Hard Words To Hard-Liners

By Sandra Burton

* "I checked my handgun at the gate," Richard Nixon quipped within earshot of a dozen armed Chinese police and soldiers standing guard around the U.S. embassy in Beijing. His sarcasm drew whoops of laughter from foreign service officers, who had lodged three complaints in as many days against "harassment" by the Chinese troops stationed outside the compound. With Sino-American relations at their lowest in years, the former President was back in Beijing last week on a "private" visit, attempting to salvage what he could of the relationship he had launched with such drama in 1972. If any outsider had the stature to force the Chinese leaders to conduct what a Western diplomat called a "reality check" on their view of the world, it was Nixon.

He began by taking on Premier Li Peng, whom he had pointedly not asked to meet. In a private session, Nixon reportedly deleted no vitriolics in expressing American outrage over the regime's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators last June. To end the current impasse, he suggested, the two nations should halt their recriminations and propose mutual talking points. He threw out the first one: "When I go to the embassy, I hope there will not be guards with AK-47s outside." Li retorted that the troops had been posted there to prevent the escape of dissident Fang Lizhi.

The U.S. decision to grant Fang and his wife refuge has become the primary source of tension between the two countries. Just before Halloween the Chinese mounted a show of force around the embassy, evidently fearing that masked party guests were going to smuggle Fang out in a coffin. Diplomats had joked openly for months about pulling such a stunt. The Chinese evidently took them at their word -- monitored, no doubt, over tapped phone lines.

Nixon's suggestions for restoring the relationship fell on deaf ears. Deng was unyielding during his three hours of talks with Nixon. China, he contended, had not done "one thing harmful" to the U.S. "But the U.S. was involved too deeply in the turmoil and counterrevolutionary rebellion," he lectured. Although Deng expressed a strong desire to repair the damaged ties, he insisted "it is up to the U.S. to take the initiative."

"Had that attitude existed back in 1972, there would have been no embassy here," Nixon commented later. Echoing George Bush's announcement of a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, Nixon likened his discussions with China's leaders to "two ships passing in the night."

With reporting by Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing