Speaking later at a press briefing, Mr. Liu said he was certain that "competent Chinese authorities will handle his application in accordance with the law." The announcement came hours after Mr. Chen, in a four-point statement conveyed by telephone to a friend, insisted that he did not want to seek political asylum in the United States but that he had been invited to attend New York University and hoped "to go to the United States and rest for several months." That would give Chinese officials a face-saving opportunity to allow Mr. Chen and his family to leave China in the same manner as do scores of thousands of Chinese students every year, according to Jerome A. Cohen, a New York attorney and expert on Chinese law who discussed the proposal with Mr. Chen this week. Mr. Chen's subsequent pleas for help from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - repeated in an urgent telephone call played on speaker during an emergency congressional hearing in Washington on Thursday - frayed the fragile deal American officials had struck with the Chinese only one day before the start of high-level talks between China and the United States. American diplomats have worked frantically to recoup but since Wednesday they have been barred by the Chinese even from visiting Mr. Chen in his hospital room. American diplomats sought on Friday to deliver a package including food and two cellphones to Mr. Chen, Reuters reported. They were forced to leave it outside, the news agency said. In a telephone conversation with The Associated Press, Mr. Chen said his wife was being followed by men who are recording her movements on video and that his own conversations with American officials were being cut off after a couple of sentences. The Obama administration has been bombarded with criticism from human rights activists and its Republican critics that it had botched its handling of a major human rights case and placed one of China's most famous rights activists in jeopardy. Mr. Chen's initial remarks have fueled those attacks. In a telephone conversation on Thursday with The New York Times, he said that Chinese government guarantees of his safety were "empty talk" and that he had left the embassy the previous day in part because of Chinese threats that his family would be harmed if he did not agree to leave. "The U.S. Embassy treated me well," he said, "but the U.S. government was not proactive enough." In posts on Twitter and a Chinese microblog, a friend who assisted in Mr. Chen's flight to the American Embassy, Guo Yushan, said Mr. Chen had told him he was "totally astonished" by the crisis his earlier statements had provoked. Mr. Guo said he had talked at length with Mr. Chen late Thursday and posted a summary of their talk on Friday. He never complained, either directly or indirectly, that the United States Embassy forced or induced him to leave the embassy. He left the embassy voluntarily and appreciates very much the United States Embassy's help during the past week," he wrote. Mr. Chen "has much respect for China-U.S. diplomatic efforts," he wrote, and "is very much aware of the importance of diplomacy between the two countries and the seriousness of all agreements that have already been reached." Bree Feng contributed research.