Reuter  

BEIJING-Chinese President Jiang Zemin used Monday’s visit by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to rebuke Washington for interfering in internal Chinese affairs concerning Taiwan and Tibet.  

But Jiang, who is also Communist Party leader, also praised unspecified “important and positive progress” in bilateral ties over the past year, the Xinhua news agency said.  

Kissinger is visiting China as an adviser to the U.S. telecommunications company GTE Corporation.  

Xinhua gave no explicit indication that Jiang and Kissinger touched on the potentially explosive bilateral row over piracy of U.S. copyrights and other intellectual property in China.  

But Jiang’s stress on equality as a prerequisite for ties suggested that the topic was raised, observers said. Beijing has accused Washington of treating it as an unequal partner in anti-piracy talks.  

Negotiators are expected to tackle the problem on Wednesday in emergency talks, seeking to avert billions of dollars in punitive U.S. sanctions and Chinese countermeasures.  

Jiang said the United States and China had experienced “ups and downs” in recent years “with one wave rising to succeed the other and troubles constantly appearing,” Xinhua reported.  

He attributed the setbacks to the United States’ “violation of enshrined in the principles” three joint communiques under which diplomatic ties were restored in 1979, the report said.  

Without citing specific cases, Xinhua said, Jiang complained to Kissinger about persistent U.S. interference in internal Chinese affairs concerning Taiwan and Tibet.  

“Some Americans have always tried to tamper with matters related to China’s sovereignty, most notably on the issues of Taiwan and Tibet,” Xinhua quoted Jiang as saying.