Albright Criticizes China’s Plan to Quickly Deploy 4,000 Soldiers

WASHINGTON —  On the eve of China’s reclaiming of Hong Kong, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Sunday criticized Beijing’s decision to deploy 4,000 troops immediately upon regaining control of the British colony.

“I must say that, speaking personally, that that kind of arrival of those kind of numbers is not a good beginning,” Albright said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” speaking from Hong Kong.

Albright acknowledged that the deployment is allowed under terms of Britain’s agreement to surrender Hong Kong to China but said, “What is important is not what is permitted--but the message that it sends.”

Albright said the Chinese should preserve the freedoms that have emerged during the last few years of British rule in Hong Kong. But she didn’t indicate what action, if any, the United States might take if China does otherwise.

“We are going to be watching very carefully to make sure that that agreement that was signed between the British and the Chinese does preserve the way of life, the civil liberties, the political liberties of the people of Hong Kong,” Albright said on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.”

On Sunday, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who negotiated the agreement providing for China’s takeover of Hong Kong, drew a parallel between the military showing that the Chinese are expected to make in Hong Kong with the deadly suppression of activists in and near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

“The real trouble is they’re going to come in in high publicity with armored personnel carriers,” Thatcher said on “Late Edition” on CNN. “Now that’s just totally insensitive, for it was armored personnel carriers that were present at the terrible events of Tiananmen Square.”