US and Chinese officials are ironing out a deal to secure American asylum for a blind Chinese legal activist who fled house arrest, with an agreement likely before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives this week, a US rights campaigner said Monday. Bob Fu of the Texas-based rights group ChinaAid said that China and the US want to reach agreement on the fate of Chen Guangcheng before the annual high-level talks with Clinton and other US officials begin in Beijing on Thursday. “The Chinese top leaders are deliberating a decision to be made very soon, maybe in the next 24 to 48 hours,” Fu said, citing a source close to the US and Chinese governments. Both sides are “eager to solve this issue,” said Fu, a former teacher at a Communist Party academy in Beijing whose advocacy group focuses on the rights of Christians in China and who maintains a network of contacts in the country. “It really depends on China's willingness to facilitate Chen's exit,” Fu said. Chen, a well-known dissident who angered authorities in rural China by exposing forced abortions, made a surprise escape from house arrest a week ago into what activists say is the protection of US diplomats in Beijing, posing a delicate diplomatic crisis for both governments. The US Embassy declined comment Monday either on Chen's situation or talks involving Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. Both want the annual talks, known as the strategic and economic dialogue, to provide ballast to a relationship that is often rocky and to provide ways of working out disputes on trade, Taiwan, Syria, Iran and North Korea. In a video made after Chen escaped from his village and released last Friday, the activist made no mention of wanting to go abroad. Instead he beseeched Premier Wen Jiabao to investigate the beatings, harassment and other mistreatment he, his wife and daughter suffered at the hands of local officials during 20 months of house arrest. If Chen were willing to leave China, Washington could ill afford to turn him away.
