By Bo Erickson, Susan Heavey, Katharine Jackson and Parisa Hafezi
WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump warned Chinese President Xi Jinping against providing support to Iran during talks in Washington this week and received assurances that China would not do so, the US ambassador to China said on Friday.
The warning came amid reports that China had supplied Iran with shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers and that Tehran had found ways to evade sanctions on its oil sales with Chinese help.
David Perdue, Trump’s ambassador to Beijing, said in a CNBC interview that Trump reiterated to Xi that direct or indirect support for Iran was “totally unacceptable.”
Asked separately on Fox News if that meant China would stop assisting Iran, Perdue said Washington received assurances from Beijing on Thursday.
“We’ve seen movement … on that already. That’s what the commitment is. They assured us yesterday they’re not doing that,” Perdue told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” program.
Trump later on Friday acknowledged that the two leaders discussed the war that the US and Israel launched on Iran in late February, without giving details.
MISSILE LAUNCHERS, SANCTIONS DODGE
US lawmakers had urged Trump to confront Xi over reports of Chinese assistance to Iran, raising concerns that Chinese entities may have given targeting help that led to US casualties in the conflict.
Chinese officials have assured Iran that even after the Trump-Xi meeting China will not limit its economic, political or military ties with Tehran under pressure from the US president, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Friday.
Reuters reported in July that Iran was expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers.
Iran has also used a barter-like arrangement to bypass sanctions on its oil sales and buy billions of dollars’ worth of goods from China, including military gear, two senior Iranian sources and three other people familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month.
Chinese state newswire Xinhua reported on Thursday that Xi had urged the US and Iran to return to negotiations to end the war, but Xi has not publicly commented on Chinese support for Iran.
Trump and Xi did not take formal questions during the three-day state visit to Washington.
Earlier this month, Trump brushed aside a report that Iran acquired satellite images of a base in Jordan from Chinese entities before an attack that killed three US troops there in July.
“They basically do what we do,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on September 13. “When they say China spies on us, I say you’re right and we spy on them too.”
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson, Susan Heavey, Bo Erickson and Parisa Hafezi; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Peter Graff, Mark Porter, Chris Reese and Sanjeev Miglani)
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