A SHAMEFUL QUID PRO QUO: Peter Mandelson, EU's trade commissiones, during a trip to China has hinted that Europe could lift the arms embargo if China limits its textile exports to Europe.

"We in Europe are preparing to move forward to lift the arms embargo," he said in a speech to students at Beijing's University of International Business and Economics.

Mandelson said China could adopt a cautious approach to the new global trading environment, highlighting textiles as an example following the lifting of quotas on January 1 this year.

"I have been encouraged by the readiness of China to consider introducing measures which may help to inhibit a dramatic surge of exports which could destabilize the new conditions under which world trade in textile products takes place," he said.

As my friend Josep Maria Fàbregas says in his blog (link in Catalan; my translation), "this means that Brussels is keen to sell the weapons with which China will threaten Taiwan, and in exchange Europeans will pay more for their clothes. That's a model of international policy, and not the Americans getting rid of Saddam so that Iraqis can go and vote!"