HILLARY CLINTON, IN CHINA, DETAILS ABUSE OF WOMEN

[Evergreen Emerald]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDF133DF935A3575AC0A963958260

Speaking more forcefully on human rights than any American dignitary has on Chinese soil, Hillary Rodham Clinton catalogued a devastating litany of abuse that has afflicted women around the world today and criticized China for seeking to limit free and open discussion of women's issues here.

"It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights," Mrs. Clinton told the Fourth World Conference on Women assembled here.

While her comments concerned abuses that have taken place around the world -- the burning of brides occurs in India for example, and rape has most recently been a tactic of war in Bosnia -- her words took on a special resonance here in China, where the Administration has muted its public criticism of human rights abuses and is struggling to patch up frayed political relations.
China's reaction was uncertain tonight. Beijing's relations with Washington have been strained by a summer of tumult over the visit to the United States in June by the president of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui.

As Mrs. Clinton recited her litany from the podium, many delegates applauded, some cheered and others pounded the tables.