British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday defended his country's campaign to lift an EU arms embargo on China, calling it inconsistent when human-rights violators such as North Korea weren't under a similar ban.
Straw said Britain wants to see China covered instead by an EU code of conduct that regulates all weapons sales to other countries.
"The code is wider and stronger than this individual embargo," he said after meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星).
"There is an issue of consistency here because there are embargoes on China, Zimbabwe and Burma. There is not an embargo with respect to North Korea, which has a terrible human-rights record," he said.
Chinese officials said the arms ban would be a key issue in talks with Straw.
But in brief comments to reporters, Straw and Li didn't say whether they took up the issue or what else they discussed.
The US, Japan and other governments have lobbied the EU to retain the arms embargo. Washington says arms sales could undermine East Asian security, endanger Taiwan and hurt efforts to push China to improve human rights.
EU leaders say the embargo could be lifted in as little as six months following an official review. Britain, France and Germany say the ban hinders relations with Beijing, and that there are safeguards preventing any arms sales from being used improperly.
Straw said earlier that no decision was likely for at least two months, but he has said the ban probably would be overturned within six months.
"No conclusion has yet been arrived at," he said.
Japan lobbied Straw to retain the embargo during a stop on Thursday in Tokyo.
"Japan opposes lifting the ban," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told him, saying that the issue concerns the "security and environment" of East Asia.
The EU code of conduct requires EU nations to ensure weapons they sell are not used for internal repression, external aggression or where serious violations of human rights occur.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan (
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS