U.S. Sends Officials to China to Discuss WTO

President Clinton sent U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling, who chairs the influential White House National Economic Council, to China to try to come to an agreement for China to join the World Trade Organization, the White House said. The trip appears to be a last-ditch effort to reach an accord by the end of the month, when ministers from the 134 WTO member nations will gather in Seattle for a new round of world trade talks. Clinton would not rate the chances of the U.S. and China reaching an accord before the Seattle talks. U.S.-China negotiations have been on-again-off-again and were suspended entirely when NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, and did not resume until September, when Clinton met Chinese President Jiang Zemin in New Zealand to mend fences.