Human Rights a Thorny Issue at Asia-Europe Summit

Europe and Asia, trying to modernize ties that have slipped behind the times, on Friday explored ways of increasing economic links but found it impossible to avoid the thorny issue of human rights.

The first Asia-Europe economic summit--a two-day meeting between leaders of the 15 European Union nations and 10 of East Asia’s most robust economies--seeks to renew Europe’s interest in the world’s fastest-growing market. Trade is booming, but European investment here is lagging.

Both sides recognize there are differences of perception, stereotypes that must be overcome and images that no longer correspond to reality.

“Our two regions have taken quite different developmental paths,” Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa, the summit’s host, told the opening session in a Bangkok convention center on Friday. “Accordingly, each has evolved cultural values and standards suited to its own particular circumstances.”

But European leaders insist that concepts of human rights are universal.

All nations are accountable to the system embodied in the United Nations, no matter what their cultural background, said Prime Minister Lamberto Dini of Italy, which now holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

“It was there, with the consensus of us all, that human rights were enshrined, putting the individual at the center of collective organizations, whether states or groups of states,” Dini said Friday.