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.
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