BEIJING (AP) - The diplomatic disarray deepened Thursday after a blind activist reversed course and asked to leave China with his family, abandoning an arduously negotiated agreement even though he had left the protection of the U.S. Embassy and was in a Beijing hospital ringed by Chinese police.
Bewildered and alone with his wife and children, Chen Guangcheng periodically switched on a cell phone to tell friends and foreign media he felt scared and wanted to go abroad, and that he had not seen U.S. officials in over a day.
Chen's high-profile effort to keep his case in the public eye served to increase pressure on Washington and embarrass Beijing as it hosted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other U.S. officials for annual talks on global political and economic hotspots.
Taken aback at Chen's change of heart, U.S. diplomats spent much of Thursday trying to confirm the family wanted to leave, and they eventually said they would try to help him. Still, it remained unclear how they might do so now that he has left the embassy, or whether the Chinese would be willing to renegotiate a deal that both sides thought had been settled a day earlier.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner confirmed U.S. officials weren't able to see Chen in person Thursday but spoke twice with him by telephone, and once with his wife, Yuan Weijing, outside the hospital.
"It's our desire to meet with him tomorrow or in the coming days," Toner said. "But I can't speak to whether we'll have access to him. I just don't know."
Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said U.S. officials would continue to work with Chen and his wife to try to find a satisfactory new solution. "We need to consult with them further to get a better sense of what they want to do and consider their options," Nuland said.