EU fails to satisfy wary US on China arms embargo

WASHINGTON - European Union officials said their lifting of a 15-year-old ban on arms sales to China would be matched by tough export controls, but Washington said it remained committed to the weapons embargo.

A mission headed by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's personal representative on nonproliferation issues, Annalisa Giannella, met officials and lawmakers on Monday to hear US views on the lifting of the embargo, expected by June.

"The issue of the arms embargo has highlighted the fact that there is a missing dimension in our dialogue with the US and that dimension is a strategic dialogue on the Far East and, in particular, on China," Giannella told reporters.

She said EU and US goals were "basically the same" on bringing China into the global community even as they disagreed over lifting an arms embargo imposed after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

US President George W Bush has voiced concerns that the end of the embargo could skew the military balance between China and Taiwan. Taiwan, Japan and other Asian neighbours of China have also come out against lifting the arms embargo.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, said he "indicated my own very considerable reservations and skepticism about the EU action" in a meeting on Monday.

"I'm certain she found a similar reaction with many of our colleagues," said Lugar, who will chair a hearing on the arms embargo on Wednesday.

State Department deputy spokesman Adam Erelli said US officials met the EU envoys and "let them know we're opposed to lifting the embargo and that would remain our position."

China's rising defence spending and its passage this week of a law permitting the use of force to head off any independence bids from Taiwan have complicated the EU mission, which will also go to Tokyo to hear Japanese concerns.

EU officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a soon-to-be-implemented EU "code of conduct" requires EU states to look hard at the human rights record of the importing country before granting export licenses, as well as its history of passing on imported equipment to third countries.

"The revised code will have a wider scope and intensity," a senior EU official told reporters.

Rights groups say the EU's existing code of conduct on arms sales is not legally binding and contains loopholes. But the EU delegates said the code had governed EU members' denial of past Chinese requests to buy radar and missile guidance systems.

An EU diplomat said the embargo was mostly symbolic and was overtaken by the need to engage China as a rising power.

"We prefer strict controls that work rather than symbolic statements that stigmatise," the diplomat said.

- REUTERS