Dissident Chen Guangcheng 'wants to leave China'

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has said he fears for his life and wants to leave China, hours after leaving his refuge in the US embassy.

Mr Chen said he left the embassy after Chinese officials made threats to his family members.

But the US says it had no knowledge of the threats and that the activist had at no point asked for asylum.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently in Beijing for trade and security talks with Chinese officials.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says Mr Chen's situation is likely to come up during the talks.

Mrs Clinton has previously expressed her support for Mr Chen, who has been held under house arrest for almost two years.

But Chinese officials accused the US of interference in their domestic affairs.

"What the US needs to do is to stop misleading the public and stop making every excuse to shift responsibility and conceal its own wrongdoing," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

As the US-China talks - also expected to focus on North Korea and Syria - opened, Mrs Clinton did not directly mention Chen Guangcheng.

But she said all governments should "answer to citizens' aspirations for dignity and the rule of law and that no nation can or should deny those rights".

Mr Chen had been at the US embassy for almost a week after escaping from house arrest in his home village in the eastern Shandong province.

He left the embassy on Wednesday, and initial statements from his lawyer suggested the activist had been released after getting assurances about his safety.

Lawyer Li Jinsong said he had spoken to his client on the phone and described him as "very happy and wants to hug all his friends".

Mr Li said the dissident told him he now had "true freedom", his rights were now protected by China's law and he was "a free citizen".

But Mr Chen, 40, later told several media outlets that he left the embassy only after he heard of threats being made to his wife and children.

After talking to his wife, he said he wanted to leave China because his rights and safety "cannot be assured here".

"I would like to say to President Obama - please do everything you can to get our family out," Mr Chen told CNN.

State department spokesman Mark Toner defended the embassy's treatment of Mr Chen.

"At no time did any US official speak to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children, and nor did any Chinese officials make any threats to us or through us," he said.

Mr Chen had planned his escape from house arrest for months, scaling the wall the authorities had built around his house and then being driven hundreds of miles to Beijing, where activists say he stayed in safe houses before fleeing to the embassy.

The activists spent the past seven years in prison or under illegal house arrest after he exposed human rights abuses, including the way thousands of women were forced to have abortions under China's "one-child-policy".

Several people involved in Mr Chen's escape have been detained or have disappeared in recent days.