Germany's Merkel to focus on financial crisis in China (1st Lead)

Oct 23, 2008, 5:19 GMT

   Beijing - German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in China on Thursday for talks that were expected to focus on the global financial crisis.

   Merkel was scheduled to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao later in the day before the two leaders join some 40 other heads of state at the biannual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Friday and Saturday.

   German officials said the fact that Merkel was one of the few foreign leaders making a formal state visit to China for the ASEM summit showed the importance of ties between the two nations.

   She is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao on Friday.

   Two rights groups appealed to Merkel to raise the situation of China's Tibetan and Uighur minorities during her meetings in Beijing.

   Merkel should press China for 'tangible results from the dialogue between the Dalai Lama's representatives and Chinese officials,' Kate Saunders, communications director of the International Campaign for Tibet, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

   Saunders said the ASEM summit was taking place 'at a time of severe repression against peaceful dissent in Tibet,' following anti-Chinese protests earlier this year by Tibetans supporting the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader.

   A European-based group representing China's mainly Muslim Uighur minority also urged Merkel to press China to allow international investigation of claims that Uighurs were involved in several plots to attack the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

   'We hope that Merkel can ask, through diplomatic channels, for an international investigation of their claims,' Dilxat Raxit of the World Uighur Congress told dpa by telephone from Munich.

   'They're looking for an excuse to control the Uighur people,' Raxit said of China's terrorism claims, which included the listing of eight 'most wanted' suspects this week.

   'Nobody knows these people, we have have never heard of these eight people,' he said.

   German officials said Merkel planned to raise human rights issues with Chinese leaders, including China's treatment of ethnic minorities.

   The ASEM summit is also expected to be dominated by talks on the financial crisis, with climate change as the other major topic for the 27 European and 16 Asian nations.