TOKYO DESK - U.S. relations with its allies in the Pacific are frayed this week as president William Jefferson Clinton seemed to be moving closer to a full embrace of the communist Chinese. Meanwhile, U.S. allies in the Pacific reacted with deep sorrow and inner contempt for Clinton's moral collapse and abandonment of Taiwan as a condition for Clinton's trade deals with the communist regime in Beijing.
The Clinton administration sent shock waves throughout the Pacific Rim this week when the president placed the wishes of communist leaders in Beijing ahead of established commitments with Tokyo who, at U.S. insistence, has formally recognized the Nationalist government of Taiwan as
the legitimate government of China.
Parris H. Chang, a Taiwan legislator told reporters '...It's wrong, morally and politically, for Clinton to collude with the communist dictatorship to restrict the future of a democratic country...Beijing is
trying to manipulate the United States to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.
That Clinton has fallen into that kind of trap is unfortunate. . . . U.S.
policy toward Taiwan is on a slippery slope. More and more, the United
States is making concessions to China without any return.'
Taiwanese officials are baffled and indignant over Clinton's
shifting foreign policy stance on sacrificing Taiwanese sovereignty to communist China while in Beijing this week.
Making relations even more strained this week, as Clinton's Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin openly criticized Japan's economic policies for the benefit of communist Chinese audiences. The Japanese government has been
restrained.
The government of India was not so forgiving as its anger flared at what newspapers in Delhi call Clinton's 'hypocrisy' in condemning recent nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan and promising to work together to discourage a nuclear arms race in South Asia.
Clinton has apparently ignored evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agents linking China to technology transfers to Pakistan missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to India that helped Pakistan conduct nuclear tests last month.
Here, in Japan, the Nikkei newspaper played a story today depicting Japan, as wedged between the United States and China in which the United States is engaging in Japan-passing and China is applying pressure.
Adding insult to injury, president Clinton snubbed the Japanse people by not planning stop-overs of Air-Force 1 in Japan on neither his trip to communist China nor on his return to the White House.
