JEDDAH, 16 August 2006 — A senior Chinese official yesterday said that Beijing considered the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that halted the recent military standoff between Israel and Hezbollah as “unbalanced” and called for a permanent cease-fire in the region and resumption of peace talks to achieve a just Middle East settlement.
“We noticed that Arab countries including Lebanon did not oppose the resolution, that’s why we voted in favor of it. China does not think that it was an ideal resolution and sufficiently balanced,” Ambassador Sun Bigan, China’s special envoy for Middle East affairs, said yesterday.
Speaking at a press conference, he emphasized the need for fully implementing the resolution to achieve total cessation of hostilities between the two sides. “The most important thing ahead of us is executing this decision,” he said, adding, “Both sides have started pulling troops and we wish it’s not a temporary cease-fire but a permanent one.”
Sun said he shared the views of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah who opposed the move to link Islam and Muslims with terrorism and fascism. Sun, who was the first Chinese ambassador to Riyadh, stressed his country’s desire to strengthen its relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states. “We’ll cooperate with the Kingdom in its efforts to establish peace in the Middle East,” he added.
The peace process in the Middle East has to resurface “for that alone can achieve peace in the region,” he said. “All our activities in the Middle East and past visits were focused on this matter,” he pointed out.
Sun is leading a delegation that started its current visit to the Middle East on Aug. 6 and has so far covered Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. The delegation met yesterday with Crown Prince Sultan and discussed bilateral relations and the UN resolution on Lebanon. “Our viewpoints were near identical,” the envoy said about his talks with Sultan.
Sun said that Israel’s random bombing against Lebanon had killed and injured a large number of civilians and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. “This is a big humanitarian catastrophe.”
The Republic of China has strongly condemned the Israeli attack on Lebanon as well as the massive use of force by the Israeli Army, he said.
