Exhibition boosts ties with France

CHINESE and French officials yesterday cut the ribbon on an exhibition of the works of one of France's most important living artists, Pierre Soulages, and hailed what they called strong cultural relations.

And a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday expressed hopes bilateral political ties would improve in the near future.

The new French Ambassador to Beijing, Francois Marcel Plaisant, told a few hundred invited guests gathered at the exhibition, which took up three huge rooms at the China Art Gallery, that it was ''a symbol of the very good cultural relations between the two countries''.

The exhibition had been planned against a backdrop of acrimonious Sino-French diplomatic relations after France decided to sell jet fighters and missiles to Taiwan in late 1992.

The Soulages retrospective takes place just after France declared that it wanted to mend its diplomatic relations with China, and amid signs that Beijing will take the opportunity to patch up its differences with Paris.

''It is our hope that Sino-French relations will be able to improve and develop soon,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Wu Jianmin said at his weekly news conference yesterday.

''We welcome French Foreign Minister [Alain] Juppe's statement,'' Mr Wu added, referring to Mr Juppe's remark on Tuesday that he hoped to see relations between France and China normalised as soon as possible.