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China activist

urges president to

ease on dissent

BEIJING: A top Chinese dissident accused police on Tuesday of harassment in the 10 months since he was released from jail and urged paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and President Jiang Zemin to talk to pro-democracy activists.

"I want dialogue with the authorities because after all they will not be able to eliminate us," Liu Gang, 34, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Liu, jailed for six years for his role as a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations centred in Tiananmen Square, said he had defied a ban on travel and fled his hometown of Lingyuan, 700 km (420 miles) northeast of Beijing, to escape constant police harassment since his release last June.

The pro-democracy activist said he had written on April 15 to Deng and President and Communist Party chief Jiang as well as to the Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on April 16 to complain about his treatment.

His letters were timed to coincide with continuing debate at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva on possible censure of China for its human rights record, and the run-up to the seventh anniversary of the brutal military crackdown on student demonstrators on June 4, 1989.

Liu's letter to Deng and Jiang, titled "Appeal for dialogue, and for realisation of complete political reconciliation", called for talks.

In his letter to the police, Liu listed seven types of harassment, accusing police in Lingyuan of taking his property and financial assets and of illegally raiding his home on an almost daily basis.-Reuter