Posted on 12/06/2002 4:43:27 AM PST by Liz
WASHINGTON - Just as Vice President Gore is reappearing on the American political scene, a recent trip to Asia is prompting questions about a fund-raising flap like the ones that followed him after the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. Mr. Gore visited Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, last month for a forum focused on the nation’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Conference participants had the opportunity to have their photos taken with Mr. Gore in exchange for cash, the South China Morning Post reported.
The sponsor of the event at the top of the list on the forum Web site, the China Development Institute, operates under the approval of the communist Chinese government. Also while abroad, Mr. Gore attended an Asia Society Hong Kong event hosted by former Enron director Ronnie Chan Chi-chung.
The report evokes memories for some of the 1996 Buddhist Temple fundraising scandal in Los Angeles, not to mention the allegations of money funneled to the Democratic Party by the Chinese government. Mr. Gore has said he will soon announce whether he intends to run for president again in 2004.
“If this is true, it’s a pretty severe lapse in judgment,” a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Dan Ronayne, said when contacted by The New York Sun. “It’s mildly shocking that he’d put himself in a position for this kind of potential embarrassment.”
The Gore camp insists the former vice president and 2000 presidential candidate has done nothing wrong, and disputes the accuracy of the report.
A former American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, also came to Mr. Gore’s defense.
“We were not paid in any way for any photographs,” a spokesman for Mr. Gore, Jano Cabrera, said.
“We’re aware of no one who paid to have photos taken with Mr. Gore. If they did, they did so without our permission.”
The South China Morning Post did not specify who had offered the pictures-for-cash deal to forum participants. It listed the price as 50,000 yuan — about $6,000 — or 100,000 yuan for “conference sponsorship packages.”
Mr. Cabrera said the event was a BusinessWeek forum, in conjunction with another conference sponsor, DnmStrategies.
It was not, as alleged by the vice-chairman in Hong Kong of Republicans Abroad, hosted by a “communist think tank” — that is, the China Development Institute.
But on that point, the spokesman for Mr. Gore and a spokeswoman for Business Week do not agree.
“The forum was not put on by BusinessWeek. The primary sponsor and organizer was the China Development Institute,” the spokeswoman, Nancy Sheed, said.
“We were there as a sponsor, in the form of signs and logos. We did not pay for any of the speakers or participants to be there.”
Mr. Cabrera said the Washington Speaker’s Bureau paid Mr. Gore for his appearance, but would not disclose the amount.
To prove his point, he gave the Sun a contract regarding the appearance that lists the client as “DnmStrategies For Service to BusinessWeek.”
The South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed Asia Society source as saying that Mr. Chan, the former Enron director, hosted the Asia Society meeting.
The chief executive of DnmStrategies, Sam Moon, told the paper Mr. Gore was aware of who Mr. Chan was “because I told him before we went into it [the lunch.]”
Mr. Cabrera said Mr. Gore had no advance knowledge of who Mr. Chan was; he said it was as innocent as giving a speech to an audience that contained an Enron executive.
Throughout his trip, Mr. Gore brought the message of open trade and human rights, Mr. Cabrera said.
Mr. Gore got involved when Mr. Holbrooke invited him to the meet with the Asia Society, Mr. Cabrera said.
“We are grateful that Vice President Gore took the time to speak to the Asia Society Hong Kong. The Asia Society is the leading non profit, non-governmental organization in the United States concerned with Asia, and we are proud that Ronnie Chan is a Member of the Board and the leader of our activities in Hong Kong,” Mr. Holbrooke said in a statement.
“To suggest that Vice President Gore’s activities in Hong Kong was somehow improper because he visited China during his trip — as has every president since Richard Nixon — is ridiculous and smacks of old school McCarthyism.”
Copyright 2002 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC. All rights reserved. back to top
Is anyone other than the Red Chinese willing to contribute to the Goron these days/
Won't happen; he'd be wasting his time.
Too bad the Tennesse two by four doesn't feel we should have the same in The US.
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