WASHINGTON — President Bush sharply confronted China’s President Hu Jintao on Wednesday about Beijing’s harsh crackdown in Tibet, joining an international chorus of alarm months before the U.S. and the rest of the world parade to China for the Olympics.
In a telephone call with Hu, Bush “pushed very hard” about violence in Tibet, restraint and a need for China to consult with representatives of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, the White House said.
It marked a rare, direct protest from one president to another. As if to underscore how pointed Bush was, the White House said he used the call to “speak very clearly and frankly.”
At the same time, Bush was forced to address an embarrassing blunder by the United States — the shipment of nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan and the failure to discover the error for more than 18 months.
“It came up very briefly,” National Security Adviser Ste phen Hadley told reporters. “Basically, the president indicated that a mistake had been made.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had previously registered concern about China’s actions in Tibet, but Bush’s call raised the protest to the highest level of the government. On the world stage, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has suggested a boycott of the Olympics opening ceremony.
The United States and Britain have ruled out a boycott.
