CHINA/EU: The EU remains on course to lift its arms embargo on China, its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said yesterday.
Speaking in Brussels after a meeting of EU leaders, Mr Solana said China's human rights record had improved and it deserved to have the ban, which was imposed after the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, lifted.
"It is not justified to maintain it," he said.
Pressure from the United States has moved some EU governments to edge away from a commitment, agreed by EU leaders last December, to lift the arms embargo. German chancellor Gerhard Schröder insisted, however, that the EU's policy on the arms embargo remained the same. "Nothing has changed in my position," he said.
French president Jacques Chirac said this week that lifting the ban would not lead to any increase in arms sales to China because the EU would draw up a strict code of conduct on all arms exports.
EU diplomats say that lifting the arms embargo is, above all, a symbolic move aimed at improving economic and political links between the EU and China.
