WASHINGTON: USS. Secretary of State James Baker said that it ‘was necessary to guard against the risk of the Tiananmen Square tragedy compounded as a possible result of a Chinese isolation from the international community.

The one way of ensuring against that danger was to establish better relations with China, the Secretary of State said stoutly defending the mission of national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger to Beijing.

However, he assured a questioner on ABC television that when he spoke to Scowcroft and Eagleburger Saturday night, they assured him that they did raise issues of human rights with China’s leaders.

Baker said the U.S. deplored what happened in China but “This is a very important relation in terms of its geopolitical and importance, and we want to try to ‘ways to preserve it”.

He said it was important to that “we have engaged in strategic with the Chinese government even when our bilateral relations have been the very best, going back to the early seventies”.

So it was necessary to brief on Malta, he said.

“Another purpose was, of course, to seek to improve the relationship to the extent that can be done…we still have sanctions in place against China but unless we are willing to talk and try and resolve these problems, we are not going to be able to preserve this relationship which is very important to both countries”.

On other subjects, Baker said the Soviet Union still had serious Reservations about German reunification and hence it was very important that the process be gradual in order that the unification would be achieved peacefully.

He insisted that even if there was no Warsaw pact it was necessary to have Nato. Nato had not only a security content but also a political content and “there is not one country over there that does not want to see the continued presence of the U.S. Military in Europe, including the Soviet Union and President Gorbachev specifically spoke to that in Malta”.

Berlin Wall pieces on sale

TORONTO: Fragments of the Berlin wall will soon be up for sale in Canadian gift stores at $10.00 a piece giving people a chance to possess a “piece of history.”

“At the price we have them; they’re basically an impulse item” said Kevin Talbot of FAI Trading Co of Toronto. “I’ve heard of prices going as high as $40 dollars a. Ounce. “FAI has imported 1.5 tonnes of the wall broken up into 9.000 pieces.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  December 22, 1989