"How dare this Administration blame Presidents Reagan and Bush for [Chinese nuclear espionage] that oclearly ccurred on Bill Clinton's watch!'' said Dan Quayle. Quayle Says China Is World Threat By LAURA MYERS .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Vice President Dan Quayle, making his first major foreign policy speech as a potential presidential candidate in 2000, suggested the Bush administration may have been too easy on China. Saying it was time to ``speak some truths,'' Quayle said former President Bush and he believed encouraging trade ``with a minimum of sanctions and sanctimony'' would move China toward allowing more freedoms for its people while improving U.S.-China ties. But the strategy didn't work and things have worsened under an even friendlier Clinton administration, Quayle said, according to a draft copy of a speech he was delivering today in Los Angeles to the World Affairs Council. The Associated Press obtained an advance copy. ``I think it was a worthy objective, but upon reflection it is clear to me that the Chinese took advantage of that opportunity,'' Quayle said. Quayle said the Bush administration was ``firm when we had to be,'' however, imposing stiff economic sanctions against China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators by Chinese military troops. Some sanctions remain in effect. The Bush administration also used an annual international human rights convention in Geneva to condemn China -- something President Clinton refused to do last year for the first time since Tiananmen, Quayle said in a broad attack of the administration's China policy. Quayle criticized Clinton for removing the link between human rights and U.S. trade policy in 1994, saying the administration went further than Bush in promoting trade. Still, Bush granted China most-favored nation status to China every year, as has Clinton, allowing normal trade. ``President Clinton has consistently supported granting China most-favored nation status, no matter how egregious the human rights abuses documented by his own State Department,'' Quayle charged. Quayle also slammed Vice President Al Gore, the likely 2000 Democratic candidate, for blaming past Republican administrations for lax security at federal weapons labs that may have allowed China to steal nuclear secrets. ``How dare Al Gore blame Presidents Reagan and Bush for negligence that clearly happened on his and President Clinton's watch,'' Quayle said. The FBI and CIA since 1995 have been investigating possible espionage at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in the 1980s that may have helped modernize Chinese nuclear warheads. The Clinton administration has been accused of dragging its feet in responding to the allegations as U.S. officials just this week announced tighter lab security. Clinton on Thursday ordered an analysis of the security threat. Quayle, who has visited China three times since leaving office and has met Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, said he doesn't perceive China as a U.S. enemy and he believes that working with Beijing will promote development of a ``free and prosperous China.'' But he said the fall of the Soviet Union and the growing U.S. military technological advantage over other countries, among other events, have caused China to see the United States as a potential enemy. ``We need to recognize the emergence of a new China,'' Quayle said. ``China is much different than it was 10 or even five years ago. The new China is increasingly assertive and aggressive.'' Quayle said the Clinton administration should move cautiously on making a deal with China to join the World Trade Organization, which would require Beijing to lower more tariffs on goods. Meanwhile, he said Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, is ready to join the WTO now, although the Clinton administration doesn't want to anger by Beijing by making a deal with Taipei first.
