Shannon, Ireland– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will seek to enlist more Arab diplomatic pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions during a visit to the Gulf this week, U.S. officials said Saturday.
Speaking as she set off on a three-day visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the officials said Clinton also hoped to win greater Arab support to revive Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations, which have been frozen for more than a year.
President Barack Obama has made little headway in his effort to restart the peace talks or to persuade Iran to rein in a civil nuclear program which the West, as well as many Arab states, suspect is a cover to develop atomic weapons.
The United States is leading a push for the U.N. Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran, which says its nuclear program is to generate electricity so it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.
The U.S. officials hinted that one way Saudi Arabia could help diplomatically would be to offer China guarantees it would meet Chinese oil requirements, a step that might ease Beijing’s reluctance to impose further sanctions on Iran.
China, which wields a veto on the Security Council, has lucrative commercial relationships with Iran and, along with Russia, has worked to dilute previous sanctions resolutions.
"We believe that all countries have a part to play in helping to sharpen the question for Iran," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman told reporters as Clinton began her trip, saying Saudi Arabia and China have recently increased their diplomatic and commercial contacts.
"We would expect them (the Saudis) to use these visits, to use their relationships, in ways that can help increase the pressure that Iran would feel," he added.
Other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said they believed Saudi Arabia had made some gestures toward China on fuel assurances but gave no details.
"There’s been some recent, positive moves," said one official, without elaborating.
Clinton is scheduled to meet Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani Sunday and Saudi King Abdullah on Monday.
The centerpiece of Clinton’s trip is a speech Sunday at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, a meeting hosted by the Qatari government and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank.
Aides described her appearance as a sequel to Obama’s June speech in Cairo, in which he called for an end to the "cycle of mistrust and discord" between the United States and the Muslim world and sought to pave the way for better relations.
While Obama’s speech was well received by many, there has been deep unhappiness among Arabs at his inability to get Israel to stop building Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
A year of U.S. diplomatic efforts has so far failed to revive talks aimed at ending the six-decade conflict through a peace treaty that would create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Having failed to get Israel to undertake a total settlement freeze or to get Arab states to take confidence-building steps such as reopening Israeli trade offices as a first step toward negotiations, Washington now simply wants to get talks going.
Clinton planned to discuss how Arab states might give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas political cover to help him resume peace talks despite the absence of a settlement freeze.
"What we would like to see right now is for the Arab states to provide the support that President Abbas feels he needs in order to enter … negotiations," he said. "Let’s stop talking about negotiating. Let’s actually get the negotiations moving."
