SEATTLE -- U.S. Ambassador to China James Lilley, who yelled 'Go back to China!' and 'You're a bunch of cowards!' at demonstrators protesting human rights abuses in China and Tibet, says he regrets the outburst.
Lilley angrily confronted a small band of activists at Seattle's Union Station Saturday moments before addressing the closing session of the U.S.-China Trade Exposition.
'It was a mistake in the first place,' Lilley said before leaving Seattle for Tokyo Sunday. 'I shouldn't have done it.'
All last week the trade expo was the target of human rights demonstrations, culminating Saturday when 200 protesters gathered outside of the Seattle International Trade Center for 90 minutes, then went to the former train station to meet Lilley.
While most of the protesters flocked to the station's main entrance, a few went to the rear where Lilley and Zhu Quizhen, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., arrived by car.
Zhu walked directly inside and ignored the protesters, who were shouting 'China -- Human Rights!' 'Tibet for Tibetans!' and 'Remember Tiananmen Square!'
But Lilley suddenly wheeled toward the group and shouted, 'Were you at Tiananmen Square? I was there!'
'So what?' shot back one of the demonstrators.
The ambassador then yelled at a Tibetan woman, saying 'What are you doing about it? I'm doing something about it!'
Asked what he was doing, Lilley responded, 'I'm fighting,' and began stalking toward the protesters, prompting a police officer to intervene and escort the envoy inside.
'You're a bunch of cowards!' Lilley yelled as he looked back at the 35-year-old Tibetan woman he mistook for a Chinese. 'Go back to China and serve China!'
The outburst left Jim Berman, 32, a Seattle employee of the U.S. Census who is married to a Tibetan, 'speechless and flabbergasted.'
'It was quite a shock,' said the visiting Tibetan, a restaurant owner from Katmandu, Nepal, who requested anonymity. 'I wasn't sure even if he was really the ambassador because that's no way for an ambassador to act.'
Rep. John Miller, R-Wash., Sunday demanded an apology from the 62- year-old envoy and threatened to take the matter up with President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker.
'Lilley should understand the importance of people seeking human rights and work to move forward, not backward, in the pursuit of that cause,' Miller said.
The call for an apology was repeated Monday by Rinchen Dharlo of New York, the American representative for the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet. Tibet has been occupied by Chinese communists since 1949.
Lilley's remarks 'were an affront to Tibetans who fled Tibet because of Chinese persecution and who now have no other choice but to try to carry on their struggle from outside,' Dharlo said.
William Abnett, a former diplomat who was one of those trying to escort Lilley into the station, said the envoy later acknowledged he 'blew his cool.'
'I've known the guy for years, but I've never seen him go after anyone like (he did Saturday),' Abnett said. 'It was very uncharacteristic. He was like a loose cannon.'
Abnett added, 'For 18 months he has snapped at the Chinese the same way, so the demonstrators aren't alone.'
'Lilley is a dyed-in-the-wool anti-communist, and I think he very much resents being attacked in public as an apologist for the Chinese,' speculated Mike Chinoy, Beijing correspondent for Cable News Network. 'He makes no secret in private discussions of his dislike for the communists, yet at the same time he's been identified with a policy seen by some as too soft on them. It must be very galling.'
In his defense, Lilley noted he was in Beijing at the time of the 1989 crackdown and helped negotiate the release of Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi, who spent more than a year at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing before being allowed to leave China.
Liley added he didn't like being portrayed as a Chinese 'patsy' and wouldn't have lashed out at the protesters had not one of them yelled an obscenity at him, which the protesters denied doing.
'Nobody takes human rights more seriously than I do,' Lilley said. 'I don't have to listen to anybody about human rights.'
The trade expo, originally planned for the fall of 1989 to showcase China's growing economy, was all but canceled in the wake of the bloody repressions in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China in June 1989. Trade between the two nations dropped off drastically when many Americans refused to deal with the government responsible for the massacre.
The Chinese government tried to revive the conference for this past summer -- about the time of the massacre's anniversary -- but was met with protest and cold shoulders.
Finally held last week, the exposition, billed as the largest trade conference ever between the two nations, was largely a bust. Only a handful of American corporations, including Dow Corning Corp., Occidental Petroleum and Microsoft, agreed to endorse it and attendence was far less than anticipated.
