The US has warned Beijing over reported use of Chinese weapons by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Asian giant’s continued sale of arms to Iran, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said on Thursday.
He said he conveyed the concerns personally to Chinese officials during his visit to Beijing this week.
“Just the other day, Monday, when I was in Beijing, this was one of the issues I raised — concern about Chinese weapons or Chinese-designed weapons showing up in some of these battle areas, be it Iraq or Afghanistan,” he told a congressional hearing on US-China ties.
The US military in Iraq had said its troops had found Chinese-made missiles, which they believe were smuggled in by groups in Iran aiming to arm militants fighting US-led forces.
The US military has repeatedly accused Iranian-linked groups of training Iraqi extremists in the use of armor-piercing weapons known as explosively formed penetrators.
Afghan authorities had also seized dozens of Iranian and Chinese-made weapons from Taliban fighters near the border with Iran.
The weapons, including land mines and rocket-propelled grenades, appeared to have been manufactured in Iran and China, reports have said.
Negroponte told the US senators that Washington “made it clear” to Beijing that Chinese entities’ continued sale of conventional weapons to Iran “is unacceptable.”
He said Chinese officials told him “they have scaled way back their sale of conventional weapons to Iran.”
“They had relationships previously where they exported these weapons but they have dialed that back,” he said.
Negroponte, a former US intelligence chief, said that China understood Washington’s position that Iran presented “a grave international and regional security concern.”
Beijing also understood that the US government “reserves the right to apply all multilateral, bilateral and unilateral measures at our disposal to ensure that our concerns are addressed.”
“We reinforce this message at every opportunity,” he said.
Negroponte also slammed China for expanding trade and investment links with Iran, particularly in its oil and gas sector.
“We believe this expansion undermines international efforts to pressure Iran and sends the wrong signal to the Iranian regime, especially at a time when other oil companies are heeding their governments’ wishes to forgo new investments in Iran,” he said.
Negroponte said the Chinese government shared the US’ “strategic objective of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”
Washington has spearheaded efforts at the UN to rein in Iran’s ambitions to master the nuclear fuel cycle, accusing Tehran of seeking to build atomic weapons.
China has voted in the UN Security Council for sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies linked to nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.