The United States has announced it will resume dialogue with China on human rights next month after a two-year hiatus, promising to raise concerns about Internet and religious freedoms. The May 13-14 talks would be the first under US President Barack Obama, who has faced harsh criticism from some activists who see him as downplaying human rights in his quest for broader ties with China. The two nations had initially planned to hold talks earlier this year but no date was set amid China's anger over US arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Thursday he expected the two countries to have a 'candid discussion' on issues including religious freedom, Internet freedom and the rule of law. He said the two sides would likely discuss 'the broader topic of Internet freedom and the availability of information to Chinese citizens.' 'We disagree with China as to what that represents,' he said. China rigorously filters the Internet to block access to sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protesters and the banned Falungong spiritual movement. Google said in January that it would stop cooperating with China's censorship of the Internet after reporting cyberattacks against the accounts of the company and activists. Crowley said the United States would also raise recent cases in which Chinese lawyers defending unpopular causes have reported being disbarred or harassed by the authorities. 'The rule of law means just that, and the Chinese government should not be intimidating the legal profession or denying the right of counsel to any of its citizens,' Crowley said. On Thursday, two Chinese human rights lawyers -- Tang Jitian and Liu Wei -- went to court battling the revocation of their licenses after they represented a practitioner of Falungong. China and the United States started the human rights dialogue in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square clampdown, in which authorities killed hundreds if not thousands of protesters. China suspended the dialogue in 2002 in anger over US criticism at the United Nations of its rights record. It only agreed to one other round of talks, which were held in Beijing in May 2008. During those discussions, the United States urged China to improve its treatment of its own people in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. T. Kumar, the international advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, said previous talks bore little fruit. He feared the dialogue could even set back human rights if China sees the issue as separate from the rest of its relationship with the United States. 'We welcome the resumption but we urge the administration to set some specific benchmarks and timetable that is linked to the dialogue. 'We want the administration to keep human rights as part and parcel of the overall engagement with China,' he said. 'Otherwise it would be easy for China to ignore as it's not part of the major engagement.' Kumar appealed for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to maintain pressure on human rights during their expected trip to Beijing in late May for wide-ranging talks. Clinton triggered an uproar early in her tenure by saying that human rights concerns would not 'interfere' with cooperation with China on other issues such as fighting climate change and reviving the global economy. Next month's talks will be held between Michael Posner, the US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, and Chen Xu, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry's department of international organizations and conferences. The United States and China have been gradually resuming cooperation after the tensions over Taiwan and Tibet. US Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday he expected China to sign on to new UN sanctions against Iran. 