{"id":9012,"date":"2022-03-19T04:22:24","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T04:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=9012"},"modified":"2022-03-19T04:22:24","modified_gmt":"2022-03-19T04:22:24","slug":"biden-warns-china-over-sidings-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2022\/03\/biden-warns-china-over-sidings-with-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden warns China over sidings with Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – US President Joe Biden has warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of \u2018consequences\u2019 if China backs Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Leaders spoke for nearly two hours but Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joe Biden spoke for nearly two hours with\u00a0Xi Jinping as the US sought to dissuade China from backing Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine, reported Guardian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

A White House account of the call on Friday said that the US president \u201cdescribed the implications and consequences if China provides material support to\u00a0Russia\u00a0as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians\u201d.<\/p>\n

A senior administration official said there would be consequences \u201cnot just for China\u2019s relationship with the United States, but for the wider world\u201d, but would not give more details on whether Biden had gone into specifics on possible sanctions, other than to point out what had happened to Russia as an example.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president really laid out in a lot of detail the unified response from not only governments around the world, but also the private sector to Russia\u2019s brutal aggression in\u00a0Ukraine,\u201d the official said. \u201cThe president made clear that there would likely be consequences for those who would step in to support Russia at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president really wasn\u2019t making specific requests of China. He was laying out his assessment of the situation \u2026 and the implications of certain actions,\u201d the official said. \u201cOur view is that China will make its own decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chinese account of the conversation in the\u00a0state news agency, Xinhua, said it was \u201ccandid and in-depth\u201d but gave little detail about Ukraine. The report said that Xi expressed the wish that the war was not happening, but gave no sign of what the Chinese leader\u2019s intentions were towards support for Moscow.<\/p>\n

Xi said the situation in Ukraine had developed to such a point \u201cthat China does not want to see\u201d according to the report, which stuck to Beijing\u2019s policy of avoiding the words \u201cwar\u201d or \u201cinvasion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Beijing\u2019s readout of the call did not suggest any Chinese role in ending the war. It quoted Xi as referring to a favourite aphorism, \u201cLet he who tied the bell on the tiger\u2019s neck take it off\u201d, a seeming reference to China\u2019s position that the US and Nato are ultimately to blame for Vladimir Putin\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Beijing blames the war on Nato\u2019s refusal to rule out future Ukrainian membership of the alliance, and western supplies of weapons to the country. Xi also expressed concern about the impact on Taiwan, which he has vowed to restore to rule from Beijing.<\/p>\n

Xi claimed \u201csome people in the United States are sending the wrong signals to the \u2018Taiwan independence\u2019 forces, which is very dangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it will have a subversive impact on the relationship between the two countries,\u201d Xi added. The US \u201cOne China\u201d policy acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China, but Washington does not recognise Beijing has sovereignty over the island.<\/p>\n

Before the call, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Biden would question Xi about Beijing\u2019s \u201crhetorical support\u201d of Putin and an \u201cabsence of denunciation\u201d of Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n

US officials fear that Xi has\u00a0already decided\u00a0to give Russia economic assistance and some military aid, though it unclear what difference Chinese arms supplies would make on the battlefield, as the more sophisticated weapons, like drones, would not be compatible with Russian equipment.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s president, Emmanuel Macron, and Germany\u2019s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, both had hour-long conversations with Putin on Friday morning,<\/p>\n

According to Scholz\u2019s office, the German leader had \u201cput pressure on [Putin] to introduce a ceasefire as soon as possible, to improve the humanitarian situation and to make progress in the search for a diplomatic solution for the conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n

A spokesman gave no details on whether any progress had been made, adding that the conversation had been focused on the war and attempts to stop it.<\/p>\n

In the Kremlin\u2019s version of the conversation, put out ahead of the statement from Berlin, it was described as \u201charsh but businesslike\u201d, with Putin complaining about war crimes he said had been committed by the Ukrainian army, referring to attacks he said had taken place in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Makiivka that had led to \u201cnumerous deaths\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese war crimes are being ignored by the west,\u201d Putin said according to Russian news agency reports referring to the Kremlin. Putin reportedly told Scholz the Russian army \u201cis doing everything to avoid civilian victims\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to the Kremlin\u2019s account, Putin accused Ukraine of trying to \u201cslow down\u201d the discussions with Russia, and said that the government in Kyiv was making \u201cunrealistic suggestions\u201d. It added that the Russian leadership was \u201cready to seek solutions appropriate to its basic views\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin account of Putin\u2019s call with Macron said the Russian president had talked about the Kremlin\u2019s approach to peace talks with Ukraine but gave no details. The Elys\u00e9e Palace said Macron had said he was \u201cextremely concerned\u201d about Mariupol, which has suffered constant shelling. According to the Kremlin version, Putin repeated the claim that Russian forces were doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

The US, UK, France, Albania, Ireland and Norway have all accused Russia of\u00a0committing war crimes\u00a0in Ukraine, and the prosecutor at the international criminal court has begun collecting evidence. The UN\u2019s international court of justice has\u00a0ordered Russia\u00a0to halt its invasion, declaring that it had no evidence to support Russian claims, used to justify the attack, that Ukrainian forces were committing genocide against Russian speakers in the east of the country.<\/p>\n

The UN security council met on Friday to hear a repetition of Russia\u2019s unsubstantiated claims, circulated after the invasion as a justification, that Ukraine had run biological weapons laboratories with US help.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UN was clear that there was no evidence. It was nonsense then. It\u2019s nonsense now,\u201d the UK permanent representative, Barbara Woodward, said afterwards. \u201cAnd as far as we\u2019re concerned, frankly, this is the disinformation of the desperate. Things are clearly not going well for Russia in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

ENDS<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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