Europe seeks to pressure China at EU-Asia meeting

Hamburg, Germany - European foreign ministers are expected to confront China over the Darfur conflict at a meeting of 46 EU and Asian nations that starts here Monday.

The eighth Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) of foreign ministers will also focus on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs and fraught efforts to map the way forward on fighting climate change.

Asian nations are also likely to come under pressure over their attitude to Myanmar, whose hardline leadership has extended by one year the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Darfur amid frustration over Beijing's support for the Sudanese government.

China's close ties with Sudan -- it sells arms to the African state and buys more than half its oil output -- has bedevilled US-led attempts on the UN Security Council to use sanctions to force President Omar al-Beshir to let UN troops into Darfur.

According to UN figures, fighting in the western Sudanese region has claimed at least 200,000 lives since 2003 when an ethnic minority rebellion met with a scorched earth response from the government and allied Arab militias.

The ASEM meeting comes just a week ahead of the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm in Germany.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has put Darfur on the G8 agenda, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned that neither this issue nor the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crises can be resolved without China.

"There will be no solution on the question of Iran, on the question of Darfur, on the question of North Korea, without strong and positive Chinese involvement," Sarkozy said on Wednesday.

The EU troika will hold a special meeting with Yang just before the two-day ASEM meeting starts.

China has been blocking US-led attempts at the UN Security Council to use sanctions to force Sudan to allow UN troops into the region to stem the bloodshed.

On Friday, the council endorsed plans for a hybrid UN-African Union force but its deployment remains subject to the approval of Khartoum.

Kouchner has pinpointed China as one of the countries that should be included, along with the United States, in a proposed new contact group of nations on Darfur.

As with the G8, climate change is high on the agenda for the Hamburg meeting, and diplomats were expected to lobby China and new ASEM member India on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Together the two nations' output of the harmful gases will surpass that of the United States by 2015 and Merkel, who is having trouble winning Washington's support on the environment, believes that without their help efforts to fight global warming will fail.

German authorities are expecting up to 100,000 anti-globalisation protestors at the G8 summit and Hamburg police have warned that some 5,000 could target the ASEM meeting as they 'warm up' for Heiligendamm.

Agence France Presse