Rights may take second place on Clinton China visit

By Arshad Mohammed

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States will press China on human rights but this will not keep them from working together on the financial crisis, climate change and North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

Clinton, who openly criticized China's human rights record in a 1995 speech in Beijing, told reporters there is a certain predictability to U.S.-Chinese disagreements on political freedoms, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the status of Tibet.

The United States has long accused China of human rights abuses, has pressed Beijing to grant greater autonomy to Tibet and has sold arms to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province.

Making her first trip abroad as secretary of state, Clinton said three of her top priorities in Beijing will be addressing the global economic crisis, climate change and security challenges such as the North Korean nuclear weapons programme.

"Now, that doesn't mean that questions of Taiwan, Tibet, human rights, the whole range of challenges that we often engage on with the Chinese, are not part of the agenda," Clinton told reporters in Seoul before flying to Beijing. "But we pretty much know what they are going to say.

"We have to continue to press them but our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises," she added. "We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those."

Making her final stop on a week-long tour of Asia that earlier took her to Tokyo, Jakarta and Seoul, Clinton said she hoped to sound out the Chinese leadership on what more it may do to push North Korea to abandon its nuclear programmes.

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