The 25-nation EU is abandoning, for now, a plan to lift its 15-year-old embargo on weapons sales to China, a senior German legislator said.
"It will not be lifted," said Volker Ruehe, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the German parliament, on Wednesday. He said the reason was China's recent adoption of the "Anti-Secession" Law threatening military action against Taiwan.
"It would send the wrong signal," said Ruehe, who was in Washington primarily to urge the Bush administration to endorse a proposal for permanent seats on the UN Security Council for Germany and five other countries.
The Bush administration has clashed with the Europeans over weapons sales to China, saying China's poor record on human rights justifies maintaining the weapons ban.
Informed of Ruehe's remarks to reporters, a senior US official said the administration did not foresee any lifting of the embargo. But, speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said removing the ban still had some strong European support, particularly from France.
Germany and France have long urged fellow EU members to remove the embargo, while Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden wanted to keep it because of China's human-rights deficiencies.
The Europeans imposed the embargo after the Chinese military crushed student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The US, which bans arms sales to China, urged the Europeans to maintain the ban as a means of pressuring China on human rights.
The dispute has put trans-Atlantic ties under renewed strain. The US said ending the ban would create more instability in East Asia.
An EU foreign-ministers meeting in Luxembourg last month failed to develop a consensus on the issue, and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the EU would keep the issue under study and step up discussions with the US.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called Europe's burgeoning relationship with China "very important" and said he hoped the EU would return to the issue next month.
China's foreign ministry spokesman has previously denounced the embargo as an example of "political discrimination."
The Europeans had pledged not to sell lethal weapons to China if the ban were lifted, saying only that items such as helicopters might be sold.
Ruehe, meanwhile, was sent to Washington by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to lobby Bush administration officials for adoption of a proposal giving Germany and five other countries permanent seats on the UN Security Council.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had apparently ruled out a seat for Germany during a meeting with members of a congressional task force.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on the report.
"Enlargement is what is being discussed," he said.
"If we find that some of these proposals can make the council more effective, then certainly that's where we will throw our support. But at this point, we haven't taken a position pro or con for any particular proposal," he said.
The administration, however, has publicly endorsed Japan for a permanent seat.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS