COPENHAGEN, April 8 (AFP) - Denmark will on Wednesday put forward a draft resolution criticising China's human rights record, despite Beijing's pledge to sign a UN convention by the end of the year, Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said.

"The decision has been taken and the draft resolution, whose chief themes will be breaches of freedom of expression and association and the conditions of political prisoners, will be presented," Petersen added.

He expressed scepticism regarding Beijing's promises to improve its human rights situation.

Regarding China's pledge to sign the UN convention on economic, social and cultural rights, Petersen said: "We have discussed with the Chinese the question of the UN conventions several times."

"We have called on China to sign the two major United Nations conventions on human rights and the Chinese have repeatedly expressed their willingness to do so," he added.

Earlier Tuesday, Petersen insisted Copenhagen was acting on its own volition in bringing an anti-China motion to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Denying the decision was influenced by the United States, he said: "I don't know why the Americans did not want to put forward this resolution themselves, but it would be a bad thing if Europe did not itself have the strength to draw up a human rights policy on China and to wait for the United States to do so in its place."

He reiterated that many other European countries supported the draft resolution which Denmark will put forward on Wednesday at the ongoing rights commission meeting in Geneva, but refused to comment on French opposition to the move.

Petersen added that the divisions in Europe on the subject, which he said were the first in seven years with regard to China, constituted "a serious set-back for the European Union's common foreign policy."

He said the resolution would note that progress had been made in some areas, but would at the same time "express fierce anxiety, notably concerning restrictions on freedom of association and of expression, and the absence of cultural rights for Tibetans."

The draft resolution also expresses concern over "the executions and long prison terms for political prisoners" and calls on China to "improve the situation on these points, to release political detainees and to preserve the religious and ethnic rights in Tibet and in other communities."

Denmark stepped in Saturday and announced it would put forward the motion critical of China after the European Union (EU) was unable to agree on a joint position on the annual human rights debate.

The EU has previously sponsored a critical resolution on China each year since the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989, but France this year blocked a common EU stance.

Paris was supported by Germany, Italy, Spain, and Greece, prompting criticism that they were putting trade ties with China before all other considerations.

Denmark is expected to have the backing of at least 11 EU states as well as the United States.

In Oslo, the Norwegian foreign ministry said Norway would support the Danish motion.

"Norway supports the Danish resolution, but our representatives in Geneva are also actively working to compose a resolution text that will gain the broadest possible support," ministry spokesman Ingvard Havnen said.

Denmark's proposal has sparked sharp criticism from China, which has warned that all countries supporting the motion would see their relations with the Asian giant "adversely affected".

"Supporting this resolution will not be beneficial to any nation's ties with China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said.