China blocks European call for carbon-dioxide cuts (Roundup)

May 28, 2007, 17:43 GMT

Hamburg - Beijing voiced reluctance Monday to accept far-reaching cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

In the German city of Hamburg, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China was a developing nation and suggested it was up to rich nations to shoulder the cuts.

Climate change was to be a key issue at the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Tuesday among 43 Asian and European foreign ministers in Hamburg.

In talks with three leading EU officials before the meeting started, diplomats said Yang insisted there were three sorts of emissions: luxury emissions, normal emissions and survival emissions.

'Ours are necessary for our survival,' he said, according to diplomats who asked not to be quoted by name.

Meeting the media, Yang said, 'China is a developing country and per-capita emission of greenhouse gases in China is much lower that in developed nations. China is really in need of development.

'A substantial number of people in China are living under the poverty line.'

China, with a population of 1.3 billion, has reportedly been opening a new coal-fired electricity plant on average every second day.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso met separately with Yang and said the Chinese minister had shown 'great interest' in the climate change issue. Japan has been proposing halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Yang called Monday for the European Union to drop restrictions on exports of high-technology products to China. The EU maintains the ban is needed because of human-rights breaches in China.

Referring to China's 130-billion-euro (170-billion-dollar) trade surplus with the EU, Yang said: 'There is potential for increasing trade. China is not deliberately seeking a trade surplus with Europe, and would like to import as much as possible.

'I hope that Europe will relax its restrictions on high-tech exports to China,' he said after the meeting with three EU foreign ministers led by Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The European Union's commissioner for foreign relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, gave no hint of changes in the trade sanctions.

She said the Europeans raised human-rights issues with Yang Monday, including Chinese restrictions on the internet, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

She said the EU directly asked Yang why an EU-hosted meeting in Berlin on rights issues this month had not been able to take place. Chinese envoys left Berlin in protest at the presence of Hong Kong non-governmental organizations they do not approve of.

Steinmeier said negotiations were continuing between the EU and China on a partnership agreement. Those talks began in 2003.

He added that more talks were also need on climate-protection issues and he hoped a successor accord to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012, could be settled by the time of a UN climate summit in Bali this December.