Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 7, 1990 TAG: 9007070253
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
"I think without doubt there is some double standard there," he said in an interview Thursday with NBC News' Tom Brokaw, that was scheduled for broadcast Friday evening. Fang currently is living in Britain after being allowed to leave Beijing for exile late last month.
President Bush, asked about Fang's remark, said at a news conference Friday: "I'd say that he's wrong . . . If he feels that way, he's simply not expressing the facts as they are. I don't agree with that."
Bush, who has sought to maintain smooth relations with China in the wake of the military crackdown that ended the 1989 pro-democracy movement there, has been sensitive about suggestions that his interest in China has made him more tolerant of rights violations there.
Bush served as the head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing - effectively, the U.S. ambassador - in 1974-75.
Fang was able to come to Britain only after Chinese authorities agreed to permit him to travel to the airport and leave the country without facing arrest for his dissident activities.
In the interview with NBC, Fang agreed with Bush that it was important not to isolate China, a central theme in the president's defense of his administration's continued contacts with the Chinese government.
"I think that we should not isolate China," Fang said. "The question is, how do you do that and . . . push China to become more and more international, to become a member of the international community.
"They should meet the standard of democracy and freedom of the international community." he said.
Fang also expressed disapproval of Bush's decision to send national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger on two secret missions to China last year.
Bush, in his own news conference, which was held at the end of a two-day NATO meeting here, referred to a declaration expressing opposition to Chinese human rights violations that was issued at a meeting of the major industrial democracies last July in Paris.
"He's got a little time warp here," Bush said of Fang.
Bush also pointed out that the United States has maintained certain sanctions that it applied in the wake of the events around Beijing's central Tianamen Square, including a ban on visits by high-level officials, on sales of U.S. military equipment and on most loans to from the World Bank.
But, the president said, "I am heartened that Fang Lizhi is free and free now to say what's on his mind like this."
The dissident had said on his arrival in Britain that he would seek "a period of peace and quiet" while he pursued his career as an astrophysicist at Cambridge and would not become embroiled in an political controversies.
"I thought he wanted to stay out of the public eye - I thought he himself said so," Bush declared, seemingly taken aback by the revelation that Fang was already speaking out in a news interview.
by CNB