Chinese leader tested for SARS ahead of summit

Chinese President Hu Jintao is having medical tests to ensure he is not carrying the deadly SARS virus when he meets world leaders on the fringes of next month’s G-8 summit in France.

Hu and his delegation are limiting the number of visitors they meet, having regular chest X-rays and are being checked for fever twice a day, Vice Foreign Minister Liu Guchang said.

“All our efforts are to ensure there will be no one in our delegation with SARS,” he said in the Chinese capital Beijing.

Hu, who took office in March, will be making his first foreign trip as China’s leader to attend a development conference being held on the fringes of the June 1-3 G-8 meeting in the Alpine town of Evian.

Hu is not taking part in the G-8 summit itself, but plans to meet US President George Bush and other world leaders, Liu said.

He said the meeting with Bush is “a priority of both sides,” though he had no details of what they planned to discuss.

The G-8 also includes France, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada, Italy and Russia.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has killed at least 294 people on China’s mainland.

Outbreaks elsewhere are subsiding, but experts say it is too early to know whether SARS is declining in China, where more than 5,200 people are infected.