China Premier's Visit Still On WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite China's call for an immediate halt to NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia, a top Chinese embassy official says Premier Zhu Rongji will go ahead next week with a planned White House visit. In the face of growing U.S.-Chinese tensions over human rights, alleged Chinese nuclear spying and U.S. missile defense initiatives, Zhu is still hoping to close a deal with the Clinton administration to allow Beijing to join the World Trade Organization as well, Liu Xiaoming said Thursday. ``I know that the climate and atmosphere right now is not that good, but I think it is all the more important, all the more necessary for the leadership to meet,'' said Liu, deputy chief of mission at the embassy. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov canceled a visit to the White House at the last minute last week as NATO airstrikes got under way March 24. Primakov visited Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic this week in an attempt to negotiate a halt to NATO's air campaign. Liu said Zhu, who has acknowledged this might be a difficult visit, is ready to face the good and the bad of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Liu said the Chinese are used to ``storms'' between Washington and Beijing. The premier will make clear to Clinton that China strongly opposes U.S. plans to condemn Beijing's human rights record at the annual U.N. Human Rights Commission meetings under way in Geneva, Liu said. The U.S. resolution, which hasn't been introduced yet, will protest recent long prison sentences for members of a banned democracy party. On trade, Liu said it was uncertain whether U.S. and Chinese trade officials, who have been negotiating furiously during the past few weeks in Washington and Beijing, will agree on terms for China to join the WTO after 13 years of trying. Gaps still remain, he acknowledged, in how much China is willing to lower trade barriers and tariffs on imported goods. Zhu's nine-day U.S. tour, which will take him to five cities outside Washington, is his first as prime minister. He will see President Clinton at the White House on April 8. Zhu will arrive in Los Angeles April 6 before heading to Washington. He also will visit Denver, Chicago, New York and Boston and may observe financial markets, possibly the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.
