EU starts talks on sweeping new treaty with China
Source: Reuters
(Adds details) By Chris Buckley BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - The European Union and China set out their expectations on potentially contentious trade, security and human rights issues on Wednesday as they began talks on a sweeping new treaty to map out ties between them. The EU External Relations Commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said the new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement needed to reflect the expansiveness of contacts between Brussels and Beijing. "Twenty years ago the EU and China were trading partners, but now we are strategic partners," she told reporters, adding the treaty negotiations would be a "focus of the bilateral agenda for years ahead". She said the proposed pact covering 22 areas would address human rights, where Western capitals and rights groups have pressed China to drastically improve treatment of criminal suspects, prisoners and political critics. "Why should it not be there since we have been working with China on these issues in every meeting? So of course this will be there in this broad agreement," she said when asked about human rights provisions in the treaty. "I don't see any negative sign on the Chinese side on that." At a news briefing alongside the EU officials, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing did not say how he thinks human rights issues will be negotiated. China has often said it is willing to discuss rights issues but resists having conditions imposed by foreign governments. Li did make clear China wants Europe to lift a ban on arms sales and to give China official status as a market economy -- although these two disputes are not a part of the formal treaty talks -- if the two are to regard each other as global peers. "The reason why China demands lifting of the arms embargo against it is that we believe the two partners should treat each other as equals and there should not be any political discrimination," he told reporters. Brussels banned many arms sales to China in 1989 after Beijing's bloody military crackdown on pro-reform demonstrators. Under pressure from some member states and Washington, who raised worries about China's stance on human rights and Taiwan, the self-governed island the mainland says must accept eventual reunification, the EU has held back from lifting the ban. Li also said the EU should recognise China as a market economy, a move that would shield the export powerhouse from the most stinging anti-dumping measures Brussels has at hand. The EU has invoked anti-dumping rules against many Chinese products, most recently leather shoes. Ferrero-Waldner has said another priority in her talks in Beijing is global warming. The EU hopes China will do more to contain its ballooning output of greenhouse gases. The EU has proposed cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, with the possibility of going to 30 percent if other developed countries joined in. Before heading to Beijing, Ferrero-Waldner said the bigger cut could only come if China made reductions of its own. And EU officials said she is likely to announce agreements intended to help China reduce some emissions. China, the world's fourth-largest economy and second-biggest energy user, has set a goal to cut energy consumption per unit of national income by 20 percent by 2010. But with coal-fired stations generating over 80 percent of its electricity, China is on course to overtake the United States by 2009 as the biggest creator of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas generated by human activity.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
