WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush’s search for better relations with Europe in his second term faces an early test next week with a visit by an old ally, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

The Briton is coming ostensibly to say goodbye to Secretary of State Colin Powell, with whom Straw planned war and postwar diplomacy on Iraq, and to greet Powell’s designated successor, Condoleezza Rice.

In the process, Straw will convey the unsettling message that the Europeans are united on wanting to sell weapons to China. U.S. arms sales to the Asian giant are banned.

The Bush administration worries that European arms could be used against U.S. armed forces should they be called upon to defend Taiwan. Thus, even though Britain is considered the most steadfast of allies, Straw probably will go home with an earful from his American hosts.

The administration is citing China’s weak record on human rights as another reason not to suspend the embargo the Europeans imposed after the Chinese crackdown in 1989 on protesters in and near Tiananmen Square. Hundreds of people, including some police and soldiers, were killed when government forces drove democracy protesters from the central Beijing square.

Straw said last week in Beijing that a ban on human rights grounds is inconsistent because North Korea is not under a similar embargo.

Straw said Britain wants to see China covered instead by a European Union code of conduct that regulates all weapons sales. “The code is wider and stronger than this individual embargo,” Straw said after meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing.

Stopping in Tokyo, Straw ran into a Japanese effort to maintain the ban. “Japan opposes lifting the ban,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said, citing concerns about security in East Asia.

Bush plans a trip to Europe next month to try to patch up differences with some of the allies over Iraq. Britain, by contrast, was a steadfast supporter of the war and is helping to try to put down a violent postwar insurrection in Iraq.

The president intends to send Rice to Europe ahead of him to pave the way for a better trans-Atlantic relationship.

James F. Dobbins, a former assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said Friday that the administration should base its stand on arms sales on whether it can secure European assurances on restraints.

“On the one hand,” Dobbins said in an interview, “it would seem not to make sense to sell the Chinese anything they might want. On the other hand, China is a friendly power with which the United States and Europe do a great deal of business.”

Dobbins, who heads the Rand Corp.’s international security program, said “the complete post-Tiananmen ban may be outdated, but it should be replaced by some kind of restraint so the administration can remove its objections to lifting the ban.”

However, John Hulsman, senior foreign policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, strenuously objected to the canceling the ban.

“The European talk about establishing a code of conduct that won’t change the geopolitical balance, but that wouldn’t be worth the paper it is printed on,” Hulsman said in an interview.

“Every state will interpret it the way they want,” he said, France going in one direction and Britain taking a position favorable to the United States.

“Faced with the choice of repairing relations with the U.S. or selling a couple of hundreds of million dollars of arms to China, the Europeans chose China,” he said. “And that is the most worrying thing of all.”

“This is just breathtakingly stupid,” Hulsman said.

Britain, France and Germany say the ban hinders relations with China, and safeguards exist that would prevent arms sales from being used improperly.

The White House has given no sign of easing the U.S. embargo on arms sales to China, also imposed after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

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