CITES CHINESE SUPPORT OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC

Ossining, New York, May 19, 2000--In light of the Chinese Communist government’s support of Serbian dictator and indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, the Albanian American Civic League called on the U.S. Congress today to defeat legislation that would grant permanent normal trade status to China. In addition, the Civic League cited China’s continuing human rights abuses and the adverse impact of the trade bill on Americans workers in the following statement to the House Committee on International Relations and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

It is depressing to contemplate the United States bestowing trade benefits on China, when the Chinese government oppresses its own population and actively opposes U.S. interests around the world. While the Clinton administration fights for passage of the trade bill, the Chinese government sentences dissidents to draconian prison terms, violates the international embargo against Slobodan Milosevic (having given him $300 million in aid this spring), transfers nuclear technology to Iran, and threatens freedom and democracy in Taiwan.

The problem lies with the Clinton administration’s policy of coddling Beijing and pretending that the current Chinese government is our friend, when it behaves like an adversary. If the trade bill passes, the United States will lose the only real leverage that it has to effect change in China. Proponents of this bill maintain that its passage will bring freedom to China and prosperity to the United States. But this is not the case.

Instead of motivating China to become more democratic, the passage of the trade bill will allow the government to crack down on its opponents with impunity and strengthen its military alliances with Serbia and Iran. At least under the present system, the Chinese government is required to pass an annual review of its trade status, which puts a check on its authoritarian behavior. And instead of bringing prosperity to America, China will become a vast source of cheap labor for U.S. companies at the expense of American workers.

Defeating the trade bill is the most effective way for the United States to send a message to Beijing that we will not close our eyes to China’s appalling record of civil and human rights abuses at home and to its subversive activities abroad.

The United States finds itself in exactly the same situation with Russia. Newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin granted Slobodan Milosevic this week a $102 million loan and announced the sale of $32 million worth of oil to Belgrade. In addition, Russia officially hosted indicted Serbian war criminal General Dragolub Ojdanic; like China, it supports Iran’s nuclear program; and it recently cracked down on the independent press. This is occurring at a time when the International Monetary Fund is considering resumption of loans to Russia and when Putin is seeking cooperation on economics from the Clinton administration.

Both the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the United Nations, ignoring the international community’s indictment of the Serbian regime for its genocidal warfare in Bosnia and Kosova, visited Slobodan Milosevic before joining a UN Security Council mission in postwar Kosova to evaluate the conditions there at the end of April.

Under these circumstances, the United States must tell Beijing that its trade status will be subject to annual review until it changes its policies at home and abroad. We must also tell Moscow that America’s ability to support IMF assistance to Russia will be contingent on the country’s altering its behavior on the international stage. The United States has leverage, which it has certainly used successfully in the past with the Chinese Communist Party, which freed some dissidents under pressure of the annual trade review.

The Albanian American Civic League believes that the U.S. Congress should ask both China and Russia to use their close relationship with the Milosevic regime to secure the release of the 5,000 Albanian prisoners in Serbian jails. A genuine effort to negotiate the freedom of these prisoners would be a good faith measure--one that would also solve what has become a serious and embarrassing problem for the West because it dropped the provision from the war-ending agreement that would have guaranteed the release of the Albanian prisoners of war.