xinhui

washingtonpost.com




China's backing on Iran followed dire predictions
Before Obama's visit, NSC warned leaders of Mideast turmoil


By John Pomfret and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 26, 2009

Two weeks before President Obama visited China, two senior White House officials traveled to Beijing on a "special mission" to try to persuade China to pressure Iran to give up its alleged nuclear weapons program.

If Beijing did not help the United States on this issue, the consequences could be severe, the visitors, Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Bader, both senior officials in the National Security Council, informed the Chinese.

The Chinese were told that Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as an "existential issue and that countries that have an existential issue don't listen to other countries," according to a senior administration official. The implication was clear: Israel could bomb Iran, leading to a crisis in the Persian Gulf region and almost inevitably problems over the very oil China needs to fuel its economic juggernaut, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this week, the White House got its answer. China informed the United States that it would support a toughly worded, U.S.-backed statement criticizing the Islamic republic for flouting U.N. resolutions by constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. The statement, obtained by The Washington Post, is part of a draft resolution to be taken up as soon as Thursday by the 35 nations that make up the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

While largely symbolic, it is the first such declaration since 2006 to be backed by both China and Russia. And the statement marks a departure for China, which has long refrained from criticizing Iran's nuclear policies. The issue of how China will handle the Iranian nuclear issue has emerged as an early test of what Obama has described as a relationship that "will shape the 21st century."
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Given its backing even from Iran's erstwhile allies, European diplomats on Wednesday predicted easy passage of the resolution, which calls Tehran's construction of an underground enrichment plant near Qom a "breach of its obligations" under U.N. and IAEA guidelines. If approved, the resolution will be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could decide to enact harsher sanctions against the Islamic republic.

"Our patience is not going to last forever," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose government drafted the resolution, told reporters on the eve of the IAEA session.

But while diplomats and arms-control experts welcomed China's support of the IAEA resolution, some acknowledged that it is not clear whether Russia or China would go further and agree to new sanctions against Iran. Attempts to reach officials at the Chinese Embassy for comment were unsuccessful.

"They're expressing displeasure with Iran, but whether that translates into a U.N. Security Council resolution is another matter," said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

Iran, which insists that it wants to harness nuclear power only to make electricity, this week acknowledged feeling new pressure from Russia over its expanding nuclear network. A top military commander, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hassan Mansourian, told state-run Press TV that Russia had reneged on supplying promised military technology "due to pressure form the Zionist lobby and the Americans."

The visit to Beijing last month by the senior White House aides was described as part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to isolate Iran. In making their case to China, administration officials warned that a nuclear Iran not only would raise the risk of a regional conflict, higher oil prices and even interrupted supplies, it could also trigger a surge in nuclear proliferation.

The Chinese were told that "this could shake the entire framework of the international nonproliferation regime," said the official who was familiar with the lengthy analysis Ross laid out.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt could start their own nuclear programs, the Chinese were told. "And once Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey go, what's left?" the official said. The implication again was clear: Japan, China's biggest competitor for influence in the region, could go nuclear as well, the official said.

Obama reinforced those messages during his trip to China last week in meetings with President Hu Jintao, the official said. "Both Dennis and the president talked about the consequences of Iran moving toward having highly-enriched-uranium capacity," the official said.

The United States wants China to back sanctions against Iran if Tehran refuses a proposal to send most of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad for processing into fuel rods for a research reactor in Iran.

China has said it opposes sanctions against Iran; China's state-run energy behemoths have committed to investing $120 billion in Iran's energy sector over the past five years, and few if any of those projects have broken ground. Iran is also China's No. 2 supplier of oil. Earlier this week, Sinopec, one of China's biggest oil companies, signed another memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Co. to invest an additional $6.5 billion to build oil refineries in Iran.

From the start of his administration, Obama has lobbied the Chinese over Iran. The issue dominated his discussions with Hu during their meeting at the U.N. General Assembly in September. Obama referred to the issue with Iran as "a core national interest" of the United States, a conscious use of a term China employs on sensitive issues such as Taiwan and Tibet. "It's their terminology coming back at them, emphasizing how critical" the issue is to the United States, the U.S. official said.

U.S. officials have also attempted to explore ways to help to wean China off Iranian oil, State Department officials have said. Officials from the United Arab Emirates have said they plan to increase oil exports to China. Saudi Arabia is also moving toward closer ties with Beijing that would clearly involve selling more oil to China, officials said.

__________________
"Greed is Good" -- Gordon Gekko

RollingWave

but but but, I thought Obama got nothing but get humiliated by China! FOX told me so!

xinhui

a quick follow up.









November 28, 2009
Iran Censured Over Nuclear Program by U.N. Watchdog
By ALAN COWELL and DAVID E. SANGER

PARIS — The United Nations nuclear watchdog castigated Iran for blocking inquiries into its nuclear program in a resolution passed overwhelmingly on Friday that demanded the country freeze operations “immediately” at a once-secret uranium enrichment plant.

The resolution was the agency’s first against Iran in almost four years, and it won the backing of Russia and China in a long-sought broadening of the message of international displeasure with Iran that is frequently voiced in the West.

The White House issued a statement Friday that reflected its growing impatience with Iran. “The fact that 25 countries from all parts of the world cast their votes in favor shows the urgent need for Iran to address the growing international deficit of confidence in its intentions,” the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs said.

The censure came a day after Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s head, bluntly declared that Iran had stonewalled investigators about evidence that the country had worked on nuclear weapons design, and that his efforts to reveal the truth had “effectively reached a dead end.”

