Tensions between Peking and Taiwan have risen sharply since July, with China warning Taiwan not to move towards independence.The United States has sent envoys to both sides to try to calm the feud.The Pope wanted his Asia tour to include Hong Kong, and the Vatican approached Peking via the Chinese embassy in Rome. The Vatican’s diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which Peking has viewed as a renegade province since winning a civil war in 1949, were clearly at the top of the list of relevant issues.This was China’s latest example of flexing its muscles on foreign and defence issues concerning Hong Kong, and further defining the limits to the territory’s autonomy since British rule ended in July 1997. Hong Kong Bishop Joseph Zen said yesterday that China “says the Vatican has ties with Taiwan and no ties with us. Therefore, such a visit is not convenient.”
Hong Kong’s government, caught between its masters in Peking and the emotions of some 250,000 Chinese Catholics in the former British colony, said the visit would have to wait.”It would only be appropriate to discuss the proposed visit after the Central People’s Government (in Peking) and the Vatican have resolved the relevant issues,” a government spokesman said. CHINA HAS barred Pope John Paul II from visiting Hong Kong during his Asian tour later this year because of the Vatican’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Her view was that money would be better spent in helping foreigners to navigate the prodigious amounts of official information already available on government websites and in encouraging officials to give more interviews “You have to let reporters have the facts.”. “What are you going to do? Get everyone together at 9am every day to decide the message for that day?’ said one critic outside the administration. This is a new post, for which the current director of the USIA, Evelyn Lieberman has been nominated.Details of the new department’s function were finalised when the Kosovo conflict was at its height and the misgivings abroad about US policies at the time, as well as the mixed signals that were sent by different branches of the US administration – the State Department, the Pentagon and the top brass – appear to have given the reorganisation a new impetus.Any tighter control of official US statements, however, is regarded in some quarters as potentially risky. The change was part of the continual bargaining between the administration and Republican-controlled Congress and eased the way, among other things, for congressional approval of Nato expansion.
With the formal establishment of the new department – the International Public Information group (IPI) – now only six weeks away, however, and more details of the new arrangements becoming available, it appears the change in status will be accompanied by a change in substance.IPI will be smaller and less structured than the USIA and its status as an arm of US diplomacy will be spelt out with the appointment of an undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

The decision to abolish the USIA as a government agency in its own right and wrap it into the State Department was taken almost a year ago amid strong opposition from staff and warnings about new curbs on the free circulation of information. While the change is partly organisational – the new group is the direct successor of the United States Information Agency (USIA) – it is said also to reflect concern in the administration about the growth of anti-American sentiment abroad. THE UNITED States is to tighten its control of the official information it disseminates abroad with the creation of a new public information group under the auspices of the State Department. Chinese sales of conventional weapons to developing nations fell to about $500m from $1.6bn in 1997.Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia remained the biggest clients.. Germany ranked second, with $5.5bn in new sales, and France third, with $3bn Russia sold only $1.7bn. “The limited resources of most developing nations to expend on weapons, and the need of many selling nations to secure cash for their weapons, continues to place constraints on significant expansion of the arms trade.”America exported $7.12bn in arms last year, up from $5.7bn the year before but well below earlier levels. But most countries saw declining sales as developing countries – especially in Asia and the Middle East – hit budget problems and weapons exports fell to their lowest levels for almost a decade.
“Competition for available arms sales continues to intensify among major weapons suppliers,” the report says.