World Tibet Network News Tuesday, February 24, 1998
BRUSSELS, Feb 23 (AFP) - No European Union country will support an attempt by the United States to have China's human rights abuses condemned by the United Nations, EU foreign ministers agreed Monday.
"In view of the first encouraging results of the EU-China human rights,
dialogue, the council agreed that neither the presidency nor any other
member state should table or co-sponsor a draft resolution at the next UN Commission on human rights," the ministers said in a statement.
The move, which was attacked as a backward step by human rights
campaigners, follows a major row last year when France used its veto to
prevent the EU presenting a critical resolution at the Geneva-based
commission, which it had previously done every year since 1990.
Denmark went ahead with the resolution on its own, prompting threats from China that it would be singled out for trade reprisals.
There were also bitter recriminations when a high-level French trade
delegation clinched a series of major deals in China shortly after Paris had undermined the united EU stance.
Diplomats said the ministers had agreed it was better to promote practical cooperation with China aimed at improving respect for the rule of law and human rights on the ground, rather than pursuing a policy of confrontation which has yielded few advances in the past.
Even when they have been supported by both the EU and the United States, resolutions criticising China have always floundered in Geneva because Asian and African states have refused to back them.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the EU had no hope of winning
concessions from China if it appeared "deeply divided," as it had last
year.
He denied the change of approach meant the EU had abandoned its deep
concerns about civil and political rights in China and said the bloc would continue to raise individual cases of concern with the Beijing authorities as part of an intensified dialogue on human rights.
It was up to China to prove this dialogue offered a way forward by meeting four key EU demands, Cook said
These were:
-- setting a date for a visit by the UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson
-- allowing the international Red Cross to resume prison visits --
releasing some of the dissidents named on an EU-US joint list - admitting an EU delegation to Tibet
The shift in the EU's stance was greeted with dismay by human rights
organisations, who have argued that the EU should pursue both practical
cooperation on issues such as village governance in China and seek to
maintain political pressure in international forum.
Jean-Paul Barthoz of Human Rights Watch described the new policy as a
"major step backwards," and accused Britain, which currently holds the EU presidency, of reneging on a promise to put rights at the centre of its foreign policy.
"The EU's commitment to promoting human rights has been exposed as pure
rhetoric," he told AFP.
The shift in the EU's position comes ahead of the first EU-China summit, scheduled to take place in London on the sidelines of a meeting of European and Asian leaders in London in April.
At a seminar on human rights held in Beijing on Monday, the EU's ambassador to China, Endymion Wilkinson, praised China's "concerted attempt" to address human rights problems in recent months as "enormously heartening".
But he urged China to push ahead quickly with practical reforms, warning that "a dialogue without results will soon run out of steam, and will not be acceptable to public opinion in Europe."
China last year pledged to sign the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, but has not yet done so. Beijing has signed the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights but not yet ratified it. The covenant guarantees the right to form independent labor unions, currently illegal in China.
China's vice foreign minister, Wang Yingfan, said differences over human rights were natural but stressed that China and the EU had "found a way to settle their differences" through dialogue.
