New Sanctions Talks Terminated: China Refuses To Discuss Iran
Da Munchkin King and China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Tuesday.
China has refused for now to meet with top diplomats from the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany regarding Iran’s nuclear program, forcing cancellation of a critical meeting to debate new sanctions that the Bush administration hopes to impose on Iran through the United Nations, U.S. and European diplomats said today.
The meeting was scheduled to be held the week after Thanksgiving. Its cancellation is a major setback for the Bush administration, which has been pressing the world body to act because Iran has failed to suspend uranium enrichment–a process that can be used for a peaceful energy program as well as to develop atomic weapons.
In unusually blunt language, the State Department yesterday called on Beijing to be more “resolute” after U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said in a new report that Iran had provided some help with information about its previously secret nuclear program, but that data on its current efforts had been “diminishing” since 2006.
“We need China to join the effort and agree to have the next meeting,” Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview yesterday, before China balked. “We’re concerned that China’s trade has increased significantly with Iran. It’s incongruous for China to continue to sell arms to Iran and become Iran’s top trade partner. We’ve advised the Chinese to take a much more resolute role.”
In a critically timed assessment, the International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday said that Iran provided “timely” and helpful new information on a secret nuclear program that became public in 2002. But it said Iran did not fully answer questions about the program or allow full access to Iranian personnel. Iran is even less cooperative on its current program, the IAEA reported.
“Since early 2006, the agency has not received the type of information that Iran had previously been providing,” the IAEA concluded. “The agency’s knowledge about Iran’s current nuclear program is diminishing.”
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Boycott the Olympics and throttle down their imports to the U.S.
November 16th, 2007 at 11:45 am