British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is in China to lobby for further nuclear sanctions on Iran and will seek to smooth rancor with Beijing over climate change talks and the execution of a British drug smuggler thought to be mentally ill.
Miliband’s visit is a further step in the push by Britain, the US and others to persuade China to drop its opposition to a fourth round of sanctions to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
China and Russia have been skeptical of the need for new sanctions, which UN diplomats say would target Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard and toughen existing measures against its shipping, banking and insurance sectors.
However, recent statements from Russian diplomats are seen as indicating that Moscow may be losing patience with Iran and moving closer to supporting sanctions. That would leave China — which depends on Iran for much of its energy needs — as the only one of the five veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council members opposed to new sanctions.
Miliband was to inaugurate the US$38 million British pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and visit a training base for Chinese UN peacekeepers yesterday.
He is scheduled to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) today and deliver a talk at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing before leaving tomorrow.
The trip comes amid continuing friction between London and Beijing, played out through dueling accusations, diplomatic protests and statements in the media.
Ties bottomed out in December after China ignored personal appeals from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown not to execute 53-year-old Akmal Shaikh for drug smuggling. Shaikh’s family said he was mentally unstable and was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.
Brown said he was “appalled” by the execution — China’s first of a European citizen in nearly 60 years — prompting a warning from Beijing that such comments threatened to damage ties.
Even before that exchange, the two had clashed over December’s Copenhagen climate talks that ended without a binding agreement on emissions reductions.
In the aftermath, British Climate Change Minister Edward Miliband — David Miliband’s brother — published an editorial singling out China as the culprit behind the talks’ near collapse.
The bilateral friction comes as China’s relations with the US have also been fraught with tension over US arms sales to Taiwan, US President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, trade issues and China’s handling of the Iran nuclear issue.
While Beijing has lately cooled its rhetoric over such issues, a fence-mending visit to Beijing this month by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Senior White House Asia adviser Jeffrey Bader apparently produced no breakthroughs.
Beijing insists the US is entirely responsible for the turbulence in ties and must take actions it does not specify to repair the rift.
Emboldened by its rising global clout and economic influence, analysts say the tough line taken by Beijing signals China’s growing willingness to confront those who challenge it.
NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT: An official said that Guan Guan’s comments had gone beyond the threshold of free speech, as she advocated for the destruction of the ROC China-born media influencer Guan Guan’s (關關) residency permit has been revoked for repeatedly posting pro-China content that threatens national security, the National Immigration Agency said yesterday. Guan Guan has said many controversial things in her videos posted to Douyin (抖音), including “the red flag will soon be painted all over Taiwan” and “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China,” while expressing hope for expedited “reunification.” The agency received multiple reports alleging that Guan Guan had advocated for armed reunification last year. After investigating, the agency last month issued a notice requiring her to appear and account for her actions. Guan Guan appeared as required,
A strong cold air mass is expected to arrive tonight, bringing a change in weather and a drop in temperature, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The coldest time would be early on Thursday morning, with temperatures in some areas dipping as low as 8°C, it said. Daytime highs yesterday were 22°C to 24°C in northern and eastern Taiwan, and about 25°C to 28°C in the central and southern regions, it said. However, nighttime lows would dip to about 15°C to 16°C in central and northern Taiwan as well as the northeast, and 17°C to 19°C elsewhere, it said. Tropical Storm Nokaen, currently
PAPERS, PLEASE: The gang exploited the high value of the passports, selling them at inflated prices to Chinese buyers, who would treat them as ‘invisibility cloaks’ The Yilan District Court has handed four members of a syndicate prison terms ranging from one year and two months to two years and two months for their involvement in a scheme to purchase Taiwanese passports and resell them abroad at a massive markup. A Chinese human smuggling syndicate purchased Taiwanese passports through local criminal networks, exploiting the passports’ visa-free travel privileges to turn a profit of more than 20 times the original price, the court said. Such criminal organizations enable people to impersonate Taiwanese when entering and exiting Taiwan and other countries, undermining social order and the credibility of the nation’s
‘SALAMI-SLICING’: Beijing’s ‘gray zone’ tactics around the Pratas Islands have been slowly intensifying, with the PLA testing Taiwan’s responses and limits, an expert said The Ministry of National Defense yesterday condemned an intrusion by a Chinese drone into the airspace of the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) as a serious disruption of regional peace. The ministry said it detected the Chinese surveillance and reconnaissance drone entering the southwestern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone early yesterday, and it approached the Pratas Islands at 5:41am. The ministry said it immediately notified the garrison stationed in the area to enhance aerial surveillance and alert levels, and the drone was detected in the islands’ territorial airspace at 5:44am, maintaining an altitude outside the effective range of air-defense weaponry. Following
RSS