WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (AFP) - President Bill Clinton on Wednesday turned up the pressure on Congress to move quickly with a vote to accord China normal trade ties, describing the measure as "a huge national security issue."
Clinton's comments at a press conference echoed congressional testimony earlier in the day from US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, who told the House Ways and Means Committee that failing to grant Beijing "normal trading relations" (NTR) on a permanent basis would be "quite devastating to US relations with China."
But in a foretaste of the battle that lies ahead for the administration, several lawmakers denounced the move to give normal trade privileges to China on grounds it would be seen in Beijing as a green light to continue suppressing human rights and abusing workers.
Clinton has vowed a major effort to secure permanent NTR for China as part of a deal it reached last year with Beijing on Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization.
"This is not a political issue for me," the president said. "This is a huge national security issue ..."
"So I'm going to push as hard as I can, I want to get the earliest possible vote I can and I can't tell you how important I think it is."
Washington and Beijing last November reached an accord under which China agreed to sweeping tariff cuts and other measures to make its huge domestic market more accessible to foreign goods.
In return, the United States agreed to back China's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
But Beijing conditioned its acceptance on winning permanent normal trading status, which would accord it the commercial privileges enjoyed by other countries with the same designation.
At present, Congress votes -- usually in June -- on NTR for China each year, a procedure that US exporters say hampers their ability to do business in China.
Only a handful of countries, notably Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba and Afghanistan, do not enjoy normal trade ties with the United States.
Opponents of permanent NTR maintain that without yearly scrutiny, Beijing will no longer be under any pressure to respect human rights and basic labor standards.
But the administration fears that if denied permanent NTR, China will simply transfer the market-opening offers it made to the United States to Washington's competitors, notably the European Union, giving their companies a clear advantage over US firms.
Both Barshefsky, and later Clinton, argued that market-opening measures outlined in the bilateral agreement would provide a dramatic boost to US exports to China and thus reduce Washington's gaping trade deficit with Beijing, which last year came to nearly 70 billion dollars.
At the same time, they said, by opening its economy and joining the WTO China will become more deeply exposed to outside influences, making it less able to resist democratic reforms.
"I believe this agreement will change China from within more than all the other economic openings of the last 20 years combined," Clinton said.
But that argument was vigorously -- and at times emotionally -- challenged by Republican Christopher Smith, who told the Ways and Means Committee that an annual review of China's trading status "is critically important leverage that we must not surrender."
"The Beijing dictators change their conduct when they know they are being watched by people whose decisions may affect their wallets," he said.
Nancy Pelosi, a Representative from Clinton's Democratic Party, argued that China had already begun to back away from commitments it made in last November's bilateral agreement, notably concerning trade in wheat.
While the accord calls for increased quotas for US wheat exports, she said, a senior Chinese trade negotiator was quoted last month as saying Beijing had "only conceded a theoretical opportunity for the export of grain."
"In light of China's pattern of violation of trade agreements and the rapidly increasing trade deficit, I believe the US Congress should not give up its authority to review annually China's trade record at this time.":
