China agrees to discuss UN sanctions on Iran

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he wanted sanctions within the next few weeks, a tall order given China’s opposition. The Security Council has imposed three previous rounds of sanctions on Tehran, all involving months of negotiations. The Christian Science Monitor reported in a briefing on Iran sanctions that the effectiveness of previous measures is debated.

This week’s breakthrough occurred in a conference call Wednesday between the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. The US, Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany are now unified in their position, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, according to the AP.

But the coming weeks will likely include intense negotiations as those nations discuss the specifics of possible sanctions and work to convince the rest of the Security Council that sanctions are necessary. Some non-permanent members, like Brazil, had also voiced opposition to sanctions. The New York Times reports that Brazil’s foreign minister Wednesday continued to favor negotiations, not sanctions, but was open to “any discussions.” The Times reports that Secretary Clinton, at a press conference with the Brazilian official, tried to reconcile the gulf between Brazil’s insistence on negotiations and the US push for sanctions.

Mrs. Clinton suggested that the two approaches — sanctions and diplomacy — were not mutually exclusive. “Action in the Security Council is part of negotiation and diplomacy that perhaps can get the attention of the Iranian leadership,” she said.

On the heels of the US announcement that China had dropped its resistance to sanctions, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday in Beijing that China wanted a peaceful and diplomatic resolution of the conflict, phrases it has used in the past to oppose sanctions. The official made the comments as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator was slated to hold talks with Beijing on Iran’s nuclear program, reports Agence France-Presse.

In a positive sign for the US, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman also announced that President Hu Jintao would attend a nuclear summit in Washington in mid April. According to Reuters, Beijing had been reluctant to confirm his attendance at the summit, which will occur shortly before the US Treasury releases a report that could accuse China of devaluing its currency, an extremely sensitive topic between the two nations.

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