China is failing to enforce trade laws necessary for
nuclear sanctions against Iran, weakening
international efforts to prevent Iran from
acquiring a nuclear arsenal, according to a former
nuclear inspector for the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA).
Bloomberg reports that David Albright, a nuclear
physicist who served as a UN nuclear inspector in
Iran in the 1990s, warned Thursday that “China
does not implement and enforce its trade controls
or its sanctions laws adequately.”
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While the U.S. and Europe have developed law
enforcement and export control networks to
detect Iranian front companies attempting to buy
dual-use technology or materials, in China there’s
"still a large amount" of equipment and materials
that reaches Iranian buyers, Albright said.
"To a German supplier in China, it looks like a
domestic sale where export controls don ’t even
come into play," Albright said. "It turns out that
company is a front for an Iranian smuggling
network."
Mr. Albright also said that “sanctions are working,
but they can be improved," noting that Iran
appears to be facing shortages of maraging steel,
an alloy used to build centrifuges for enriching
uranium. Bloomberg writes that the Chinese
Embassy in Washington did not respond to
requests for comment on Albright's remarks.
Albright's comments come ahead of Chinese
President Hu Jintao's meeting next week with
President Obama in Washington in which nuclear
sanctions against Iran are likely to come up. The
China Post, a pro-China Taiwanese newspaper,
reports that on Thursday China rebuffed an offer
from Tehran to tour Iranian nuclear facilities,
"potentially smoothing a source of friction"
between the US and China ahead of President
Hu's visit.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei
said that China's representative to the IAEA, one
of those Iran invited to the tour, “is still in China
right now, so it will be difficult for him to go to
Iran.”
Russia, whose IAEA representative was also
invited, offered a cool response to Iran this week
as well, reports Radio Free Europe. While not
rejecting Iran's invitation, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said that "such visits cannot in any
way be considered a substitute for IAEA
inspections. And also, these visits and the group
of countries participating in these visits must not
be considered a substitute for the talks between
Iran and the sextet," referring to the six nations
involved in talks over Iran's nuclear program: the
US, China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany.
The Christian Science Monitor reported earlier this
month that Iran offered the tour of its nuclear
facilities to China, Russia, and Hungary (which
holds the EU presidency), among others, while
leaving out the US, Britain, France, and Germany
– all key critics of Iran's nuclear program, which
they fear is being used to develop nuclear
weapons.
But while Iran claimed to be making the offer to
show “cooperation with the IAEA,” experts say it
was merely an attempt to undermine the
sanctions implemented by the five UN Security
Council members and Germany.
“The Iranians are always trying to divide the
coalition, and I think the point of the meetings [for
the Iranians] is not to resolve the problem, but to
deflect pressure for more sanctions, by
demonstrating that Iran is not recalcitrant, ” says
Shahram Chubin, an Iran nuclear expert with the
Carnegie Endowment based in Geneva.
“The Russians and the Chinese like to have any
excuse not to go to the next step, or indeed to
implement the current steps, and the Iranians
play on that, ” says Mr. Chubin, author of a 2006
book about Iran's nuclear efforts. Iran’s tactic is to
“delay and prevaricate and divide, and it's always
in response to pressure, despite what it says. Of
course, that [pressure] is exactly the only way
you can get the Iranians to focus. ”
The Associated Press reports that the tour will still
go on this weekend, according to Iranian
diplomat Ali Asghar Soltanieh, but that its
significance is diminished in the absence of the
sextet and the EU, as well as key Iranian allies
Turkey and Brazil.
Source: Http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0114/Former-nuclear-inspector-China-falling-short-on-enforcing-sanctions-on-Iran
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