U.S. meeting with China to avoid unfolding murder case Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to avoid the subject of regional Communist Party chief Bo Xilai, deposed last month in the southwestern city of Chongqing for alleged "discipline violations" as his wife was named as a suspect in the murder of a British citizen, and that of Wang Lijun, the local police chief who handed over evidence of the couple's alleged crimes in February to amazed U.S. diplomats. The State Department said Monday that Clinton, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, will lead a delegation to the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue on May 3-4 in Beijing. The annual meeting is the keystone of U.S. efforts to put touchy U.S.-China issues on a smoother footing. Since Wang first sought refuge in the U.S. consulate in Sichuan province on Feb. 6, Clinton and others in the Obama administration have supplied few details of what they describe as an internal Chinese issue. President Obama was not apprised of the situation during Wang's 30-hour stay, an administration official said, adding that the White House considered it a "consular matter" to be handled by the State Department. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has received no reply to her Feb. 10 letter to Clinton demanding all information related to Wang's visit and a briefing, according to her spokesman, Brad Goehner. Ros-Lehtinen said in the letter that her concerns were based on reports that "imply that Mr. Wang may have been denied by the U.S. a request for asylum after Chinese authorities learned of [his] attempted defection." U.S. officials have never indicated that Wang attempted to defect or asked for asylum, instead suggesting that the agitated security official seemed to be interested only in temporary protection from members of his own police force, until he could organize safe passage to Beijing. There are numerous examples of temporary refuge given at U.S. diplomatic installations, but "posts may not grant or in any way promise "asylum" to any foreign national," according to Foreign Service regulations. Asylum is granted only to applicants in this country or at a port of entry. According to James Barbour, spokesman at the British Embassy in Washington, Wang had made an appointment at the British High Commission in Chongqing, but never showed up. Instead, he made a separate appointment 200 miles away in Chengdu, where the U.S. consulate for the province is located. Onetime colleagues Bo and Wang apparently had had a falling out, leading to Wang's demotion early this year and his subsequent decision to blow the whistle on his former boss. At the consulate, Wang handed over a file believed to include details indicating that British businessman Neil Heywood, whose death last November in a Chongqing hotel had been ruled a heart attack, had been murdered.