Brussels - The European Union must raise questions of human rights and political freedom with China's premier Wen Jiabao when he visits Brussels on Friday, leading human-rights group Amnesty International said Thursday.

The EU's relationship with China should be "based on mutual respect," but should "include frank discussions on human rights," Nicolas Beger, head of Amnesty's EU office, said in a statement.

"A relationship that is limited to praise would not amount to much," he said.

EU-China relations hit an unexpected low in November when Wen cancelled a summit in France - then holder of the EU's rotating presidency - in protest at a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.

He is now touring European capitals in what is seen in the EU as an attempt to mend faces with his country's main trading partner.

On Friday he is set to visit the headquarters of the EU's executive, the European Commission, in Brussels, and to sign deals on issues such as student exchanges and civil aviation worth an estimated 60 million euros (78 million dollars).

Ahead of the visit, Amnesty wrote an open letter to commission supremo Jose Manuel Barroso urging him to "place human rights at the core of a renewed relationship with China."

In particular, the letter calls on the EU to urge China to ratify the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and to ease its pressure on the newly-created "Charter 08" reform movement, which Amnesty says is subject to police harassment.

Senior commission officials said the three main topics of the meeting would be bilateral relations, the troubled global economy and ways to combat climate change.

However, "the issue of human rights and the situation in Tibet is raised regularly and systematically in our political dialogue with Chinese officials," commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said. (dpa)