EU and China trade talks not linked to human rights

THE European Union and China have agreed to begin new negotiations on trade and energy that will not be directly dependent on China delivering progress on human rights issues.

The Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, attending the EU-China summit in Helsinki on Saturday, said his country would not abandon the death penalty but insisted it had made progress on the human rights of the Chinese people. He was critical of the EU for refusing to acknowledge China as a fully fledged market economy or to lift the arms export embargo in force since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 during a peaceful protest.

The EU welcomed his promise to enforce more diligently intellectual property rights in an effort to reduce wholesale counterfeiting of European products.