Dr. ElBaradei had for years maintained a more measured approach to Iran, but he is preparing to step down next week after 12 years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. His remarks refocused attention on Iran’s suspected work on weapons design at a moment when the West is debating how to respond after Tehran backed away from a commitment it made in early October to temporarily send much of its nuclear fuel abroad.

Despite the Russian and Chinese votes, it remained unclear whether they would support any expansion of sanctions.

The resolution Friday, which passed 25-3, produced a thinly veiled threat from Tehran that the vote would further jeopardize the faltering international negotiations on its nuclear program. The United States said it was a signal that the world’s patience was running out.

The three countries voting against the resolution were Cuba, Malaysia and Venezuela, news reports said. Six other nations — Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey — abstained, and one, Azerbaijan, was absent.

The vote concerned a uranium enrichment plant that Iran secretly built on a base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards near the city of Qum. Until two months ago, Iran had failed to tell the atomic agency about the plant. Iran later said that it had kept the construction secret because it feared that its known nuclear plants could be bombed.

The resolution urged Iran “to comply fully and without delay” with previous United Nations Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program and to “meet the requirements of the board of governors, including by suspending immediately construction at Qum.”

It also urged Iran to clarify the purpose of the enrichment plant and provide a chronology of its design and construction.

The resolution called on Tehran to confirm “that Iran has not taken a decision to construct, or authorize construction of, any other nuclear facility which has as yet not been declared to the agency,” according to diplomats familiar with the text of the resolution.

And it said the watchdog expressed “serious concern” that Iran had not cooperated with the atomic energy body on issues that needed “to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.” Iran maintains that it wants to develop nuclear power to generate electricity.

Iran’s ambassador to the atomic agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, criticized the resolution as “hasty and undue” and said it would “jeopardize the conducive environment vitally needed” for successful negotiations on his country’s nuclear program.

But Glyn Davies, the American ambassador to the agency, called the resolution “a signal that patience is running out. We can’t have round after round of fruitless negotiations, circular negotiations that don’t get us where we want to get,” Reuters reported.

President Obama is approaching an end-of-year deadline to reassess whether the United States should move toward what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has termed “crippling sanctions” on Iran. The White House said Friday that “if Iran refuses to meet its obligations, then it will be responsible for its own growing isolation and the consequences.”

Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said that they will not consider taking military action until Mr. Obama’s deadline runs out, leaving hanging the suggestion — maybe the bluff — that they are preparing for that possibility in 2010.

Dr. ElBaradei’s statement on Thursday was a sharp departure in tone, and a tacit acknowledgment that his behind-the-scenes effort to broker a deal had collapsed. In the past, he has privately talked about Iran’s refusal to answer the agency’s questions about weapons work, but has stopped short of rebuking the country in public for fear of shutting off any chance of future cooperation.

Those questions, posed by the agency over a period of years, go to the heart of suspicions that Iran has worked on nuclear weapons designs. They include queries about drawings, computer simulations and other evidence of work that could not plausibly be involved in civilian nuclear power programs.

The evidence includes documents obtained by the agency — some provided by Western intelligence services, which say they were slipped out of Iran by scientists — that appear to show that Iran worked on how to shape uranium for nuclear cores, on conventional explosions needed to detonate a nuclear chain reaction and on simulations of a warhead detonation at about 2,000 feet, about the height at which the bomb was set off over Hiroshima in 1945.

“It is now well over a year since the agency was last able to engage Iran in discussions about these outstanding issues,” Dr. ElBaradei told the nuclear agency’s governors. “We have effectively reached a dead end, unless Iran engages fully with us.”

In the past, Iran has called the evidence “fabrications.” Dr. ElBaradei has complained that he has been prohibited by “member states,” including the United States and European nations, from letting the Iranians see the original evidence — presumably for fear that it could reveal its sources. On Thursday, he repeated his frustration on that point, telling the agency’s 35-member board that “it would help if we were able to share with Iran more of the material that is at the center of these concerns.”

Dr. ElBaradei’s remarks reinforced the sense that Iran had blocked inspectors from getting near what are known as Project 110 and Project 111, its suspected weapons-design work.

At Iran’s invitation, however, inspectors visited the underground plant at Qum last month, and confirmed it was in the final stages of construction, but not yet operational. It is supposed to house 3,000 centrifuges — the fast-spinning machines used to enrich uranium. That is too small, experts say, to be useful to produce civilian nuclear fuel, but large enough for about two weapons’ worth of material each year.

American officials tried to use Iran’s concealment of that plant, and the possibility that there were related facilities built to produce nuclear material, to press Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China to join new sanctions. Both have been reluctant, especially Mr. Hu, who said nothing about it when Mr. Obama visited Beijing this month.

Privately, American officials visiting China have sought help to press Iran now, warning that if the West moves to sanctions it could affect China’s ability to import oil from Iran, which supplies about 15 percent of China’s needs.

But the central issue in the Iran investigations has been the evidence suggesting that Iran conducted some level of research on weapons. An American intelligence assessment, published two years ago, contended that Iran ceased that work in 2003; intelligence agencies in Britain, France, Germany and Israel, examining the same evidence, have concluded that the work has resumed, or never stopped.

In October, parts of a confidential analysis written by senior staff members of the watchdog agency were leaked. The analysis concluded that Iran had acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb. The report’s conclusions went beyond Dr. ElBaradei’s public positions, and even those taken by the United States and several governments.

The analysis drew a picture of a complex program, run by Iran’s Ministry of Defense, “aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab-3 missile system,” Iran’s medium-range missile, which can strike the Middle East and parts of southern Europe.

Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and David E. Sanger from Washington. William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/wo...gewanted=print