By DPA
Hamburg, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier rebuked anti-globalisation protesters Tuesday as a meeting in Hamburg of 16 Asian nations, including India, and the 27 members of the European Union resumed.
He said the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) was discussing the issues that protesters had raised in a demonstration the previous day in the port city as the two-day meeting began.
“The protesters have a right to demonstrate. They have a right to raise the issues,” said the German minister, who was hosting the foreign ministers’ talks as part of the German presidency of the EU.
“But I would like to ask them a question back. Why do they demonstrate against a conference where Asians and Europeans try to establish a shared view on the places of conflict in this world?
“When we have so many places of conflict, we are duty bound to try to find a solution in a spirit of partnership,” he insisted, then adding: “We are trying.”
ASEM, held every two years, offers ministers or their deputies a chance to talk and does not take any formal decisions.
Demonstrators representing labour, church, peace and leftist groups had charged the previous day that globalization was causing poverty in underdeveloped countries.
Several hundred radicals from the 4,000-strong demonstration clashed with riot police after the procession ended Monday.
The radicals, who call themselves the Black Block, said they had wanted to “disrupt” the ASEM and would do the same again at the June 6-8 Group of Eight (G8) summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.
Police arrested 24 demonstrators on suspicion of violence including attacks on security officers and making firebombs, a police spokesman said late Monday. Another 64 people were detained.
Tuesday’s talks in Hamburg’s ornate town hall were to cover world crises, anti-terrorism policy and energy security. India and Pakistan are attending the ASEM for the first time
On Monday, at the start of the meeting, the EU and China were at odds over climate change policy. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi rebuffed calls for China, which has nearly a quarter of the world’s population, to agree to sharp cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.