Zoellick says China Shares International View on Iran

Richard McGregor, The Financial Times:

China has emphasised its support for international efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear programme in talks with the US, Robert Zoellick, the US Deputy Secretary of State said on Wednesday, adding that the two countries had not agreed on the timing and tactics of any diplomatic action.

Mr Zoellick said he had argued in Beijing that China’s interests in maintaining the flow of oil and gas from Iran would be served by helping ensure that Tehran did not develop nuclear weapons.

“I have no sense that the Chinese have a different view of the core principle [of stopping the nuclear programme],” said Mr Zoellick, speaking in Chengdu, western China, at the end of a trip to the US Pacific command in Hawaii, Japan and China.

Mr Zoellick said that far from highlighting their differences with the US on Iran, “on the contrary they very much emphasise they share that view”. READ MORE

China is a crucial player in the evolving diplomacy directed at Tehran’s nuclear programme, both as one of five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council and as a growing buyer of Iranian energy.

The US, Britain, France and Germany have drafted a resolution asking the Security Council to press Tehran “to extend full and prompt co-operation to the International Atomic Energy Agency” to inspect its nuclear facilities.

The resolution stops short of sanctions, something China has said it is reluctant to support.

Mr Zoellick said he told Chinese leaders that Iran’s political posture, such as its support for terrorism and the destruction of Israel, made its push for nuclear weapons even more destabilising.

“If you are concerned about energy security … one might conclude that developing a nuclear capability in a sensitive political region which is the heart of the world’s energy resources would be extremely dangerous,” Mr Zoellick said.

Mr Zoellick’s trip also provided a forum for the US to press China on trade and currency issues ahead of an April visit to Washington by Hu Jintao, China’s president.

Mr Hu had planned to go in September last year but the trip was cancelled at the last minute in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Mr Zoellick captured attention in China with a speech late last year calling for the country to act as a “stakeholder” in the international system in which its interests have become increasingly entwined.

The speech sparked a long debate in China about the meaning of the word “stakeholder”, a concept rarely used and little understood in the country.

One example cited in this debate by Mr Zoellick was China’s high-profile role in trying to broker an agreement to halt North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s reclusive leader, visited China earlier this month in a trip almost entirely devoted to a study of some of his neighbour’s biggest economic success stories, including its booming southern cities.

China has long tried to coax North Korea out of its self-imposed, impoverished isolation and encourage it to experiment with reform.

Mr Zoellick noted that Mr Kim’s visit “closely paralleled” the trip taken by the late Deng Xiaoping in 1992 when he was trying to re-energise economic reform in China.

“[Kim’s trip] is an interesting milepost but where that road goes is uncertain for all parties,” Mr Zoellick said.

In Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, Mr Zoellick also visited the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where he posed for photographers with a new cub, Jing Jing, who was born last August.