No questions for Bush and Hu

Posted by Mark Silva at 3:25 pm CDT

When President Hu Jintao of China meets with President Bush at the White House on Thursday, don't watch for any press conferences with the two presidents.

When Bush plays host to visiting foreign leaders of major nations or when he visits them, he often joins his counterpart in a brief "press availability," with two questions permitted from each nation's press. But, by "mutual agreement" of Hu and Bush, the two will hold no such press availabilty after their hour-long private meeting, according to a senior Bush administration official.

"This has been standard practice" with the Chinese, this official said today. "They're not as comfortable with press events as we are."

(That's quite a statement, considering that the White House insisted that questions about the visit fielded by a few senior administration officials today remain anonymous.)

More from the press-"comfortable" senior administration officials:

- Don't expect any major new agreements to be announced.

- Do expect Hu and Bush to talk about the agreement that the White House has made to support India's civilian nuclear power-generating program, in exchange for India's agreeemnt to open many of its power plants to supervision of the United Nations' atomic energy agency while preserving secrecy for its military nuclear facilities. Not only must the U.S. Congress approve any such arrangement, but also China, as part of the nuclear suppliers' group, must approve it.

"I think it's logical to assume that this will come up," the senior administration official said today.

- Do expect Bush to express his continuing concern about China's "inflexibility" in pegging the nation's currency to the U.S. dollar instead of allowing the yuan to float in the world currency market - a major factor in the huge trade imbalance between the U.S. and China.

- Do not expect China to set the yuan free.

- Do expect Bush to talk about China's imprisonment of political dissenters, having handed Hu lists of prisoners of concern to the U.Sm in previous meetings. Bush did this at their meeting last year in New York, and they discussed the issue again at a meeting last fall in China. But, rather than pursuing individual cases at this meeting, expect Bush to address the "broader" issue of political freedom.

Another senior administration official today put it this way: "The emphasis is on systemic reform."

- Do expect them to discuss the nuclear ambitions of both Iran and North Korea. The Chinese have come "a long way'' on the question of preventing Iran from having a nucllear weapon, the official said.

- Do not expect Hu and Bush to meet for much more than an hour.

"We do a lot of the work in advance," one official explained. "Then the leaders can kind of telegraph and focus."