LONDON - The European Union is guilty of "double-speak" on human rights, pressing the issue with certain countries but setting it aside when economic interests are at stake, the head of Amnesty International charged Wednesday.
Amnesty secretary general Irene Khan, speaking at the launch of the rights group's report in London, also slammed the EU for maintaining a "deafening silence" over reported rights violations by the United States.
"On the one hand, the EU's efforts to open human rights dialogue with countries like China is positive. On the other hand, we're disturbed by how quickly political and economic interests outflanked their human rights concerns on such issues," she said.
"In the context of the arms trade ban on China, we would hope that the European Union would use that as a leverage to push for human rights change for China."
Khan also issued a strong warning to Britain and the G8 group of leading industrialized nations that they would be hypocritical if they failed to live up to promises to combat global poverty and tackle trade in small arms.
She welcomed London's support for a proposed international trade treaty to control the sale of conventional arms -- a move that would likely affect Britain, the world's second-largest weapons exporter -- and its aim to put the issue to the G8 summit which meets in July.
But she also warned that it would be "yet another act of hypocrisy if the G8's aim to increase aid to Africa is less than their eagerness to sell arms to African leaders."
Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G8 this year and will head the six-month EU presidency from July, has made poverty relief, particularly in Africa, a main objective of its leadership.
Khan said Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had a "mixed record" on human rights, since despite it vocal commitment to Africa and anti-poverty efforts, it had "blindly followed the US position on human rights" and fought, unsuccessfully, to exempt its troops in Iraq from Britain's own human rights laws.
"We hope that the 'ethical foreign policy' considerations will resurface as this new term begins," she said.
05/25/2005 14:42 GMT