In China, Obama to Press for Tough Stance on Iran

November 16, 2009

In China, Obama to Press for Tough Stance on Iran

By HELENE COOPER and DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — President Obama, fresh from making progress in his efforts to get Russia on board for possible tough new sanctions against Iran, arrived in China on Sunday, where he will attempt the even more difficult task of prodding China’s leaders to get tough on Iran.

Making his first trip to China, Mr. Obama landed in Shanghai during a late-night downpour and was set to begin three days of meetings to discuss climate change, North Korea and the global economic crisis with President Hu Jintao.

The economic negotiating began even before Mr. Obama touched down. China’s top banking regulator, Liu Mingkang, sharply criticized United States policy on Sunday, saying the weakening dollar and low interest rates were contributing to global speculation in stocks and real estate, endangering the global recovery and inflating asset prices, The Associated Press reported.

China holds more than $2.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, much of it in dollars, and has increasingly expressed concern that the value of its investments is deteriorating.

But for Mr. Obama, one of the top priorities here will be to try to get Mr. Hu close to the spot where Russia, the other permanent member of the United Nations Security Council reluctant to impose sanctions on Iran, appears to have arrived.

After an hourlong meeting in Singapore on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama managed to get President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia to express dissatisfaction with Iran’s response to a nuclear offer made by world powers, raising the prospect that sanctions may be the next step in the West’s continuing effort to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The leaders, meeting on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit meeting in Singapore, also made progress in efforts to negotiate a replacement for a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia that is set to expire in December, administration officials said.

While White House officials acknowledged on Sunday that there was no way a new agreement to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, would be ratified by the legislatures of either country even if it was completed by the end of the year, they said that they expected to at least reach an interim “bridge” agreement that would preserve the status quo until a new agreement was reached.

Sunday afternoon’s session was the fifth bilateral meeting with Mr. Medvedev since Mr. Obama took office vowing to repair America’s relationship with Russia, and administration officials expressed satisfaction with their progress so far.

“The reset button has worked,” Mr. Obama said after the meeting, alluding to the administration’s early promise to press a “reset” button in America’s relationship with Russia after several years of bickering over a host of issues like missile defense and the status of Kosovo.

With Start set to expire soon, the Obama administration is searching for ways to keep inspectors in Russia — or it risks losing eyes on the world’s second most formidable nuclear arsenal for the first time in decades.

Under Start, the United States is allowed a maximum of 30 inspectors in Russia to monitor compliance with the treaty. Russia likewise has interests in finding a bridge mechanism to continue its similar right to inspections in the United States.

On Iran, Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev discussed a timetable for imposing sanctions if Tehran and the West do not reach an accord soon on a proposal in which Iran would send its stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country for either temporary safekeeping or reprocessing into fuel rods, administration officials said.

“Unfortunately, so far at least, Iran appears to have been unable to say yes to what everyone acknowledges is a creative and constructive approach,” Mr. Obama said. “We are running out of time with respect to that approach.”

More significant, Mr. Medvedev also alluded to running out of patience. He said that while the negotiation with Iran was continuing, “we are not completely happy about its pace. If something does not work, there are other means to move the process further.”

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said that the United States had set an internal deadline of the end of the year.

During Mr. Obama’s trip, his first to Asia as president, he has taken to referring to himself as “America’s first Pacific president,” a term he first used during a speech in Tokyo on Saturday morning.

Mr. Obama drew some fire from conservative American bloggers who accused him of going too far to reassure Asian leaders: they complained that he should not have bowed to Emperor Akihito of Japan when he went to the emperor’s residence for lunch.

“During his meetings and his speech in Tokyo, the president observed protocol and enhanced the status of American interests in Japan and across Asia,” said an administration official traveling with the president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity according to protocol. “Those who suggest otherwise are way off base and only looking to score political points.”

On Sunday, Mr. Obama became the first American president to meet with Myanmar’s military leaders when he attended a summit meeting of the Southeast Asian group Asean, held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation talks in Singapore. Mr. Obama, who has made his willingness to engage with adversaries one of his foreign policy hallmarks, sat four places away from Gen. Thein Sein, the prime minister of Myanmar, at the meeting table on Sunday afternoon.

After the talks, the group issued a joint statement that called for Myanmar’s elections scheduled for next year to be free and fair. But the statement did not call for the release of the Myanmar opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. White House officials said that Mr. Obama made a point of demanding her release when he made a speech to Asean members.

Since Myanmar is a member of Asean, there was never much chance that the organization’s joint statement would call for the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi or other political prisoners unless Myanmar’s military leaders agreed to that first.

Early Monday afternoon, Mr. Obama entered an auditorium on the top floor of Shanghai’s Museum of Science and Technology to give an audience of 500 a taste of what Americans have endured for the past several years: a town hall event. .

Mr. Obama referred to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement to talk about how far America has come, and said America’s struggles with inequality explained why the United States would speak out for core principles like access to information and freedom of movement.

“These are all things that you should know about America,” he said. “This is my first time traveling to China and I’m excited to see this majestic country.”

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company