Baker Sees Gains From China Visit : Diplomacy: Beijing conditionally accepts agreement that limits missile exports. The leadership gives the U.S. some details on about 800 political prisoners.

BEIJING —  Secretary of State James A. Baker III ended two tense days of talks with top Chinese leaders Sunday by announcing that he has obtained some new concessions but no far-reaching breakthroughs on China’s arms export and human rights policies.

Baker delayed his scheduled departure from Beijing while American and Chinese officials engaged in five hours of bargaining at the Diaoyutai State Guest House to work out whatever agreements they could.

At a press conference before leaving here, Baker told reporters that China made a series of promises to the United States. In particular, he said:

* China pledged for the first time to observe the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement that limits exports of ballistic missiles. But Beijing’s leaders said they will do this only if the United States lifts some sanctions it imposed last spring on the sale to China of high-speed computers and satellite parts.

* The Beijing leadership gave the United States some details concerning each of the individuals on a list of about 800 political prisoners inside China. But China balked at American requests to free at least some of these prisoners or to allow an organization such as the Red Cross to visit them in jail.

* China agreed to grant exit visas for dissidents who want to leave the country, as long as there are no criminal charges pending against them.

* Beijing reiterated earlier promises to approve the non-proliferation treaty on nuclear weapons before the end of this year, adding a new commitment to move ahead and join this international accord within another three months. China had first announced its willingness to sign the treaty last summer during former Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s visit to Beijing.

Baker acknowledged a degree of disappointment from the visit. He said he had made “some gains in the area of human rights” but said it was “not as much as we had hoped.”

“I did not come here expecting a dramatic breakthrough,” the secretary of state told reporters. “ . . . The gulf is too wide.”

Nevertheless, Bush Administration officials--whose policy of seeking reconciliation with the Chinese leadership has been criticized in Congress and by Democratic Party leaders--sought to portray Baker’s visit in a positive light.

“We got more than anybody’s ever gotten from the Chinese (on human rights),” said a senior State Department official traveling aboard Baker’s plane as he returned from Beijing to Washington. And the official said that China’s conditional pledge to abide by the rules limiting the export of missile technology was “very important.”

China’s reaction to the Baker visit was a positive one, according to a Foreign Ministry spokesman quoted by the official New China News Agency.

“Generally speaking, this visit was a successful one,” the Chinese spokesman said, according to the news agency. “It was helpful to the restoration and development of Sino-U.S. relations. Important progress was made on some issues, and mutual understanding was enhanced on some issues on which there were major differences.”

Baker’s visit ended a ban on high-level official visits to China that the Bush Administration imposed after the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations at Beijing’s Tian An Men Square in June, 1989.

Critics had charged that the trip would give new recognition and legitimacy to the regime that killed hundreds--perhaps thousands--of people during that crackdown. But Baker defended his decision to visit Beijing. “Unless we were to keep U.S.-China relations in a deep freeze forever, we had to start talking,” he said.

The visit was aimed at reversing a continuing deterioration in relations between China and the United States. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft had tried without success to accomplish that end in a secretly-arranged trip to Beijing in December, 1989.

Baker acknowledged Sunday that he had carried a letter to China from President Bush, and a senior State Department official later confirmed that this letter was addressed to China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

Deng, now 87, is officially retired and has not been seen in public since early this year. But one State Department official said that “we think that Deng is still active in some measure” and that Deng is believed to have met recently with North Korean President Kim Il Sung. Baker did not see Deng during his visit.

The secretary of state would not say what Bush had told Deng. But according to one source, the President praised him as a far-sighted leader, told him that China’s relationship with the United States is at risk and urged him to use his influence to bring about some changes in China’s policies on issues such as arms exports and human rights.

The Missile Technology Control Regime was established in 1987 to restrict the proliferation of ballistic missiles and the technology needed to produce them. Eighteen nations have now joined the control pact, and the Soviet Union has also agreed to abide by the rules developed by these nations.

