US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday the United States will continue to reach out to China and other partners as it seeks ways to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Clinton issued her remarks after Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Thursday rejected calls by the United States and other powers for sanctions against Tehran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium.
"We think it is important that we move now toward looking at what pressure, what sanctions can be brought to bear on the Iranians," Clinton told reporters after saying Iran had balked at offers to engage in talks over its nuclear plans.
"We're going to continue to reach out to all of our colleagues in this effort, including, of course, China," the chief US diplomat said.
The United States is trying to enlist support for new sanctions from its five negotiating partners China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, but Beijing is expressing increasingly strong skepticism toward sanctions.
All but Germany are veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council.
During a visit to Paris on Thursday, Yang argued that Iran had not "totally shut the door" to UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) efforts to negotiate a deal and argued that diplomacy should be given a chance.
But Clinton disagreed.
"The fact is we haven't really seen much in the way of response," Clinton said. "Sometimes we see a response from a part of the (Iranian) government that is then retracted from another part of the government."
The United States and its allies fear Iran is using an uranium enrichment drive to secretly develop fissile material for nuclear weapons. Iran says it only wants to produce fuel for a peaceful nuclear energy program.
China warned the United States on Tuesday that their cooperation on international and regional issues could suffer over Washington's decision to sell arms to Taiwan.
The White House said Thursday it thought China would continue to work with the United States to combat Iran's nuclear challenge.
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