(21 Dec 1999) English/Nat

European Commission President Romano Prodi and Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen of Finland are in Beijing for China-EU summit talks.

That's where they battled out differences over human rights and access to China's closed markets at a summit meeting designed to improve ties with the west.

This comes after China struck separate deals last month with the United States and Canada on joining the World Trade Organisation, leaving the EU as Beijing's biggest obstacle to an improvement in free trade for the country.

After greeting European Commission President Romano Prodi and Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen of Finland, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji opened the latest round of EU talks by noting previous EU criticism of China's human rights record.

But he gave positive signs suggesting that both sides "seek common ground."

Zhu warmly greeted delegation leaders European Commission President Romano Prodi and Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, saying "welcome" and "old friend" in English.

But Zhu gave only a perfunctory handshake to the delegation's No. 3, Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten.

As Hong Kong's last colonial governor, Patten earned the enmity of China's communist leaders by promoting democracy in the colony before Britain handed it back to China in mid-1997.

In a book on his experiences, Patten urged governments not to sacrifice human rights for the marginal benefits of trade with China.

During the summit meeting, the four member European Commission delegation presented Chinese leaders with their conditions for reaching a WTO deal with China.

China struck separate deals last month with the United States and Canada, leaving the EU as Beijing's biggest obstacle to joining the WTO.

But China and the 15-nation EU have been slow to resume negotiations on a market-access agreement necessary for Chinese entry to organisation.

The EU's conditions for striking a deal with China are not very different from those of the US which China has already met.

But 20 percent of the requests are specific to Europe.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I insist that these requests are not difficult to meet in the sense that they are very similar to what the Americans got. And it's very natural that when you have a multilateral deal, you must keep note of the needs of all the negotiators, all the parties interested in entering into the deal. And the European Union will become, is even now, a protagonist of world trade, in the world economy. But it will be more and more, in the future, THE protagonist of the world trade."
SUPER CAPTION: Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission

The other major item on the summit's agenda was the human rights situation in China.

The delegation brought up concerns about Tibet, a dialogue with the Dalai Lama and the recent crackdowns on democracy activists and Falun Gong movement.

European leaders welcomed what they perceived as an open attitude on the part of China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji.

But they urged China to ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights signed by China last year.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I don't think that anyone will be throwing their hats in the air or dancing in the streets until China ratifies the international covenants which we hope will come sooner rather than later. Not least because once the covenants are ratified, there is then the mechanism which , for example,allows experts from Geneva to visit those countries which have ratified the covenants to consider compliance with them."


SOUNDBITE: (English)


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