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The lawmakers, in a report adopted by the European Parliament's development committee, urged the 27 nation bloc to uphold its arms embargo against China, citing notably Beijing's role in Sudan and Zimbabwe. "As partners of Africa, both the EU and China together must find a more responsible approach to the international arms trade," Fiona Hall, a British member of the assembly's Liberal Democrats group, said in a statement. China is Sudan's main overseas supporter and arms supplier and has come under growing pressure to use its influence on the East African regime to end the bloodshed in Darfur, an area more than twice the size of Britain. This has mounted ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg this month resigned as an artistic consultant for the Games over the conflict in Darfur, which the United States describes as the first genocide of the 21st century. The conflict, which the United Nations says has claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 and displaced 2.2 million others, has raged since 2003 when rebel groups demanded a greater share of the country's resources. In their report, the lawmakers called on the EU "to maintain its arms embargo on China, as long as China continues to exports arms to armed forces and armed groups in countries, many of them in Africa, that fuel and perpetuate conflicts and perpetrate gross violations of human rights." They urged the EU to demand that China "suspend military cooperation and arms deals with those governments that are responsible for human rights violations, are involved in conflicts or on the brink of war, such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea." The report said that, rather than ensure neutrality, China's policy of "trade only, no politics" in Africa provides some "dictators with political and financial support to stay in power". |
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