China should weigh its immediate interest in buying Iranian petroleum against the proliferation threat created by a nuclear-armed Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday (see GSN, Jan. 29).

Clinton's comments marked the Obama administration's highest-profile request to date for China to endorse new U.N. Security Council sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation. Washington and its allies suspect that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at weapons development, a charge Tehran has consistently denied. Beijing has called for a negotiated settlement to the dispute while indicating it would not support new international sanctions aimed at pressuring Tehran to halt the controversial work.

"As we move away from the engagement track, which has not produced the results that some had hoped for, and move forward toward the pressure and sanctions track" in attempting to resolve the nuclear dispute, "China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supplies," Clinton said during a speech in Paris, according to the Washington Post.

"It will produce an arms race," Clinton recounted telling Chinese officials. "Israel will feel an existential threat. All of that is incredibly dangerous." (Emphasis added)

"We understand that right now it seems counterproductive to you to sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs," she said. "But think about the long-term implications." (Emphasis added)

Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi failed to reach agreement on the matter during a 45-minute discussion Friday, administration officials said, adding that the top U.S. diplomat had "made very clear" that Iran's failure to accept a U.N. compromise proposal necessitated new economic penalties.

Iran rejected key terms of the U.N. plan, which sought to forestall the nation's ability to produce enough material for a nuclear weapon by refining a large portion of its low-enriched uranium in other countries for use at a medical research reactor in Tehran. The Middle Eastern state has only offered to give up small quantities of its low-enriched uranium at a time in simultaneous exchanges for pre-enriched medical reactor fuel (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Jan. 29).

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano held out hope last week that the sides could still reach agreement over the proposal, the Associated Press reported.

"I hope the agreement will be reached, and I continue to work as an intermediary," he said Friday (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Washington Post, Jan. 29).

Iran said that talks with French and Brazilian representatives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, had produced new recommendations on the U.N. plan, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday.

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