EU and US seek answers to Asia policy questions

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 26/05/05

The European Union and the United States have this week launched unprecedented talks on a long-term strategy towards Asia.

The meetings are seen as a response to the EU's proposed lifting of its arms embargo against China, which Washington opposes, and the wider issue of China's emergence as a world power.

"China is the first great power in quite a while, the first superpower," Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told a conference after the meeting. "We need to talk about this, we need to deal with this."

Hill, who is also Washington's negotiator on the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme, said that the discussion with EU officials, including foreign policy chief Javier Solana, was "long overdue".

The meeting showed little sign that the two sides were coming together on the arms exports issue, although an expected delay in the EU's decision has cooled the temperature of the debate.

A spokesperson for Solana said that the EU was still committed to revising the ban. But he stressed that the Union is working on safeguard mechanisms.

The talks also addressed North Korea's threats to launch nuclear tests. Hill said that North Korea was not interested in the six-party talks which are currently at the forefront of diplomatic efforts.

"At some point we are going to have to sit down and work out what the way forward is," he said.

Hill said that while it was important to include Europe at an early stage in any possible solution to the North Korea issue, it was premature to discuss additions to the six-party format, which includes the US, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea.

The European Union and the United States launched unprecedented talks on a long-term strategy towards Asia, May 2005.