Azerbaijan, Baku, Apr. 7 / corr Trend T.Konyayeva /
China's readiness to hold serious discussions about serious sanctions on Iran is Beijing's attempt to maintain good relations with both the U.S. and Iran, experts believe.
"Agreeing to talk about sanctions on Iran could be one way of getting back on the good side of the U.S.," Philip Carl Salzman, Anthropology Professor of McGill University, told Trend.
At the end of last week Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative at UN, stated that China agreed to "serious discussion" of sanction measures against Iran, though earlier Beijing refused to discuss injecting new sanctions. Western sources also said that senior diplomats of "six" negotiators on Iran, which includes China, agreed upon commenting consultations over designing new resolutions of UN Security Council on sanctions with regard to Tehran.
According to Salzman, China's will to find inexpensive ways to "play nice" with the U.S. is linked with tremendous pressure by Washington, in particular, with regard to rate of Chinese currency, which can lead to a trade war.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner US Finance Minister announced on Apr. 4 about his intention to delay an annual report to Congress about currency regimes in U.S. trade partner countries. The report, originally scheduled for Apr. 15, was expected to contain charges on China in manipulating currency rate and could lead to protective duties on Chinese goods.
Nevertheless, Salzman believes China's interests in the Middle East have not changed, and doubts whether Chinese would accept American assurances that their petroleum needs would be guaranteed by the U.S.
"But at the same time China can show "good will" to the U.S. by talking, and "good will" to the Iranians by negating or minimizing sanctions," he said.
Yevgeniy Satanovskiy, president of the Near East Institute, believes format of sanctions which the U.S. deal with, does not concern China's interests, because "energy resources were taken out of brackets". Furthermore, sanctions of this kind are neither tough, nor damping, nor momentary for Iran.
China is undoubtedly a very important player as far as the implementations of sanctions against Iran are concerned, Anthony Seaboyer, a European analyst, who is involved in Iranian issues, said.
"With it's permanent seat in the UNSC China has the ability to block agreement on new sanctions," Seaboyer, an analyst of the German Council for Foreign Relations (DGAP), told Trend via e-mail.
According to Seaboyer, Chinese concerns clearly play into the design of the draft of new sanctions.
Furthermore, Seaboyer believes while leaving out the explicit mention of sanctions may be a concession to Chinese interests of avoiding such measures as long as possible, currently there is high probability for adopting the fourth round of sanctions.
The U.S. and West accused Iran in an intention to crate nuclear arms. Iran gave to understand that uranium is enriched to ensure nuclear power stations with fuel. In 2006 Iran's nuclear file was sent to the UN Security Council by the IAEA. So far, the UN Security Council adopted five resolutions to stop the Iranian nuclear program and three of them envisage economic sanctions against Iran.
Piruz Mujtahidzade, Professor of Tehran University, believes if China receives definite compromises from the U.S., it will back tough sanctions against Iran, as it did earlier.
"Iran well knows about it and tries to make definite compromises to China, whilst economic cooperation between China and the United States is quite large, and Iran will hardly be able to separate Beijing from Washington," chairman of Urosevic Research Foundation of London, told Trend over telephone from London.
However, Salzman doubts whether the Chinese agreed to any sanctions at all or to support strong sanctions.
"Talking is not agreeing, and negotiating is not acting," he said.
E.Ostapenko and D.Khatinoglu contributed to this article