The U.S. delegation will be led by Lorne Craner

BEIJING, December 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Human rights groups and a leading dissident Tuesday, December 17, cast doubt on the effectiveness of U.S. efforts to pressure China into improving its human rights record as the two sides held their second day of dialogue.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch called the ongoing talks a “pro-forma exercise,” and blasted China for using the global war on terror as an excuse to crack down on ethnic Uighur groups in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Human Rights Watch also criticized Washington for placing a little-known Uighur group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, on a U.N. list of terrorist groups, an action it said had emboldened Beijing in its crackdown.

“Since the September 11 attacks, China has tried to use the terrorism issue to bolster its domestic political agenda,” the group said in an e-mail sent to Beijing-based foreign journalists.

“Its greatest accomplishment was moving the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush from a position of unqualified criticism of China’s crackdown on ethnic minorities to taking actions that indirectly lend legitimacy to Beijing's policies.”

The U.S. delegation, led by Lorne Craner, Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, will spend two days in Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region, from Wednesday, December 18.

Before Tuesday’s meetings, U.S. officials declined to elaborate on what would be discussed but said rights issues relating to Xinjiang would be an “important focus.”

Craner’s visit to Xinjiang “is clearly an effort at damage control,” the group said, adding that China’s actions in the region continued to be characterized by arbitrary arrests and summary trials often leading to the death penalty.

It urged Craner to demand China open up Xinjiang to international trial observers and allow unrestricted access to U.N. rights experts.

“Mr. Craner should tell China that the U.S. will work with other governments at the highest levels to push a resolution on China’s dismal human rights record at next year's annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva,” it said.

While leading Chinese rights activist Ding Zilin welcomed the resumption of talks, stalled until October last year after the U.S. bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo air campaign, she doubted much would be achieved.

“It is good that China and the United States have resumed their human rights dialogue, I hope the talks will be constructive and substantive and not empty and symbolic,” Ding told AFP.

“(But) I feel that it is very regrettable that the U.S. has allowed China to place the issue of June 4 (the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests) off the agenda because if you cannot address the fundamental issues, then nothing will change.”

She said Beijing’s refusal to admit to any human rights violations in 1989 had only encouraged it to crack down on other groups like the outlawed Falungong spiritual group and the banned China Democracy Party.

Since her 17-year old son was killed by Chinese soldiers during the bloody Tiananmen democracy protests, Ding has been an outspoken critic of Beijing's human rights record.

The new round of rights talks come as diplomacy between the United States and China has become unusually engaged with a flurry of visits by senior U.S. officials.

Some observers have said the top agenda items during the recent high-level U.S. visits - Iraq and North Korea - could weaken the current U.S. delegation’s position because Washington needs China’s support.