Bush Urges China To Talk To Vatican, Dalai Lama
(Reuters | Beijing | February 21, 2002)
US President George W Bush urged China on Thursday to talk with the Vatican and exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as he appealed to Beijing to take strides toward relaxing religious controls. In a rare and unscripted moment of candour during a press conference, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said he had read the Bible, the Koran and Buddhist scriptures despite being a non-believer.
Beijing had always protected such freedoms in its constitution, Jiang said. Asked twice by reporters about why Beijing had imprisoned more than 50 Roman Catholic bishops, Jiang replied: "Whatever religion people believe in, they have to abide by the law. So some of the law-breakers have been detained because of their violation of law, not because of their religious beliefs.
"Although, I'm the President of this country, I have no right interfering in the judicial affairs because of judicial independence," said Jiang.
Bush urged Jiang to open talks with the Dalai Lama and Vatican in a long and extensive exchange on religious freedoms, US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice told reporters.
"All the world's people, including the people of China, should be free to choose how they live, how they worship and how they work," Bush said at the joint news conference with Jiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Communist China bans religious activity outside of state-backed groups, but millions of faithful worship in underground churches, unsanctioned Islamic prayer groups and Tibetan Buddhist temples loyal to the Dalai Lama.
Jiang said he meets with Chinese religious leaders and added: "Although I am not religious I have an interest in various religions, for example I've read the Bible, I've also read the Koran as well as Buddhist Scriptures."
Signs of progress: Bush, a devout Christian, has nudged China over religious freedoms in recent months amid criticism he had gone soft on Beijing's human rights record to gain support for his war on terrorism.
And observers say Beijing has been keen to meet Washington halfway -- as signalled by the releases of a convicted Hong Kong bible smuggler and an exiled Tibetan who was a former Fulbright Scholar and the reported parole of a jailed Tibetan monk.
China in recent years has shut down dozens of underground churches and imprisoned bishops, priests and monks.
Beijing broke off ties with the Holy See in the 1950s and created the Catholic Patriotic Association, which claims five millions members compared Vatican estimates of some eight million underground Catholics who are loyal to the Pope.
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