WASHINGTON, May 25 (AFP) - Strained Sino-US ties frayed further Tuesday as US lawmakers overwhelmingly voted for a new probe into the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and blasted China's human rights record. Voting 418-0, the House of Representatives backed a non-binding resolution commemorating the massacre shortly after a House panel released a report charging Beijing with widespread theft of US nuclear secrets over several decades. Relations between Beijing and Washington have been strained over the past few weeks as a result of NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade and ensuing violent protests that left the US mission in the Chinese capital in shambles. Hundreds and possibly thousands of demonstrators were killed when Chinese forces swept into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, ending weeks of pro-democracy protests. "The human rights situation has not improved" in China despite billions of dollars of US foreign investment, said Republican Representative Frank Wolf. "In fact it has worsened." "I am convinced that the Chinese government cannot last much longer," he said. "Any government that keeps its power through lying and deceiving its own people cannot stand forever." A spokeswoman for Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson, a main backer of the measure, said the Senate would likely take it up before the Congress begins a week-long recess late Friday that will run throught the June 4 anniversary. US senators and representatives gathered May 18 to present the resolution. With prominent Chinese dissident Harry Wu looking on and flanked by a poster showing the lone Chinese man who in 1989 halted a column of tanks, several lawmakers from across the US political spectrum demanded Beijing halt "ongoing and egregious human rights abuses." The group urged passage of identical non-binding Senate and House resolutions condemning the 1989 incident, pressing Beijing for a new investigation and to re-evaluate its official verdict. "I do not want human rights in China and the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre to be lost" among a host of other thorny Sino-US issues, Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson, a principal backer of the bill, said at the time. The measure denounces Chinese human rights abuses and expresses sympathy for relatives of the crackdown's victims. It also calls on China to end human rights abuses and free all prisoners of conscience, including those who took part in the May and June 1989 pro-democracy protests, and compensate families of the victims. The resolution also calls on Beijing to ratify and implement the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, which it signed on October 5, 1998.  