EU nations maintain ban on arm sales to China

The European Union nations today failed to agree on lifting their 15-year-old ban on arms sales to China, a proposal that had drawn heavy criticism from the US and exposed internal divisions.

An EU foreign ministers meeting failed to generate “a consensus” on the issue, said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

He said the 25-nation EU will keep the issue under study and step up discussions with the US, which says an end to the European ban on arms sales will create more instability in East Asia.

Officials said privately the issue may well be put off until at least 2006. Britain, which opposes an end to the embargo – imposed after the Chinese military crushed student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989 – will hold the EU presidency in the second half of 2005 and is not expected to push for a decision.

Before the EU meeting, Fischer said ending the ban depended largely “on movement by Beijing, especially on the question of human rights and a peaceful resolution” of its conflict with Taiwan.

Denis MacShane, Britain’s European affairs minister, standing in for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, side-stepped questions about the timing of a decision.

The arms embargo has put trans-Atlantic ties under renewed strain, with the US voicing concern after China adopted a law authorising military action against Taiwan if the island declared independence.

Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden want to retain the arms ban, while Germany and France have long urged fellow EU members to lift the embargo.

The issue has been under active consideration by the EU since December 2002.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is keen to lift the embargo, but misgivings have surfaced in his coalition of Social Democrats and Greens and among the conservative opposition.

Yesterday, he told the German parliament the ban hindered Europe’s efforts to boost trade with China.

Fischer, a Green and Schroeder’s most important ally, told German lawmakers a greater Chinese commitment to human rights would help craft an EU consensus on lifting the embargo.

Diplomatic sources acknowledged there were differences within the EU, but added that China had complicated matters by not ratifying the United Nations’ Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and by adopting an aggressive tone against Taiwan.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she was concerned the arms ban dispute was beginning to overshadow the EU’s overall, fast-growing trade relationship with China. “We have a dialogue with China that covers 20 sectors,” she told reporters.

Yesterday, the European Parliament joined the camp demanding that the EU arms ban remain in place because of China’s shaky human rights record.

In a non-bonding 431 to 85 vote, with 31 abstentions, the EU assembly meeting in Strasbourg, France, backed a motion to keep the embargo in place.

The European Parliament called Taiwan “a model of democracy for the whole of China,” and expressed regret that Europe’s ties with Beijing were only progressing in terms of “trade and economic fields, without any substantial achievement as regards human rights and democracy issues.”

The parliament also expressed “deepest concern (at the) large number of missiles in southern China aimed across the Taiwan Straits” and about the recently adopted anti-secession law empowering China to use force to rein in Taiwan.