BEIJING - Vice President Al Gore yesterday assured Chinese Premier Li Peng that U.S.-Sino relations will not be hurt by allegations that China illegally contributed to American political campaigns in an effort to influence U.S. policy, an administration official said.
Li raised the issue during bilateral talks on the first full day of Gore's visit to China, but Gore interrupted him and "said very directly to the prime minister that these allegations very obviously were in the air and they would be there," the official added.
Gore told Li "the issue is being investigated, but the important point was that this in no way would deflect the administration from pursuing its policy of engagement with China," said the official, who attended the meeting and briefed the media but spoke on the condition that he not be named.
Li reiterated his government's consistent denial that it engaged in any illegal efforts to influence U.S. policy, and echoed Gore's assertion that the affair should not hinder Sino-U.S. relations, which are currently on a relatively steady footing after years of tension.
Gore is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989, and both sides are determined that his four-day trip to the giant Asian nation will pass without controversy. Plans for the visit seemed to be progressing without a hitch until the campaign-finance scandal spotlight focused on China.
In recent months, reports have surfaced that the FBI was investigating whether the Chinese Embassy in Washington engaged in efforts to influence U.S. politics through campaign contributions to the Democratic Party, and that half a dozen members of Congress were warned by the FBI last year that China might try to funnel money to their campaigns in an attempt to gain influence. The Justice Department is investigating some of the charges but has said little about the details of its probe.
Gore's message yesterday, in public and private, was that the controversy did not sour his talks.
In his effort to send signals that the United States is eager to improve bilateral relations, Gore nevertheless found himself in some awkward positions.
During a morning event in the central room of the Great Hall of the People, he reviewed Chinese military personnel side by side with Li - the hard-line Communist who issued the declaration of martial law that ended in the deaths of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in 1989. Li smiled broadly, but Gore was straight-faced and appeared a little uncomfortable as they walked on a red carpet past the soldiers, airmen and navy men standing at attention.
Gore's advisers stressed that the conflict over human rights in China - where most voices of dissent are silenced with prison terms, and the government shows no sign of improving its record on human rights - is not the stumbling block that it once was. When Li and Gore met in Copenhagen in 1995, the Chinese leader angrily attacked Gore over the tough U.S. stance on human rights. The atmosphere was very different yesterday, aides said.
"They discussed human rights," Fuerth said. "But it was a conversation. And it left them at the end of that time in a position to take up the next agenda item in a calm and equitable frame of mind."
Other topics on the agenda included nuclear nonproliferation, trade and the environment, but Gore's advisers said details from those talks would not be available until today.