Iran-China ties weaken West's isolationist bid

Washington: The rapidly growing relationship between Iran and China has begun to undermine international efforts to ensure that Iran cannot subvert a peaceful energy programme to develop a nuclear arsenal, US and European officials say.

The Bush administration and its allies said last week that they plan to seek new UN sanctions against Iran, after the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iranian officials had given inadequate answers to questions about the country's past nuclear activities.

But US and European officials now worry more about a Chinese veto than about opposition from Russia, which has previously assisted and defended the Iranian nuclear energy programme.

US and European officials charged on Friday that Beijing is deliberately stalling to protect its economic interests.

"China needs to play a more responsible role on Iran, needs to recognise that China is going to be very dependent in the decades ahead on Middle East oil, and therefore, China, for its own development and its own purposes, is going to need a stable Middle East, and that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is not a prescription for stability in the Middle East," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on Friday.

China now gets at least 14 per cent of its imported oil from Iran, making it China's largest supplier and worth as much as $7 billion this year, according to David Kirsch, a manager at PFC Energy. Tehran in turn gets major arms systems from Beijing, including ballistic and cruise missiles and technical assistance for Tehran's indigenous missile programme.

Dozens of Chinese companies are also engaged in several other industries. On the eve of Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's visit to Tehran last week for talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Beijing suggested that it could reject US-orchestrated efforts for a new resolution. "

We believe that all parties should show patience and sincerity over this issue, while any sanctions, particularly unilateral sanctions, will do no good," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.

The United States last month imposed its own tough new sanctions against Iran's military, banks and industries, in part out of frustration over stalled efforts to pass a third UN resolution. Two earlier UN resolutions, passed in December and March, call for further action if Iran does not comply in 60 days with demands that it shut down its uranium enrichment, which can be used both for energy and weapons. The latest US diplomacy has dragged on for six months.

But the new Tehran-Beijing relationship is likely to delay or dilute international diplomacy, because the two powers share a strategic vision, experts say. Both are determined to find ways to contain unchallenged US power and a unipolar world, said Ilan Berman, vice-president of the American Foreign Policy Council.

Engineer of growth

China's voracious appetite for energy has cemented the relationship, US experts say. China's oil consumption is expected to grow by about 6 per cent over the next two years, analysts have said. "Iran has become the engineer of China's economic growth. It may not be like Saudi Arabia is to the US economy, but it's close," Berman said.

"We're presenting China with an untenable proposition. We're asking them to unilaterally divest from Iran and not offering them energy alternatives. This is not sustainable for policymakers whose predominant priority is to maintain and expand their country's growth," Berman said. "It's not that we shouldn't ask them to scale back their relationship, but China has put a lot of its eggs in Iran's economic basket, and a sophisticated American strategy would provide alternatives."

China has also announced an interest in helping two Iranian refinery projects, Kirsch said.

After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda at the White House on Friday, President Bush said they had agreed that "a nuclear armed Iran would threaten the security of the Middle East and beyond."