March 23 – The Bush administration said China’s threat to halt negotiations over human rights issues is virtually meaningless because China hasn’t complied with its past commitments.
“The fact that they don’t want to have another round of talks doesn’t bother us so much since the last three or four rounds we had didn’t lead us anywhere,” U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
The response marked the latest volley between the U.S. and China, which together have $180 billion in annual trade, since the State Department announced yesterday that the U.S. would propose a resolution criticizing China for “backsliding” on rights to a United Nations commission.
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Shen Guofang summoned U.S. Ambassador Clark Randt to protest the censure, saying the U.S. had reneged on efforts to resolve human rights differences through talks, China’s Foreign Ministry said on its Web site. China said it was suspending a one-on-one series of talks with the U.S. on human rights issues begun in the 1990s.
Boucher, asked about the cancellation, described it as insignificant because China has failed since December 2002 to carry out commitments it has made in the talks.
The U.S. resolution prepared for the UN Commission on Human Rights would be its first against China since 2001. The U.S., which sought to censure China throughout the 1990s, wasn’t on the commission in 2002 and didn’t file a complaint last year, saying it saw progress on Tibet and the release of political prisoners.
