BEIJING - A group of U.S. religious leaders who spent six days studying the U.N. family planning agency's work in China said Friday they found no evidence to back accusations that it supports forced abortions. They said they would lobby Washington to end its ban on aid to the agency.

Abortion rates in areas with UNFPA programs have fallen, the delegation members said. They said U.N. experts were promoting voluntary family planning, helping to change official Chinese policy that for decades used fines and other penalties to enforce a one-child limit for most couples.

"We very much believe that UNFPA is a very positive force within the Chinese family planning program," said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, which organized the visit.

The nine-member delegation also included representatives of Muslim, Jewish and Protestant groups — though not the conservative religious organizations that have supported blocking money for the U.N. program.

The visit came after the U.S. House of Representatives voted in July to sustain a policy that lets President George W. Bush withhold money from the U.N. fund.

Bush denied the fund US$34 million last year out of some US$450 million that Washington contributed to international family planning programs. Opponents of the fund say its programs in China support forced abortions and sterilizations.

Members of the religious delegation said they had found no sign of such coercion in areas with UNFPA programs.

"No one that we spoke to — we're talking about close to 100 people, if not more than that — said that they knew of any cases of forced abortion ... in recent years," said Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs of Temple Kol Tikvah in Los Angeles.

The delegation members acknowledged that they were not experts on China and spent only a short time in the country. They visited six counties in the north and northwest, where there were UNFPA programs. They also visited two areas without and said Chinese authorities didn't impose controls on their travel.

"The slice of knowledge that we have is very limited," said Kissling. However, she added, "We do feel that we have gotten a very good picture of how UNFPA operates."

Kissling criticized the Bush administration's stance as "quite simplistic" and counterproductive as a means of changing Chinese policy.

Other delegation members said they planned to organize lobbying to restore American financing for the U.N. program.

"I ... will go back to my organization and spread the word and mobilize support to get UNFPA re-funded," said the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, pastor of the Fellowship Baptist Church in Washington and president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

"They're doing important work," Veazey said. "And if we are truly interested in the people of China in terms of their future, we should do it."

Reports of forced abortions in China by local officials trying to enforce quotas have been widespread, though Chinese authorities say the numbers have been greatly reduced.

According to Jacobs, statistics provided by officials in one county in Gansu province in the northwest showed that the number of abortions there fell from 572 in 1997 — a period before the arrival of the U.N. program — to 75 last year.

The delegation also visited counties in Hubei province and the Ningxia region, which abuts Gansu.

"What we heard from everybody is that they want to reduce the abortion rate, and that they are doing this," Kissling said. She said she didn't know the reason, though she said it might be because Chinese officials were trying instead to prevent pregnancies with better contraception.

Ronald M. Green, chairman of the religion department at Dartmouth College, noted that some areas with UNFPA programs still imposed "morally undesirable" fees on couples who violated birth limits. But he said the fund had publicly opposed such fees and they often weren't collected.

"I believe we can say with some degree of confidence," Green said, "that all the programs with which UNFPA is currently associated are committed to avoiding any practice of forced abortion or involuntary sterilization."

This article courtesy of the Associated Press.