ANALYSIS-China diplomatic zigzag over Iran set to continue
(repeats with ANALYSIS tag)
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Jan 22 (Reuters) - China's diplomatic tack between Iran and the West enters increasingly narrow straits on Tuesday, when Beijing appears likely to back strong words but not strong actions against Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will join counterparts in Berlin from the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, as well as Germany, with Western powers favouring a third and tougher U.N. resolution pressing Iran to halt uranium enrichment and cooperate more with inspectors.
The West suspects Iran is pursuing the means to make nuclear weapons. Iran says its atomic programme is for civilian energy.
But while Beijing may not trust Iran's uranium plans, it does like the Iranian oil and gas feeding its voracious energy appetite. And in Berlin, China's zigzag approach to addressing both worries is set to continue.
China will likely accommodate Washington's demands for a fresh resolution, but only one shorn of serious economic threats that could choke ties with Tehran, said Chinese experts.
"China and Iran are not in the same boat," said Yin Gang, a Middle East analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"China hopes it can achieve a resolution that raises pressure but does not risk serious economic fallout, and I'm not sure the European powers are really thinking that differently".
As a permanent member of the Security Council, China has the power to veto resolutions. It backed the two previous resolutions pressing Iran to cooperate more with U.N. nuclear inspectors.
But a U.S. intelligence assessment late last year concluded Iran stopped nuclear warhead development efforts in 2003, undercutting Western momentum for fresh sanctions.
And even as Washington has maintained that Tehran's efforts to purify uranium remain dangerous, China has pursued major energy deals with Iran.
Sinopec (0386.HK), China's top oil refiner, recently agreed to invest $2 billion in Iran's big Yadavaran oilfield. And this year Sinopec is set to nearly triple its imports of Iranian crude through a deal to buy 160,000 barrels per day (bpd).
In 2007, Iran was China's third-biggest source of imported crude, behind Angola and Saudi Arabia, with shipments reaching 20.5 million tonnes, a rise of 22.4 percent on volumes in 2006.
China is interested as well in Iran's rich gas reserves, the world's second-largest after Russia.
But while wary of a rupture with Tehran, China is also loath to risk a deep rift with Washington and its European allies, who also hold big economic and diplomatic cards.
Beijing's diplomacy over Iran has thus settled into a pattern of taking Western sanctions demands and then conspicuously paring them down.
With Russia also unwilling to join tough sanctions and international oil prices near feverish highs, China is set to continue that course, said Zhang Xiaodong, also of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"For China there's the paradox that it believes sanctions really can't solve the dispute but also that Iran only seems to cooperate when sanctions are raised," Zhang said.
Washington has spearheaded the drive for more punitive measures and is keen for a new resolution that tightens the noose on more Iranian state banks.
But China will carefully parse any proposed U.N. resolution to ensure its own trade and energy contracts with Iran are not threatened, said Guo Xian'gang, a former Chinese diplomat to Tehran.
"China does not like to oppose resolutions, even ones it dislikes, but it can always try to revise them," he said. (Editing by Jerry Norton)
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