Ireland has seen excellent relations with China during the past several years and it would bepleased to see cooperation between the two countries furthered in various areas including trade, education, culture and technology, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Wednesday.

Briefing reporters on his upcoming second official trip to China, scheduled for next month, Ahern said he would head the "biggest trade mission that has ever gone out of Ireland by far" to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

"I saw quite a lot of dealings with China over the past years since I formulated the Asian Strategy... So very very close relationship," Ahern said in an interview with Chinese reporters.

On the development of relations between Ireland and China, Ahern said, "Our political and economical relations have continued to improve, they are very well developed over these six years," he said.

"In terms of trade, the figures are there for themselves... the trade relations between our two countries remain strong," he said.

"We are trying to do in all areas. Bilateral relations should be as they are. We should try to do in education, we should try to do in culture. A lot of our visitor connections have been of technology because of the development of software in this country," the Irish leader said.

"We are very much looking forward to going to your country nextmonth... We will travel to Beijing, to Shanghai, to Hong Kong, we will have a lot of contacts with the people there," said Ahern, stressing that he enjoyed his first official trip to China in September 1998 and hailing the Chinese people as a friendly people.

On China's economical development, Ahern said his country really wants to develop trade with China.

"The market force as we see it is all the time expanding in China, you are developing a new market, you are developing fair competition as far as people can see...Ireland wants to trade goods and services, that is why we want to develop bilateral trade," said the Irish prime minister.

Admitting that there was still "ground for improvement" in Irish-Chinese relations, Ahern stressed the importance of his government's Asian Strategy which aimed at boosting Ireland's relations with Asia, especially with China.

"The Asian Strategy is enormously important for us. We started developing that back six years ago, in terms of two-way trade. This increased dramatically. In terms of Irish companies now dealing with China, in terms of many of our people at our educational institutions having close relationships, our cultural relationships, issues of tourism, the Irish economy, and they are all very positive," he said.

"So this opens up a huge opportunity for us and to extend and expand our business, our trade, with China particular," Ahern said.

"And I think the shared view, the shared opinion over our Asian colleagues and our Irish colleagues is that the potential for growth in this relationship is enormous, the areas of development... are going extremely well," he added.

Asked about the Irish government's stance towards the lifting of the EU arms embargo on China, Ahern said the EU made a lot of progress at that stage during Ireland's EU presidency in the firsthalf of this year.

"Europe is continuing to examine the issue with all of our partners considering our overall relationship with China and our ongoing commitments to human rights in a broader region of international context. At this stage, we can't preempt what the European Union might collectively discuss...I know that this issue is going well and making steady progress...I think we can report that things are going in the right direction," Ahern stressed.

China and Ireland established diplomatic relations in June 1979 and exchanged ambassadors in 1980.

In recent years, the relations between the countries have made faster progress with their exchanges and cooperation increased and enriched continuously in the fields of economy and trade, education, science and technology, culture and agriculture.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2004)