In an article, Washington Post wrote: Under Pressure, China Agrees to Meeting on Iran Sanctions. Under intense international pressure, China late today reluctantly agreed to attend a meeting with the world’s major powers on Iran’s nuclear program after earlier refusing to take part.
The Washington Post added: Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview yesterday. “We’re concerned that China’s trade has increased significantly with Iran. It’s incongruous for China to continue to sell arms to Iran and become Iran’s top trade partner. We’ve advised the Chinese to take a much more resolute role.”
After a meeting at the White House today, President Bush said he and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda had agreed that “a nuclear armed Iran would threaten the security of the Middle East and beyond.” The United States and its closest ally in Asia “are united in our efforts to change the regime’s behavior through diplomacy,” Bush told reporters. “We agreed that unless Iran commits to suspend enrichment, international pressure must and will grow.”
Fukuda, making his first visit to Washington since he became prime minister in September, said through an interpreter, “With regard to Iranian nuclear development, we can never tolerate. And we agreed that we shall, together, work to raise pressure with the international community so that Iran will comply with the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday said that Iran provided “timely” and helpful new information on a secret nuclear program that became public in 2002. But it said Iran did not fully answer questions about the program or allow full access to Iranian personnel. Iran is even less cooperative on its current program, the IAEA reported.
George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said: “ElBaradei wants to focus on the positive in terms of the accounting for the past, but in the big strategic picture, the report is wholly negative because Iran is not suspending uranium enrichment. Iran is not only not suspending, but it is spitting in our face by saying they’re going to ramp up with the next generation of centrifuges beyond what they had already.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that “partial credit doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about issues of whether or not Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the report “makes clear that Iran seems uninterested in working with the rest of the world.”