Iran and China agreed during talks in Beijing that sanctions “have lost their effectiveness,” chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Friday after meeting senior Chinese officials.
“In our talks with China it was agreed that tools such as sanctions have lost their effectiveness,” Jalili told a news conference, speaking via a Chinese translator.
Asked if China backs sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, he said: “It’s up to China to answer that.”
The US said last week that six world powers, including China and Russia, are united in talks on a possible new round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Beijing has not commented directly on whether it is contemplating supporting further restrictions on Iran, but diplomats have dropped a phrase they were using earlier this year — that sanctions did not offer a “fundamental solution.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) called for “flexibility” during talks with Jalili, who flew into Beijing on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.
Beijing, like Moscow, reluctantly backed three previous rounds of UN sanctions against Tehran for refusing to halt enrichment as demanded by five UN Security Council resolutions.
Iran rejects Western charges its atomic program is aimed at developing bombs and says enrichment is a sovereign right.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended only to peacefully generate electricity.
Diplomats say China has been slowly and reluctantly falling in line with other powers involved in the talks, though it wants any new steps against one of its major oil suppliers to be weak.
Jalili also said it was unacceptable to wield the threat of sanctions to press Tehran over a UN-backed nuclear fuel offer. That offer would have move Tehran’s low-enriched uranium stocks to Russia and France for processing into fuel for an ageing research reactor that produces medical isotopes.
“What is ridiculous is that if we don’t accept their conditions, they will impose sanctions on us,” said Jalili, speaking in Farsi, with a Chinese translator. “The logic of this remains unacceptable to the international community.”
Negotiations based on pressure will not work, he said.
Moscow, Western diplomats say, has become increasingly impatient with Iran’s lack of interest in the deal. Along with Beijing, it privately urged Iran to accept the offer as a goodwill gesture, but they did not receive any clear response.
That, diplomats say, is one of the reasons China agreed to join negotiations on a new UN sanctions resolution.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
RSS