By Vernon Loeb and Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 27, 1999; Page A07

The Clinton administration announced yesterday it will formally criticize China's human rights record before the United Nations Human Rights Commission for measures against political activists that have created what officials called a "sharply" deteriorated rights situation over the last year.

The protest will come in the form of an official U.S. resolution offered during the commission's annual meeting in Geneva, which began Monday. Debate on the measure, which will be circulated in draft form next week, is set to begin March 31, with a final vote scheduled for April 23, officials said.

U.S. officials offered similar resolutions sharply criticizing China's human rights from 1991 to 1997, before pulling back last year in the hope Beijing would show greater tolerance toward dissidents. All seven previous attempts to rebuke China's human rights practices failed to win adoption.

The U.S. position each year has been viewed as a measure of Washington's attitude toward the Chinese government. This year, the atmosphere toward China here has soured markedly, with accusations of Chinese espionage in U.S. nuclear laboratories and charges from Republicans in Congress that the Clinton administration was lax in enforcing security rules.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said that a decision to resume the resolutions came in light of China's crackdown on political opposition over the past year, in which dozens of activists have been jailed and three leaders of the China Democracy Party were handed harsh sentences at secret trials.

"These developments are a source of deep concern to the United States," Rubin told reporters.

His announcement came on the same day that the administration officially announced Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji will visit the United States from April 6-14. The trip has been in the planning stages for months. But one senior administration official said a scheduling mistake led to both announcements coming on the same day.

Yu Shuning, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, immediately denounced the administration's announcement. "This is what we call seeking confrontation, and seeking confrontation will lead to nowhere," Yu said. "We think the differences between the two countries on human rights should be dealt with through dialogue on the basis of equality and mutual respect, not through seeking confrontation."

Elsewhere in Washington, reaction was generally favorable from both critics and supporters of the Clinton administration's China policy. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), a leading critic who believes the administration has been far too solicitous of China, called the decision "highly appropriate in light of the State Department's recent assessment of worsening conditions in the People's Republic of China."

But Cox added: "The true test will be whether the administration spends any effort to convince our allies to vote for the resolution."

Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, made a similar point. "We welcome the U.S. decision to hold China accountable for its international human rights obligations," he said. "But this will be too little, too late unless the U.S. puts some real diplomatic clout behind it."

Jendrzejczyk said the administration "faces an uphill battle" and called on Clinton, Vice President Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to pressure other governments at the highest levels to support the resolution.