STRASBOURG, Dec 18 (AFP) - The European Parliament demanded Thursday the EU maintain its arms embargo against China because of the communist country's human rights record and its "threats against Taiwan".
The European Union assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that rejected talk of lifting the embargo -- in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 -- as promoted by EU leaders and China itself.
"The human rights situation in the People's Republic of China has improved over the years but remains unsatisfactory," said the resolution, which was addressed to all 15 present member states and the 10 due to join in May.
"The crackdown on fundamental freedoms continues as well as torture, ill-treatment, mistreatment of HIV-AIDS sufferers, arbitrary detention, the high number of death sentences each year, and the lack of respect and protection of minority rights."
The parliament -- which traditionally takes a strong line on human rights -- also said that it believed "it is the wrong time, in view of Chinese threats against Taiwan, to open the way to a lifting of the European arms embargo".
At summit talks, EU heads of government last Friday said it was time "to re-examine the question of the embargo on the sale of arms to China".
France and Germany have called for the embargo to be lifted, while Britain says ending the ban would be largely symbolic.
The EU has other controls in place to ensure that China could not use newly bought European weapons to attack Taiwan or for domestic crackdowns, British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said in Beijing.
China Thursday kept up the pressure, saying the EU embargo "does not conform with the good momentum in the development of relations between China and Europe".
"We hope that the EU can at an early date adopt measures to eliminate this embargo," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
The European Commission -- the EU's executive arm -- has given out contradictory signals on its stance on the embargo.
Commission president Romano Prodi backed the statement put out by the EU leaders on Friday, Prodi's spokesman Reijo Kemppinen told AFP.
But a spokeswoman for External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten -- Britain's last governor of Hong Kong -- said early this month that China "would need to demonstrate very clearly the progress made in human rights" first.
The commission itself would not have a say in lifting the arms embargo, which would have to be decided by all 15 EU member states.
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