Luxembourg meeting urges initiative on Burma rights

The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, is to be urged by the EU to take an initiative on Burma. At the instigation of Ireland, Britain and Denmark, the EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg yesterday, agreed that the Luxembourg Presidency should write to Mrs Robinson. They rejected calls from the same three countries to extend sanctions against Burma to areas such as tourism and sport.

Welcoming the move, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, said that reports from EU missions suggested the human rights situation in Burma was deteriorating, although she welcomed the decision of the military regime, SLORC, to allow a congress of the National League for Democracy (NLD) for the first time since 1990. The NLD is led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest.

Simmering EU-US rows over the latter's use of extra-territorial legislation to punish those trading with Iran, Libya and Cuba were put on the diplomatic back-burner yesterday when EU ministers declined to order the return of their ambassadors to Tehran.

With the US signaling that it might be willing to exempt Europe from anti-Iran sanctions legislation, some diplomats suggested the EU foreign ministers made the token gesture to strengthen President Clinton's hand with Congress. But the return is complicated anyway by Tehran's continued insistence on penalising Germany for instigating the withdrawal over Iranian involvement in a Berlin bomb attack.

There is still no sign of an agreement with the US on the anti-Cuba Helms-Burton legislation, with the EU's October 15th deadline for returning to the World Trade Organisation complaints procedure looming.

The EU Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, reported to ministers on the stalled talks and told journalists that although the 15th was "not an absolute deadline" there was "no point in carrying on if we have not made significant progress". He said he expected the US to come up with significant concessions.