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French Lawmakers Snub Chinese President

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 January 2004, 06:00 CST

China's president was given the rare honor Tuesday of speaking before France's parliament, but some lawmakers critical of the Chinese government's human rights record said they would boycott the speech.

Even as their leader, French President Jacques Chirac, rolled out the red carpet for China's Hu Jintao, and reaffirmed France's support for the unity of China and Taiwan, at least 15 lawmakers party said they would skip the speech to protest perceived Chinese human rights abuses.

Chirac and Hu on Tuesday signed a declaration in which France reaffirmed its support for the unification of China and Taiwan and said it opposed any unilateral action that would increase tensions in the region, a reference to a planned referendum in Taiwan.

In planning for the visit, China had pushed for Hu to be allowed the seldom-granted privilege of addressing France's parliament. Hu, making his first state visit to Western Europe since becoming president last March, was expected to discuss China's growth and foreign policy.

Those boycotting including lawmakers from Chirac's UMP party and the Greens.

UMP lawmaker Lionnel Luca called on other lawmakers to skip the speech. He appealed to their sense of history - noting that France declared itself a defender of human rights as long ago as 1789.

"French lawmakers, who are the heirs of those who voted for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, have no reason to listen to the speech of a head of state who will speak in hackneyed phrases," Luca said on French radio.

The parliament, added Mariton, "was conceived for debates" not for receiving the head of a country that is "not a democracy."

In a strong show of support for the Chinese leader, Chirac said at a state dinner for Hu on Monday night that Taiwan would commit a "grave error" which could destabilize that region by holding a March referendum that Beijing opposes.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian plans to ask voters whether the island that China claims as part of its territory should beef up its anti-missile defenses - if Beijing refuses to withdraw the hundreds of missiles it has pointed at Taiwan.

Speaking at the dinner, Chirac added his weight to China's opposition to the plan, saying: "Breaking the status quo with a unilateral destabilizing initiative, whatever it is, including a referendum, would favor division over unity."

"It would be a grave error. It would carry a heavy responsibility for stability in the region," he added.

Hu responded by thanking Chirac for France's "clear position of principle ... against the moves by the Taiwanese authorities that tend toward the independence of Taiwan through a referendum."

"We firmly oppose the independence of Taiwan and will not let anyone separate Taiwan from the rest of China in one way or another," Hu said.

But Chirac also pressed for human rights improvements from China, urging Hu to lead his country of 1.3 billion people "resolutely down the track of democracy and of liberties," to match its impressive economic transformation.

"Respect for human rights is a necessary condition for the development of modern societies and economies," Chirac said. "I know it is one of your priorities."

Seeking stronger ties with the world's fastest growing economy and Asia's rising power, France wrapped the visit in pomp and ceremony.

But China's human rights record to an extent overshadowed the official agenda, which focused on celebrating 40 years of China-France relations and boosting the nations' political and economic ties.

Mariton, one of the dissenting lawmakers from Chirac's party, planned to hand Hu a list of Chinese political prisoners' names - provided by rights group Amnesty International - when Hu meets lawmakers after his speech.

Luca, meanwhile, planned to ask Hu to resume negotiations with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and commute a suspended death sentence for Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

But in what would mark a milestone in China's long efforts to beat back its human rights critics, European ministers meeting Monday in Brussels said the EU could decide this spring to lift its ban on arms sales to China - imposed after Beijing's bloody 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

"Our feeling is that the embargo is out of date as relations between Europe and China improve," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said.

But "we are not yet at the point of lifting the embargo yet," he added.

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Associated Press Writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot contributed to this report.

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