China lashes at Bush for meeting rights activist

BEIJING, June 7 (Reuters) China condemned today an announced meeting between US President George Bush and an exiled activist demanding autonomy for Xinjiang, the tense and heavily Muslim region in the nation's far west.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim ethnic Uighur, was once a member of the top advisory body to China's parliament but fell from official grace and was arrested in 1999 on her way to meet US congressmen visiting Xinjiang.

She was jailed for over five years before being sent into exile in the United States, where her championing of Uighur claims has led supporters to dub her the ''mother of the Uighur people''. She was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

In a speech on human rights in Prague on Tuesday, Bush praised Kadeer and criticised the jailing of two of her sons. He said he was to meet Kadeer there.

''The talent of men and women like Rebiya is the greatest resource of their nations, far more valuable than the weapons of their army or their oil under the ground,'' Bush said.

China's response was terse but sharp.

''Rebiya Kadeer is an out-and-out criminal,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference.

''U.S. behaviour is crude meddling in China's internal affairs, and we express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition.'' The harsh response was a reminder that human rights remain a sensitive matter, and tensions could escalate if Bush presses demands for democratic reform in Communist-ruled China.

Beijing keeps a tight grip on Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia and where Uighur activists have been agitating for greater autonomy and a loosening of controls on Muslim worship.

The imprisonment of Kadeer's sons was an ''act of retaliation for her human rights activities'', Bush said.

In April, a Chinese court jailed a son of Kadeer for nine years on secessionist charges. Another son was jailed for seven years for tax evasion last November. Yet another was convicted of tax evasion but spared a jail term. She has 11 children.

REUTERS GL ND1640