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Kofi Annan Prevents the UN From Saying a Word About Tibet
From the Harvard Asia Quarterly (Summer 2000), an article titled "An Uncertain Ally: The US Government and Tibet" by John Kenneth Knaus, the author of Orphans of the Cold War, a history of the US government's role in supporting the Tibetan resistance. He is currently an associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. .... Doctor Henry Kissinger ... began crafting a policy course on China that would eventually foreclose any role for the Tibetans. His strategy culminated in President Nixon's dramatic and historic trip to China in February 1972 to meet with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai. American policy had come full circle since the days when encouraging Tibetan resistance was part of an overall of the effort to do "anything we could to get in the way of the Chinese Communists." After their journey to Beijing Dr. Kissinger told his chief that "We are now in the extraordinary situation that, with the exception of the United Kingdom, the People's Republic of China might well be closest to us in its global perceptions."These global perceptions did not include the Tibetans. The participants in President Nixon's talks with Mao and Zhou and Dr. Kissinger's follow-up conversations with the Chinese leaders agree that the subject of Tibet or the support that the US was providing to the resistance did not come up in these discussions. By this time the CIA was in the process of phasing out its support for the guerrilla groups that it had maintained in the Mustang peninsula of Nepal since 1960. .... It was Gerald Ford who made the final disavowal of support to the Tibetans. When Ford made his prescribed visit to Beijing in December 1975 Deng Xiaoping, after laying down his dictum that "we do not believe in peaceful transition" in regard to Taiwan, also took a shot at the US relationship with the Tibetans. He raised the "small issue" of the Dalai Lama's "small office" in New York. Although Deng belittled it as a matter like "chicken feathers and onion skin," Ford solemnly reaffirmed that "we oppose and do not support any governmental action as far as Tibet is concerned." .... The State Department has attempted to reclaim its prerogative to define the US position on the legal status of Tibet, inserting into the 1994 Congressionally mandated annual report on Relations of the United States with Tibet the declaration that "since at least 1966, US policy has explicitly recognized the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the People's Republic of China." .... Similarly the President [Clinton], who had come into office after charging his predecessor of "coddling tyrants," among them "the butchers of Beijing," responded to Congressional pressure and made an improvement in Beijing's relationship with Tibet a condition for renewal of its most favored nation status. This condition became a casualty of the pressure for trade the next year. .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-09-29 |
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