While they disagreed on the weight China's human rights record should have for US leaders planning policy toward Beijing, all four former secretaries of state agreed that it is important to avoid demonizing China in the wake of the spy plane scandal and other disputes.

``I am uneasy about the tendency to treat China as our next enemy and slide it into the spot vacated by the USSR,'' Kissinger said.

While stressing that the Bush administration is only three months old, Warren Christopher said he sees a ``pattern of retreat and retrenchment'' in its approach to the US role around the world. He cited the Middle East, North Korea, the Balkans and Russia's nuclear arsenal as areas of vital US interest where Bush shows signs of pulling out.

``I do think the US has to be aggressively engaged on the world scene to protect our interests,'' Christopher, Clinton's first secretary of state, said at a discussion Tuesday night with Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on Foreign Policy.

Shultz, secretary of state from 1982 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan, and Kissinger, who served under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, suggested that the Bush administration is not disengaging but is wisely reassessing whether the policies in place under Clinton are in the country's best interests.

``The Bush administration is attempting to emphasize the importance of analyzing the American national interest,'' said Kissinger. ``If a new administration wants to establish the fact that it has a new approach, it must be permitted a hiatus in which it makes this point.''

Albright, the top American diplomat during Clinton's second term, criticized the Bush administration for scrapping the US dialogue with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program and for rejecting international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 pact that aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming.

``They are anti-international treaties,'' Albright said of the Bush administration. She cautioned against ``unilateral withdrawal'' at a time of increasing global interaction.

In the Mideast, Christopher criticized the Bush administration's suggestion that it may pull peacekeeping troops from the border between Israel and Egypt and the fact that Bush has not appointed a special coordinator charged with maintaining close contact with the sides in the conflict, as Dennis Ross did under Clinton.

``There are two roles for the Americans in the Middle East: One is to stop the fighting and the other is to seek peace,'' said Christopher. ``I understand this may not be a propitious time to seek peace, but it certainly is time to stop the fighting and I don't think it can be done on the telephone.''

Shultz argued that the Bush administration ``has engaged and had quite a lot of contact'' with leaders in the Mideast. But he said that ``what they have inherited is a violent scene,'' adding that ``the first step is to do the things that are necessary to get things under a more stable situation, and then perhaps something more can be done.''

Albright, however, agreed with Christopher on the Mideast, saying that the Bush administration has ``made a mistake by withdrawing from the field at this moment.''

Albright and Kissinger spoke in New York, while Christopher and Shultz joined the discussion through a video linkup from San Francisco.

(China Daily 04/25/2001)