By Jeremy Gaunt

TURIN, Italy, March 29 (Reuter) - European Union foreign ministers, dismayed at what tehy see as China's lack of response to calls for improved human rights, said on Friday the bloc would a U.N. resolution condemning Beijing over the issue.

Italian Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli said her colleagues had decided over lunch at an EU summit they would join with the United States to push the resolution before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

"The Union is going to present a declaration to China to move forward on human rights," Agnelli told a news conference.

The EU backs the resolution each year but had held off this year in hopes of seeing some reaction from China.

Agnelli told a news conference she hoped this would be the last year that the EU would have to block the resolution.

At a meeting in early March in Palermo, Sicily, foreign ministers agreed to tell Beijing that unless it showed progress the EU would forcefully back the public condemnation.

Officials said at the Palermo meeting the EU wanted China to take actions such as improving conditions in its much-criticised orphanages, releasing dissident Wei Jingsheng and allowing the United Nations to study human rights conditions in the country.

Wei Jingsheng, a leader of China's struggling democracy movement, has receveid a 14-year jail term for plotting against the government.

The EU believes China to be higly sensitive to public condemnations such as the U.N. resolution.

But one diplomat questioned the wisdom of the move, following increased tension between China and Taiwan , wich Beijing sees as a renegade province.

On Thursday, Bejing attacked the United States for criticising its human rights record, saying Washington was seeking to "vilify China, damage its stability, hold back its development and then change the road for development and the social system in China".

REUTER

291931 GMT MAR 96