No Breakthroughs At U.S.-China Talks

President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to cooperate more closely on trade and nuclear tensions over Iran and North Korea but failed to break new ground Thursday toward resolving a host of differences. Their meeting was marred by a protest.

No breakthroughs had been expected during Hu's first visit to the White House as the president of China. And both he and Mr. Bush acknowledged at a picture-taking session that much work remained to be done and that the two sides would strive for progress in these areas.

A welcoming ceremony for Hu on the South Lawn was interrupted by the screams of a woman critical of the Chinese president.

CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports the woman was a protester with the Falun Gong movement, a group that says it is persecuted in China for its religious beliefs. She yelled at President Bush, "Stop him from killing. Stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong."

The woman was standing on a bleacher for cameras and reporters. It is unclear how she got up there. She screamed for approximately two minutes before Secret Service officers removed her.

She was later identified as Dr. Wang Wenyi, a pathologist based in New York. She received a press credential through a Falun Gong newspaper, a spokesman for the paper said, and had been expected to act as a reporter, not a protester.

The Secret Service charged Wang with disorderly conduct. A Secret Service official tells CBS News the U.S. Attorney is weighing a further charge of "willingly intimidating or disrupting a foreign official."

The Secret Service insists the outburst was not the result of a security breakdown. It says Wang was "properly vetted" by the White House and received a temporary pass good for today only before she passed through a metal detector. A law enforcement source suggests White House press office clearance procedures "will be looked at" following the incident.

Sitting in the Oval Office with Hu before a formal luncheon, Mr. Bush praised China for previous progress in what is perhaps the major irritant in the relationship — Beijing's tightly controlled currency.

The United States views the Chinese yuan as undervalued, and Mr. Bush said, "We would hope there would be more appreciation" in allowing the currency to rise with market forces.

On Iran, China has resisted the approach favored by the United States and Europe — pursuing sanctions if Tehran does not comply with demands that it halt uranium enrichment. There appeared to be no movement on that issue.

Mr. Bush said only that the two sides agreed on the goal of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons or having the capability to produce them. The United States and China are in a position to "work on tactics" to achieve that goal, he said.

"We don't agree on everything but we are able to discuss our disagreements in friendship and cooperation," Mr. Bush told reporters.

Hu, aware of the growing U.S. impatience with America's record $202 billion trade deficit with China, offered general promises to address the yawning gap. But his comments were likely to do little to cool calls in Congress for punitive tariffs on Chinese products.

"We have taken measures and will continue to take steps to resolve the issue," he said.

Mr. Bush put a good face on the meeting.

"He recognizes that a trade deficit with the United States is substantial and it is unsustainable," the president said of Hu. "Obviously the Chinese government takes the currency issue seriously, and so do I."

Mr. Bush also had been hoping to get Beijing to take on more than a mediator's role in efforts to bring North Korea back to six-nation talks aimed at halting its nuclear weapons program. Asked what more his country could do to resolve the dispute, Hu said that China "has always been making constructive efforts to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula."

The two presidents had not been expected to take questions. But an agreement to take questions from two reporters from each country came at the last minute and produced more than a half-hour of back-and-forth as the leaders sat in front of a fireplace.

The half-day summit got under way with pomp and pageantry on the South Lawn as demonstrators massed outside to protest Beijing's human-rights policies.

The two leaders stood side by side under bright sunshine on the South Lawn of the White House as the national anthems of both countries were played by a military band.

Mr. Bush and Hu then engaged in a ceremonial review of U.S. troops, some dressed in Continental Army uniforms.

Hu arrived in Washington Wednesday night for the first time as China's leader, after two days spent wooing American business leaders in Washington state.

In formal remarks on the South Lawn, Mr. Bush spoke more forcefully on the currency issue, saying he would continue to press for China to move "toward a flexible market exchange."

Mr. Bush raised other issues with Hu, including complaints about China's human rights record and questions over China's growing military strength and whether it poses a threat to Taiwan.

During his address, Hu pledged China's help in working diplomatically to ease the nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran. And he vowed in general terms to work to promote human rights. "We should respect each other as equals and promote closer exchanges and cooperation," he said, speaking through a translator.

Hu said that closer U.S.-Chinese cooperation would "bring more benefits to our two people and to the people of the world."

The visit attracted high-profile attention both inside and outside the White House gates. The spiritual movement Falun Gong, condemned by the Chinese government as an evil cult, gathered hundreds of demonstrators on street corners near the White House in the early morning. Marchers banged gongs, chanted and waved American and Chinese flags. Banners denounced Hu as a "Chinese dictator" responsible for genocide and other "crimes in Chinese labor camps and prisons."

The Chinese government had its say as well. In a median in front of the Chinese embassy, the Falun Gong protesters that are nearly always there had been replaced by Chinese supporters holding huge red-and-yellow banners offering to "warmly welcome" Hu on his American visit.

The two sides disputed what to call the visit, with the Chinese insisting that it is a "state visit," which was the designation former President Jiang Zemin received in 1997, or an "official visit," the designation the Bush administration is using for Hu's trip.