U.S. officials have been upset about Chinese missile sales ever since Beijing sold its Silkworm anti-ship missiles to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.

In 1988, China secretly shipped intermediate-range missiles to Saudi Arabia, and since then China has signed deals to sell short-range M-11 missiles to Pakistan and M-9 missiles, which have a range of more than 300 miles, to Syria. China’s M class of missiles, which operate with solid fuel, are more mobile, advanced and accurate than the Soviet-designed Scud missiles used by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

For the last three years, officials of both the Reagan and Bush administrations have been trying to persuade China not to deliver any of these new missiles to the Middle East.

Frank Carlucci, former presidential assistant on national security, got some vague promises on a trip to Beijing in 1988 that China would curb its missile sales, and Scowcroft got some further assurances during his 1989 trip.

But last summer, some components of China’s newly-developed M-11 missile showed up in Pakistan. The Bush Administration, following the requirements of a law passed by Congress, retaliated by suspending sales to China of satellite parts and high-speed computers. Baker said Sunday that Chinese officials pledged to abide by the rules of the missile technology agreement and also agreed that these rules apply to both the M-9 and M-11 missiles. That is considered an important concession, because until now Chinese officials have claimed that the M-11 missile has a range too short to be covered by the international rules.

But the secretary of state acknowledged that China is willing to do this only if the United States lifts the sanctions imposed last June. “This is a matter that we will be examining further in Washington,” Baker said.

The negotiations were even tougher concerning China’s human rights policies.

Last spring, senior State Department officials handed China a list of 800 people believed to be in jails or labor camps because of their political or religious beliefs.

In the months before Baker’s trip, Chinese officials refused to answer questions about individuals on the list or even to talk about the list except in general, abstract terms. And a senior State Department official acknowledged Sunday that even during Baker’s visit, Chinese leaders simply “refused to engage” in discussions on human rights until Sunday, the final day.

“We talked . . . and they would never come back (with a reply),” one U.S. official said.

Chinese leaders have long argued that their definition of human rights is different from that in the West and that, in any event, human rights is a domestic issue not subject to international negotiation.

On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen finally agreed that China would respond to the American list of 800 people. Baker said that China responded by specifying which of the individuals have been convicted of crimes, which ones are awaiting trial, which ones have been released from confinement and which names cannot be identified.

U.S. officials said the key negotiating sessions were held on Saturday with Premier Li Peng and on Sunday for about five hours with Qian and other Foreign Ministry officials.

They said that Sunday’s session produced an especially intense round of bargaining. “We worked right up until the last minute,” one senior U.S. official said.

At one point, Baker and a covey of top State Department officials could be seen huddled on the steps outside the conference room, debating with one another what to do. At Baker’s press conference, the secretary of state read to reporters the wording of agreements, some of which had been written out in hand and patched together in the final hours.

Qian and his aides engaged in some horse-trading, occasionally linking together issues that have no direct connection to one another.

For example, a senior State Department official said, China offered to make its concessions on missile technology if the United States would pledge to support China’s admission to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an accord that sets the rules for international trade.

Baker eventually agreed to reaffirm in public that the United States supports China’s eventual admission to GATT and suggested that China might be admitted along with Taiwan. That reassurance is important to Beijing, because the Bush Administration had implied last summer that it might be ready to support Taiwan’s entry to GATT now while holding off on the admission of China.

One senior U.S. official said Baker’s trip followed several months of diplomacy beginning with a visit to Beijing last July by Assistant Secretary of State Richard H. Solomon. At that time, Chinese leaders seemed to be hoping for closer military links with the Soviet Union and showed no sign of willingness to make any concessions to the United States.

After the failed coup by hard-line Soviet leaders in Moscow, “they (Chinese leaders) probably had a different sense of where the world was headed,” the U.S. official said.

Times staff writer David Holley contributed to this report.