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WASHINGTON: The United States is calling for all sides to avoid further bloodshed in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, the White House is under pressure at home to take a firmer line with China over the violence. Critics accuse the Obama administration of a broader pattern of downplaying human rights concerns in US foreign policy.
With Chinese security forces blanketing the regional capital Urumqi, the United States is hoping that the violence there is over.
US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: "The main thing now, I think, is for all sides to exercise restraint and avoid finger-pointing, avoid fanning the flames and just refrain from violence in general."
However, critics say that does not go far enough.
Walter Lohman, director of Asian Studies Center, The Heritage Foundation, said: "It is saying that the side without the guns and the shields and bullets has every bit as much responsibility for the current problem as do the others. I think dispensing with that moral equivalency will be the first step."
The US State Department says it is still too early to assign blame for the initial explosion of violence.
US-based human rights groups are calling for an independent investigation, as activists highlight what they see as systematic repression of the region's Uighur population.
The US president is being urged to press the case, amidst concern from some quarters that human rights issues are being sacrificed to other foreign policy goals.
Lohman said: "There are some sinking suspicions now that he is much more interested in a sort of hardcore approach to interests, a realist approach to our foreign policy that ignores things like the central government cracking down, or really the central government instigating the riots to begin with."
Washington's response to the latest crisis is being contrasted with the Bush administration's more forceful rhetoric following last year's unrest in Tibet.
Back then, the US urged the Chinese government to show restraint and start talking to the Dalai Lama.
- CNA/yt
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