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China Urges EU to Lift Arms Embargo

China says the European Union's 16-year-old arms embargo is having a negative effect on trade and should be trashed, signalling that the issue will be a top priority when President Hu Jintao visits Europe in November, according to China Daily.

In a wide-ranging interview with journalists, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing reiterated Beijing's opposition to the "discriminatory" ban on China and urged the EU to lift it immediately.

"All the leaders of the EU that I have come in contact with believe that (the embargo) is a legacy of the Cold War, is poorly founded and is useless and only harmful," Li said.

"This should have been thrown into the trash heap of history a long time ago."

Hu will leave on a tour of Great Britain, Germany and Spain on November 2 before heading to the Republic of Korea to attend the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit on November 18 and 19.

The arms embargo has been a central issue in every high-level visit between the leaders of China and the EU’s member countries for years.

France and Germany have urged the lifting of the ban, but Britain and other EU nations disagree, citing US security concerns in the Asia Pacific region, especially those related to Taiwan.

Beijing has said it is not interested in buying European weapons, but that it is opposed to the ban in principle, especially as the EU and China have named their relationship a "strategic partnership."

"China's position is very clear. This ban involves and reflects political discrimination," Li said.

"Political discrimination is not conducive to cooperation; it is totally useless and should be abandoned. If we really look at mutual benefit, this is what we should do."

Although Li maintained there was little else China could do to nudge the EU toward the total lifting of the embargo, he did lay a veiled threat at increasingly lucrative bilateral trade.

"China's trade volume with the EU has for the first time exceeded the trade volume between China and Japan. Without such discrimination no doubt the trade volume would be even bigger and we would have more benefits from bilateral cooperation," Li said.

"The EU people, like the Chinese people, will reap more benefits from this process."