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Iran's Ahmadinejad to meet China's Hu, US wary |
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Friday, 16 June 2006LONDON, June 16 (IranMania) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due to hold his first meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao in Shanghai on Friday, a day after warning the Central Asian region to be wary of foreign "domineering powers", AFP reported.
The hardline Iranian leader raised eyebrows in Washington with typically feisty comments on Thursday to the leaders' summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that were apparently directed at the United States.
Ahmadinejad told the other leaders that deeper cooperation among SCO nations could help "ward off the threats of domineering powers to use their force against and interfere in the affairs of other states."
He also called on the SCO, which groups China, Russia and four Central Asian nations with Iran as one of four observer countries, to deepen their economic links, offering to host a summit of the forum's energy ministers.
Ahmadinejad held a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the summit on Thursday, in which Iran's nuclear program was one of the main topics discussed.
He then received a warm welcome from Chinese President Hu on Friday morning as they began their first official meeting.
"As mayor of Tehran, you provided support to Chinese businesses in Iran," Hu said in brief comments to Ahmadinejad at the start of their meeting at Shanghai's Xi Jiao guest house, a building often used for state functions.
"Now that you are president, I hope that we will have many opportunities to take the relationship between China and Iran to the next level."
Reporters were then ushered out of the room without hearing a response from Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad's presence in Shanghai and his comments did not go unnoticed in Washington, especially as the world waits for Tehran's official response to an international offer of incentives aimed at curtailing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington that the SCO should not have invited Ahmadinejad to the summit.
"Having Iran there as an observer, Iran, the world's largest or most significant state sponsor of terrorism, again runs counter to the idea that this is a group dedicated in part to countering terrorism in the region," McCormack said.
White House spokesman Tony Snow also on Thursday suggested that Iran's talks with Russia and China on its nuclear program might be an attempt to divide the United States and its partners and predicted that it would fail.
"It's safe to say that they'll try to test the unity of the P-5 plus one, but everybody's agreed," Snow said, referring to the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany.
Those countries, after much diplomatic maneuvering, united this month behind the incentives package that is meant to ensure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies that it is seeking an atomic arsenal.
Asked whether Iran was trying to divide the United States and its partners, Snow said: "I'm not going to get into that. But you'd expect them, as a negotiating tactic, to see if there is any daylight (between the partners)."
Although China and Russia united with the other four nations to put the incentive offer to Iran, they did so only after months of negotiations that resulted in a much softer joint position than the United States had hoped for.
Friday, June 16, 2006 - T®2005 IranMania.com
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Friday, 16 June 2006
Iran
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