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Hu visits London, Sino-UK ties get warmer
(China Daily/Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-09 06:10
Britain and China will seek this week to expand cooperation on cleaner
technologies to tackle global warming during Hu's visit.
Beijing, like Washington, rejects targets-based approaches to climate change
like the Kyoto pact and Prime Minister Tony Blair knows he must focus on
developing less-polluting ways to burn coal and on pursuing alternative power
sources with China.
Blair wants to encourage China to take a lead among developing countries
ahead of a United Nations climate change conference in December in Montreal,
British officials said.
Trade, China's human rights record and its growing influence in tackling
issues such as the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea will also be on the
agenda of Hu's visit, officials said.
Britain is Hu's first stop on a trip that will take him to Germany, Spain and
South Korea.
He will push for an end to a European Union arms embargo but no breakthrough
is expected, according to a Reuter report.
Lavish ceremony will dominate the two-day London visit. Hu will attend a
state banquet with Queen Elizabeth and some of London's famed landmarks are
expected to be illuminated in red.
The visit is the first to Britain by a Chinese president since that of Hu's
predecessor Jiang Zemin in October 1999.
At talks with Hu on Wednesday, Blair will discuss growing economic and trade
ties.
Trade tensions between the EU and China flared earlier this year as Chinese
textile exports surged, forcing a new limit on Chinese sales to the bloc until
2008.
Hu's tour comes at a time when China is particularly active on the
international stage. Beijing hosts six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear
crisis program this week and plays host to U.S. President George W.
Bush from Nov. 19.
"We will discuss ... the current security preoccupations in the world and how
we co-operate better on the (United Nations) Security Council," Blair said.
Blair, who visited Beijing in September for an EU-China summit, has put
tackling climate change at the top of the agenda for his presidency of the Group
of Eight rich nations and of the EU, which both end in December.
He has yet to achieve any major breakthrough and environmentalists last week
accused him of losing his nerve in the face of opposition from the United
States, China and India when he said emissions targets made some people "very
worried" and called for a "more sensitive set of mechanisms".
China, Australia, the United States, India and South Korea have united in a
regional pact on greenhouse emissions for when Kyoto expires in 2012, focusing
on the use of new technologies.
Britain and the EU are helping China to develop a power plant that uses
technology to capture carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and store
it underground.
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