Washington, March 02: Top US and Chinese diplomats will grapple with how to deal with the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea in meetings that Washington hopes will help ease tensions with Beijing.
US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and the National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs, Jeffrey Bader, were due to arrive in Beijing on Tuesday for the talks with Chinese officials.
Steinberg will be the most senior US diplomat to visit Beijing since a flurry of disputes in January and February over Internet censorship, trade, arms sales to Taiwan and Tibet unsettled ties with China.
“We’ve gone through a bit of a bumpy path here, and I think there’s an interest both within the United States and China to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible,” US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington on Monday, speaking about Steinberg’s trip.
China, too, appears to want to lower the temperature of friction with the United States, a key trade partner.
Beijing has not yet acted on its threat to sanction US companies involved in the Taiwan arms sales, and on the weekend, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he wanted trade friction with the United States to ease.
Crowley said the talks in Beijing would cover Iran, where the United States and other Western powers want China’s backing for a proposed U.N. resolution slapping new sanctions on Tehran, which they say is seeking the means to make nuclear weapons.
Iran was China’s third biggest source of imported crude oil last year, and Beijing has long been reluctant to support stiff sanctions against Tehran.
China could use its power as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to veto any proposed resolution.
Analysts and officials say China will resist any proposed sanctions that threaten flows of oil and Chinese investments, but most believe it will accept a more narrowly cast resolution that has more symbolic than practical impact.
NORTH KOREA
Steinberg will also discuss North Korea, whose nuclear arms plans have alarmed the North’s neighbours and the United States, said Crowley.
Nations involved in six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme have been seeking to revive negotiations, stalled since last year after North Korea pulled out and held a nuclear test.
North Korea has previously put conditions on its return to the talks, including ending U.N. sanctions and having discussions with the United States on a peace treaty to replace the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
China’s Foreign Ministry has not said what it hopes to achieve from the talks with Steinberg, merely noting that the US side requested the meetings and the two sides will discuss “issues concerning China-US relations”.
A report in China’s state-run Xinhua news agency on Monday suggested that Beijing would use the talks to press its complaints about US policy towards Taiwan and Tibet.
In January, the Obama administration said it was going ahead with new arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled and democratic island that Beijing claims as its own. The following month President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by Beijing.
After Beijing, Steinberg and Bader are due to meet with senior officials in Tokyo on Thursday and Friday.
—-Agencies