China's veto power weighs
heavy By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China this week sided with the other four
of the United Nations Security Council's five
permanent members - the United States, Russia,
Britain and France - to favor referral of Iran
to the Security Council over its nuclear program.
But whether Beijing uses its power of veto to
block possible sanctions against Tehran is another
issue.
The Iranian nuclear case is
expected to be forwarded to the Security Council
at a meeting on Thursday of the governing board of
the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
in Vienna. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki warned on Iranian
television late Tuesday
that a referral to the Security Council would
result in Iran halting cooperation with the UN
atomic agency as of February 4.
China,
with its Security Council veto power and its seat
on the board of the governors of the IAEA, plays a
key role in how the world deals with Iran.
Should Iran avoid sanctions now, and be
allowed to develop its nuclear program - and
possibly a nuclear device - Beijing fears this
would prompt North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to
become even more obstructive in future talks over
Pyongyang's nuclear program. This would endanger
China's carefully crafted position of a peace
broker on the Korean Peninsula and present the
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 jeopardize 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, accounting
for about 40% of demand. Currently the world's
second-largest oil importer, China gets more than
12% of its oil imports from Iran and wants to step
up imports of Iran's natural gas too.
Agreeing to UN sanctions would potentially
destroy the value of many investments Beijing has
made. In Iran, where US companies are prohibited
from investing more than US$20 million annually,
Chinese companies have signed long-term contracts
valued at $200 billion, making China Iran's
biggest oil and gas customer.
But
encouragement of Tehran in its attitude toward
attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions would
make China become an outcast in the eyes of the
White House, and much of the international
community.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russian and
Chinese diplomats would fly to Tehran to urge Iran
to answer outstanding IAEA concerns.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled
to visit the US in April and Beijing wants to
prevent anything disturbing the delicate balance
of Sino-US relations ahead of his visit.
The US has been putting pressure on China
both to abstain from a resolution on Iran's
nuclear program and to force North Korea to return
to the six-party nuclear talks it abandoned last
year.
The US negotiator, Christopher
Hill, was in Beijing last month discussing how to resume
the Korean talks and US Deputy Secretary of State
Robert Zoellick 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 Security Council, but
it is finding it increasingly hard as all major
world powers are now thinking aloud about the
possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon.
French President Jacques Chirac warned
last month that France might use its nuclear
weapons against a terrorist state. In Germany,
senior politician Rupert Scholz, who served as
defense secretary under former chancellor Helmut
Kohl, said perhaps Germany should be thinking
about the need to acquire its own nuclear
deterrent.
In the face of North Korean
nuclear brinkmanship, Japanese politicians made
the same point last year. Since 2003, North Korea
has expelled IAEA inspectors, quit the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and resumed
processing reactor fuel rods.
Iran
and North Korea are said to have 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 the Pyongyang and Tehran
nuclear challenges will 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 US-led
attempt to impose sanctions on Iran, diplomats in
Beijing say. Instead, China has argued with even
more vigor that continued negotiations are the
best way to resolve the dispute with 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 on
January 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," said 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 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."
