Downing Street Says » Chinese Foreign Minister

The Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) started by updating journalists on the Chinese Foreign Minister’s visit to London yesterday when he met with David Miliband and had a pre-arranged meeting with Simon McDonald (the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Advisor), which the Prime Minister dropped in on for approximately 20 – 30 minutes. At this meeting they discussed a variety of things including the Prime Minister’s visit to China in the new year; the situations in Darfur and Burma and the proposals the Prime Minister set out in his Mansion House speech on the form of international institutions.

Asked if the Chinese supported the proposals Britain was putting to the UN next week re measures against Iran, the PMS replied that we should wait and see; there would have to be a discussion of the situation regarding Iran next week. The Chinese had been supportive in the past; obviously we wanted to do this on a multi-lateral basis, so we should wait and see how things developed over the coming week. As had been increasingly clear following the report from the US earlier this week, it remained the case that the situation regarding Iran remained serious.

Asked if the issue of Chinese industrial espionage came up, the PMS said he was not aware that that had come up in the Prime Minister’s meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister and it was best to check with the Foreign Office to see if it came up at any other meeting.

Asked if the Prime Minister saw the Government’s relationship with China as more like the relationship France was pursuing or Germany’s more stand-offish relationship, the PMS said that the Prime Minister was focussing on what Britain’s relationship with China was, rather than trying to come up with a relative ranking. The Prime Minister believed that Britain should have a strong relationship with China. Insofar as there were human rights issues, these would be raised in the appropriate way, but the Prime Minister had always said, as Chancellor and now Prime Minister that the UK’s relationship with China needed to be a strong one; we shared a number of common interests and China was a key international partner.

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» Friday, December 7, 2007

Chinese Foreign Minister

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