Colin Powell is likely to find China's President Jiang Zemin acquiescent onIraq but less flexible on North Korea, writes Jasper Becker, in Beijing.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Beijing yesterday to ask a sceptical Chinese leadership to abstain from vetoing a second Iraq resolution and to urge them to put pressure on ally North Korea.
Mr Powell, on his first Asian tour since the Korean crisis erupted, is likely to find President Jiang Zemin - and other leaders he will see today - acquiescent on Iraq but less flexible on North Korea.
In public, China is saying the UN inspectors should be given more time, and Mr Jiang has been phoning Moscow and Paris to co-ordinate responses with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council.
However, most diplomats expect that President Jiang is reluctant to jeopardise his recent initiatives to strengthen ties with Washington and will therefore abstain during a new vote.
Before the 1991 Gulf War, China abstained from almost every Iraq-related resolution in the UN Security Council, and last November Beijing went along with the rest of the council and voted in favour of resolution 1441.
"They just want to sit on the fence as long as possible," said a Western diplomat.
China is also keen to win business in Iraq if sanctions are lifted or a new government embarks on a massive economic reconstruction programme.
China has a long-standing policy not to take the lead in any international crisis, despite becoming more involved in UN peace-keeping missions. Its priority remains enlarging its influence in Washington over issues like bilateral trade, Taiwan and Tibet.
China's economic expansion now depends on oil imports, and it shares Western interests in low oil prices and policies to curb Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.
China became a net oil importer in 1993 and its imports rose by 15 per cent last year, forcing its trade balance into an overall deficit in recent months. To avoid becoming over-reliant on Gulf oil, it is pushing ahead with long-term plans to contract oil and gas from Russia, Indonesia, Central Asia and Australia.
On his visit, Mr Powell will also be trying to persuade China to back its bid to tackle Pyongyang through "multilateral talks" involving China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and perhaps other countries.
President Jiang has repeatedly voiced support for North Korea's demand that the United States engage Pyongyang in bilateral negotiations leading to a non-aggression treaty. Although China is uncomfortable with the North's decision to restart aggressively its nuclear programme, North Korean Foreign Minister Mr Paek Nam-sun received fresh assurances of Beijing's support when he passed through Beijing a day before Mr Powell arrived.
"The crux of the issue now is to ensure the non-nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and the DPRK's [North Korea's\] concern over its security should also be taken into consideration," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ms Zhang Qiyue, after Mr Paek's visit.
"We hope related parties will keep on with their efforts to bring about conditions for dialogue and prevent the escalation of tension," she said.
Washington is drawing up plans to put pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear programme by placing it under a trade embargo. But China, one of the North's main trading partners, could block this.
Mr Powell, who has an optimistic view of China's influence on its difficult neighbour, will argue that if North Korea becomes a nuclear power, Japan and South Korea will arm themselves and will join the proposed missile defence shield, two developments which China opposes.
At the same time, Mr Powell has announced that the United States will announce shortly a new food donation to North Korea.
He said the Bush administration might have made a food donation earlier but was unable to do so because Congress had not approved legislation until recently providing money for food assistance.
"We don't use food as a political weapon," Mr Powell told reporters.
There have been no US food deliveries to North Korea since December.
The United States donated more than 150,000 tonnes of food to North Korea last year, more than any other country.
"You go through all the politics and there are kids out there that are still starving," Mr Powell said.
Mr Powell will be in Seoul tomorrow for the inauguration of newly elected President Roh Roh Moo-hyun, who is also against putting too much pressure on the North.
Mr Powell said that the United States remained open to giving the secretive communist state an array of other aid - but only after it abandoned its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
"You can't eat plutonium. You can't eat enriched uranium," Mr Powell said.