Foreign ministers to re-examine China arms ban

Foreign ministers from the EU states are poised to reopen discussion at their next meeting of the EU’s 17-year-old ban on selling arms to China.

They will discuss lifting the ban, despite deep divisions over the move, at their meeting on 11 December which will attempt to reach a deal on a code of conduct for arms exports.

In 2005 France and the UK clashed over attempts to lift the ban on arms to China and there is little sign that positions have now changed.

France continues to argue that the ban, brought in after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, is anachronistic, while the UK, backed by the US, has argued that increased arms sales to China could change the balance of power in eastern Asia and damage transatlantic relations.

But Finland, the current holder of the EU presidency, is pushing hard for a deal on a new EU code of conduct for arms exports and has put the issue on the agenda for the ministerial meeting. France wants to link the code of conduct to lifting the ban on arms sales to China.

According to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the EU is not in a position to reverse its arms embargo, but the EU should press ahead with the code of conduct. "The code of conduct is a separate issue," he said.

"We cannot take decisions like these on purely commercial considerations. I think most people have stepped back from that. We have to look at the strategic issues, we have to look at the transatlantic aspects of it.

"We need to have an understanding across the Atlantic that is somewhat deeper than we have today on some of the security and stability issues of east Asia."

Finland, the UK and Sweden are leading a drive at the United Nations to establish an international arms treaty and according to Roy Isbister, the head of export controls at Saferworld, these efforts may be affected by the EU’s inability to agree such a deal at home.

"The EU is starting to lag behind other parts of the world," said Isbister, citing recent agreements in Latin America and Africa.

But Finland and the UK face opposition. Austria, France, Italy and Luxembourg have argued that previous EU talks established the adoption of a new code of conduct as a quid pro quo for lifting the ban.

One French diplomat expressed concern that the code of conduct was being discussed independently. "We were a little surprised when it was raised," he said.

Although Denmark and Sweden are urging the EU to agree the code of conduct with or without a deal on China, Finland now looks likely to put both items on the agenda of the December ministerial meeting.

Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja is expected to contact his colleagues in the coming days to gauge whether a deal can be reached.

The French diplomat said that France continued to support the lifting of the ban. "It is overdue in our view," he said, "we don’t think it would be useful [to have another debate] if there is another sterile discussion and no decision."

Chinese officials continue to press for the ban to be lifted but admit that previous attempts were badly timed - coinciding with a widely criticised law on Taiwan’s succession, which threatened war if Taiwan declared independence.

Foreign ministers from the EU states are poised to reopen discussion at their next meeting of the EU’s 17-year-old ban on selling arms to China.