Ayala open to compromise development

HAMBURG (AFP) - European foreign ministers are expected to confront China over the Darfur conflict at a meeting of top diplomats from 46 EU and Asian nations that gets underway here on Monday.

The eighth Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) of foreign ministers will also focus on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs and fraught efforts to map the way forward on fighting climate change.

Asian nations are also likely to come under pressure on their position towards Myanmar, whose hardline leadership has extended by one year the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is set to hold one-on-one talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Darfur amid frustration over Beijing's support for the Sudanese government.

China's close ties with Sudan it sells arms to the African state and buys more than half its oil output is bedevilling US-led attempts within the UN Security Council to use sanctions to force President Omar al-Beshir to let UN troops into Darfur.

Fighting in the western Sudanese region has claimed some 200,000 lives since 2003 when an ethnic minority rebellion met with a scorched earth response from the government and allied Arab militias.

The ASEM meeting comes just a week ahead of the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm in Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has put Darfur on the G8 agenda, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned that neither this issue nor the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crises can be resolved without China.

The EU troika will hold a special meeting with Yang just before the two-day ASEM meeting starts.

As with the G8, climate change is high on the agenda for the Hamburg meeting, and diplomats are expected to lobby China and new ASEM member India on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Together the two nations' output of the harmful gases will surpass that of the United States by 2015 and Merkel, who is having trouble winning Washington's support on the environment, believes that without their help efforts to fight global warming will fail.

German authorities are expecting up to 100,000 anti-globalisation protestors at the G8 summit and Hamburg police have warned that some 5,000 could target the ASEM meeting as they 'warm up' for Heiligendamm.