China should ratify a UN treaty on political rights and make progress on human rights to improve European public support for lifting a 16-year-old arms embargo, a senior EU official said yesterday.
Beijing is lobbying the 25-member European Union to lift the arms ban imposed after its 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. But Washington opposes such a step, and EU foreign ministers failed to agree at a key meeting last month on ending the embargo.
"We need to help persuade ... our European Parliament that China is making concrete steps to improve human rights," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. "It's important that China assists us to bring about the right climate."
Ferrero-Waldner was in Beijing with an EU delegation for talks with China's foreign minister and othes. She said they would cover the arms embargo, human rights, Beijing's relations with Taiwan and an EU investigation into surging Chinese textile imports. EU officials have cited Beijing's refusal to ratify the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as one reason for extending the arms ban.
"The reality is, they should go for ratification," Ferrero-Waldner said.
She said the EU wasn't directly tying the lifting of the ban to human rights, but said progress would help to create an "overall climate" for ending it. Ferrero-Waldner said China's newly enacted anti-secession law, which is aimed at curbing independence activists in Taiwan -- an island Beijing claims as its territory -- also hurt sentiment in favor of lifting the arms embargo.
Noting People First Party Chairman James Soong's trip (
EU and Chinese officials will discuss the EU investigation into China's textile imports, which has alarmed Beijing. She said the EU wants to reach a settlement without triggering protective tariffs allowed by the WTO. The EU launched the investigation last month into nine types of Chinese-made clothing and textiles whose imports have jumped by up to 534 percent since a worldwide quota system ended on Jan. 1.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS