But the United States strongly opposes the EU plan and a new law passed by China this week giving a legal basis to an invasion of Taiwan if it moves toward independence is making the European Union rethink.

"We believe -- and the US also believes -- that now is the time to ... have a strategic dialogue," Annalisa Giannella, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's personal representative on proliferation issues, told reporters here Tuesday.

"Our mission to Washington is to listen and to explain -- to listen to American concerns and to explain both our export control policies, how we see the possible impact or non-impact of the lifting of the embargo and, generally speaking, our approach to China," she said.

Giannella is heading a delegation that met on Monday and Tuesday with senior officials at the State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council, as well as with members of Congress.

Among them were Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee; Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee; a senior staff member for Senator Joe Biden; and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, an EU diplomat said.

A senior EU official said the matters discussed in the meetings would be taken into consideration by the EU in making a decision on whether to lift the embargo. EU foreign ministers are to discuss the issue again on Wednesday.

An EU official in Brussels said China's new anti-secession law could negatively influence plans to lift the arms ban, or at least the timing of such a move.

The European Commission, the EU executive branch, insists that lifting the arms ban should have no direct impact on the quantity or type of weapons sold to China.

"It has never been our intention that the lifting of the arms embargo should lead to an increase in arms (sales to China) quantitatively or qualitatively," an EU official said in Brussels.

The EU plans to accompany the lifting of the embargo with a stronger code of conduct, designed to prevent the sale of certain types of weapons or technology.

The 25-member EU has been considering since last year plans to lift the ban, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

France has led arguments that the EU ban is outdated because of the political in China.

A senior EU diplomat, meanwhile, pointed out that the European Union has imposed an arms embargo against only four nations: China, Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

The diplomat said lumping China together with the other three nations is not an intelligent way to deal with such a major power, stressing that the EU favors engagement and feels that much progress has been made as a result.

Speaking to reporters en route to India on Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said EU officials "know very well our views on the arms embargo, that this is not a time to end (it).

"It's a time when Asia is in transition, when the military balance needs to be maintained. It's a time when human rights concerns continue coming out of Tiananmen, which was the original reason for the arms embargo.

Rice said she hoped the anti-secession law "would at least remind the Europeans that there are still serious security issues in this region, and indeed in the cross-Straits, in particular."

She also reaffirmed US concern that China was boosting military spending at a time of rising tensions with Taiwan.

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