
Such a jarring disruption inside the White House gates is extremely rare and seen as deeply offensive to the protocol-sensitive Chinese leadership. Bush, described as angry by aides who saw him afterward, apologized to Hu when they sat down in the Oval Office. ”This was unfortunate, and I’m sorry this happened,” Bush said, according to a White House official.
The visit held deep meaning for the Chinese delegation, which broadcast the pomp -- but not the protest -- to its people back home as a sign of the nation’s standing in the international community. Bush obliged to a point, serving an Alaska halibut luncheon in the East Room for Hu but not offering the black-tie state dinner Beijing wanted.
Bush had hoped to use the summit to soften Chinese opposition to his strategy of increasing pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program. In the Oval Office meeting, Bush pushed Hu to consider a Security Council resolution invoking Chapter 7 of the United Nations charter, which could lead to punitive action, including sanctions or force, if Tehran persists in enriching uranium.
But Hu, by his own account, spent much of his time talking about Taiwan and publicly insisted on sticking to ”diplomatic negotiation” in dealing with Iran. As for North Korea, which already has nuclear weapons and refuses to give them up, Hu acknowledged that six-party talks ”have run into some difficulties” but offered no ideas on how to break the logjam, other than urging negotiators ”to further display flexibility.”
”Both sides agreed to continue their efforts to facilitate the six-party talks to seek a proper solution to the Korean nuclear issue,” Hu told reporters through an interpreter in a rare question-and-answer session after the Oval Office meeting. ”And both sides agree to continue their efforts to seek a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue.”
Although security and economic issues dominated the talks, Bush made his standard suggestion to reform China’s autocratic system. ”China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship,” Bush said in welcoming remarks.
In private, aides said, Bush raised the case of a North Korean asylum seeker, Kim Chun Hee, who was deported back to her homeland despite Chinese obligations under U.N. refugee conventions. He asked again about a list of Chinese political prisoners that he first gave Hu during a meeting at the United Nations in September and gave a new list of six detainees he hopes will be released. But Bush did not mention the persecution of Falun Gong, even with hundreds of its followers outside the White House banging drums, holding up banners and chanting, ”Stop the killing, stop the torture.”
Hu insisted China is committed to democracy. ”What I can tell you is that we’ve always believed in China that if there is no democracy, there will be no modernization,” he told reporters during the brief question session. ”. . . We have always been expanding the democracy and freedoms for the Chinese citizens.”
Last night, Hu was feted at a dinner sponsored by the U.S.-China Business Council at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel as hundreds of pro- and anti-Chinese protesters faced off across Calvert Street with dueling banners wishing him a ”happy journey” and denouncing ”torture and death under communism.” Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger introduced Hu before the crowd of 900 people, saying the United States has ”no more important relationship” than with China.
In the 25-minute speech, Hu broke little new ground but stressed his familiar themes that what China ”needs most is a peaceful international environment” to thrive and deal with the growing inequalities between rural and urban areas of his country. He said China’s relationship with the United States is a top priority for China, stressing it would strengthen protection of intellectual property copyrights and seek to increase imports to relieve the trade imbalance. He insisted that China will continue to ”expand citizens’ orderly participation in political affairs” and that his country ”takes human rights seriously.”
Hu, who was flanked by security personnel as he spoke, said: ”Due to different national conditions, it is normal for China and the United States to disagree on some issues. We should seek common ground while shelving differences.”
White House officials took note of Hu’s linkage of democracy to economic progress, the line of argument Bush often uses with him. ”He has heard enough from the president on this subject that he’s starting to think about it,” said Dennis Wilder, a top Asia specialist on the National Security Council.
That was not enough to satisfy Baihua Zhou, 49, a software engineer from Ohio, who was among hundreds of protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue. On her chest she wore a picture of a mutilated corpse whose organs had been sold off, representing what Falun Gong says is a campaign of abuse and murder of believers in China.
”We want to expose these crimes to the world,” she said, comparing Hu to a murderer. ”If he wants to invite him to his house, President Bush has to say what is right to say, not just to please him. He has to tell him the people’s concerns.”
Bush and Hu may not have heard her, but they heard the woman who interrupted the festivities on the White House lawn. Identified by authorities as Wenyi Wang, 47, of New York, she had gained admission with a press pass issued by a Falun Gong newspaper, Epoch Times, copies of which were passed out by protesters outside the gates.
When she screamed from a press riser where cameras were recording the event, it took several minutes before uniformed Secret Service officers could get through the throng of photographers to remove her. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said she would likely be charged with attempting to intimidate, coerce, threaten or harass a foreign official in the performance of his duties, punishable by as much as six months in prison.
Congressional Democrats also used the Hu visit to criticize Bush’s China policy. In a letter to Bush this week, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) complained that the administration ”still has no coherent strategy for managing this nation’s relationship with China.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) derided Bush’s approach as wishful thinking. ”We have pursued trickle-down liberty -- promoting economic freedom first, assuming that political freedom will follow,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Times. ”Reality exposes this policy as the illusion it is.”
Economics permeated the discussions at the White House yesterday. Bush aides trumpeted Hu’s comments about transforming China into a more consumer-driven economy, which would presumably benefit U.S. businesses at a time when the United States is running a $202 billion annual trade deficit. And they pronounced themselves encouraged that Hu said he would continue to loosen controls over the Chinese currency, which U.S. corporate leaders blame for hurting their business opportunities.
Bush made sure to surround Hu at the East Room luncheon with corporate titans, including top executives from General Motors, Home Depot, Motorola, Caterpillar, Daimler Chrysler, Avon Products and Goldman Sachs. Other guests included Kissinger, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D), actor Ron Silver and skater Michelle Kwan.
White House officials acknowledged no breakthroughs were made, seeing the value of the summit as the next step in incremental change. Many of the statements and promises made by Bush and Hu mirrored the language from their other meetings. At a briefing afterward, Bush aides used words such as ”reiteration,” ”rearticulation” and ”renewed commitment” to describe yesterday’s discussion.
In the end, the main purpose seemed to be to work on the relationship between Bush and Hu. The summit, scheduled for September but postponed after Hurricane Katrina, gave Hu the world’s most prominent platform, even if not a formal state visit as his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, had with President Bill Clinton in 1997. Throughout the day, Hu kept using the term ”win-win.”
Staff writer Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.
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