POLITICS: Sanctions on Iran, a Chinese Puzzle

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jan 31 2006 (IPS) - As the international community weighs its options on dealing with Iran’s disputed nuclear proliferation, ahead of an emergency meeting of the United Nations nuclear watchdog in Vienna later this week, Chinese leaders are faced with a serious security conundrum.

China, with its U.N. Security Council (UNSC) veto power and its seat on the board of the governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is likely to play a key role in how the world deals with Iran, including whether the UNSC imposes sanctions.

Should Iran avoid sanctions now and be allowed to get away with building a nuclear arsenal, Beijing fears that would prompt the Stalinist regime of North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il to become even more obstructive in future nuclear talks. This would endanger China’s carefully crafted position of a peace-broker on the Korean peninsula and present Chinese leadership with a real nuclear threat across its border.

Yet, should China cave in to pressure from the United States and refrain from using its veto power on a resolution condemning Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, that would most certainly jeopardise Beijing’s stable and rising supply of oil from Iran.

China believes that to be a serious threat to the country’s economic stability and growth, which its leaders consider a matter of national security. China became a net importer of oil in 1993 and imports since then have risen sharply, accelerating in recent years.

In 2004, it imported 2.46 million barrels per day (bpd), accounting for about 40 percent of current demand. Currently the world’s second largest oil importer, China gets more than 12 percent of its oil imports from Iran and wants to step up imports of Iran’s natural gas too.

Agreeing to U.N. sanctions would potentially destroy the value of many investments Beijing has made. In Iran, where U.S. companies are prohibited from investing more than 20 million dollars annually, Chinese companies have signed long-term contracts valued at 200 billion dollars, making China Iran’s biggest oil and gas customer.

But encouragement of Tehran in its obstructive attitude towards attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions would make China become an outcast in the eyes of the White House, and the international community.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit the U.S. in April and Beijing wants to prevent anything disturbing the delicate balance of Sino-U.S. relations ahead of his visit.

The U.S. has been putting pressure on China both to abstain from a resolution on Iran’s nuclear programme and to force North Korea to return to the nuclear talks it abandoned last year.

The U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill was in Beijing in January discussing how to resume the Korean six-party talks and Robert Zoellick, U.S. deputy secretary of state, was in China too, conducting another round of a bilateral dialogue on how China should become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international community. Zoellick has urged China to be more assertive with Iran as a way of showing that it intends to lay a constructive role in global affairs.

Over the past two years, China has been trying to prevent both its allies Iran and North Korea from being referred to the UNSC, but it is finding it increasingly hard as all major world powers are now thinking aloud about the consequences of allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

French President Jacques Chirac warned this month that France would use its nuclear weapons against a terrorist state. In Germany, senior politician Rupert Scholz, who served as defence secretary under former chancellor Helmut Kohl, said that perhaps Germany should be thinking about the need to acquire its own nuclear deterrent.

In the face of North Korean nuclear brinkmanship, Japanese politicians have made the same point last year. Since 2003, North Korea has expelled the IAEA’s inspectors, quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and resumed processing reactor fuel rods.

Iran and North Korea are said to have actively cooperated on nuclear and missile research. Experts say North Korea has advised Iran on how to bury its nuclear facilities deep underground to escape detection and destruction from aerial bombardment.

If major world powers cannot agree on a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, then the urgency of dealing with Pyongyang will dwindle and this would render the NPT a dead letter. How Beijing responds to Pyongyang and Tehran nuclear challenges would test China’s commitment to prevent nuclear proliferation.

That is perhaps why Beijing has refrained from repeating its threat about enforcing its veto on any U.S.-led attempt to impose sanctions on Iran, diplomats in Beijing say. Instead, China has argued with even more vigour that continued negotiations are the best way to resolve the nuclear dispute in Iran, as well as the one involving North Korea.

“Negotiations remain the best option, as sanctions will muddy the waters,” noted an editorial in the English-language China Daily, Jan. 20. “Patience, perseverance and principles are needed so as to revive the talks. China shares the same goals as the rest of the world, in terms of limiting nuclear proliferation.”

“If the matter gets to the UN Security Council, they (the Chinese) would most probably abstain,” says a Western diplomat based in Beijing. “But not before they have used all available options to delay Iran’s referral and not before they have made sure the world knows they oppose blanket sanctions.”

In comments made during a visit to Beijing by Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani last week, Kong Quan, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, expressed support for a Russian proposal to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis and said China would not back strong-arm tactics against Tehran.

According to Moscow’s nuclear deal, Iran would ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched and then returned to Iran for use in its nuclear reactor – thus proving to the world that Iran is not making fuel for nuclear weapons.

“We think the Russian proposal is a good attempt to break this stalemate,” Kong said. “We oppose impulsively using sanctions or threats of sanctions to solve problems,” he added.

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