MEPs to demand EU passports for Hong Kong citizens

BRUSSELS, Feb 6 (Reuter) - The European Parliament will urge the European Union to give passports to all Hong Kong citizens ahead the British colony's handover to Chinese rule later this

year. The non-binding resolution - expected on February 20 - is also likely to demand that the EU follows Washington and requires its representative in Hong Kong to produce an annual report on the human rights situation there. "It will be a political signal that we won't let the people of Hong Kong down," Belgian Radical Alliance MEP Olivier Dupuis told Reuters. Meanwhile European members of parliament also want Hong Kong's Governor Chris Patten to come to Brussels and set out in detail the problems associated with Britain's handover of the territory to Beijing. Dupuis said he had received no answer to a request for European Union trade commissioner Leon Brittan to tell parliament how the European Commission would react if China violated human rights in Hong Kong after the handover. British Liberal Graham Watson is to lead a delegation of five MEPS, including Dupuis, to Hong Kong in March. "I want to send a message to Hong Kong ... that the European Parliament does not regard this as a British matter but as

a European matter," Watson said. He said the EU could make support for China's accession to the World Trade Organisation dependent on respect for human rights in Hong Kong. "It's more in Chinals interest to be in the WTO than in the west's (interest). China needs access to Western technology, Western capital and Western markets," he reasoned.