UPDATE 1-U.S. will aim to persuade others to 'call out' China over Uighurs at U.N. - Pompeo

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday the United States would use the United Nations General Assembly this month to persuade countries to help "call out" China over treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority.

Asked after a speech at Kansas State University how Washington had been promoting an end to the oppression of Uighurs in China, Pompeo said, "Insufficiently, because it's still going on." "We are going to have this U.N. General Assembly in the third week in September. We'll do a number of gatherings, where our efforts will be to get other countries to sign up to help us call out this activity," Pompeo said.

"We want freedom for those folks. We have lots of challenges with China, but this is about their fundamental unalienable rights for those particular individuals." Pompeo reiterated past comments, saying that the treatment of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China "may well end up being one of the worst stains on the world this century."

"It's of that magnitude," he said, adding that the challenge was to "rally the world" against it. "We have done so today with some success, but not nearly enough, to call this out and work with the Chinese government, to convince them - to convince the Chinese Communist Party - that this isn't in their best interests ... that it's not the right way to treat ... other human beings," Pompeo said.

In his speech, Pompeo charged that over the past two years in its western province of Xinjiang, China had "tried to brainwash coming on one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps ... to renounce their culture and their faith." Though the United States has ramped up criticism of China's measures in Xinjiang, it has held off on responding with sanctions over the issue, amid on-again-off-again talks to resolve a bitter and costly trade war.

China said on Tuesday it had lodged stern representations with the United States about Pompeo's previous comments about Xinjiang. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said a post by Pompeo on Twitter was just repeating his old narratives to accuse China, and China firmly opposed it.