President Hassan Rouhani will attend a summit with his Chinese and Russian counterparts next month, officials in Beijing said Monday, as they try to salvage the nuclear deal thrown into upheaval by US President Donald Trump.
China, Russia and European powers, all of which signed the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, are scrambling to save the pact following the Trump's decision to quit the agreement and reinstate sanctions, AFP reported.
“Our hope is that China and Iran will have close consultation on the basis of observing the deal and push forward development of bilateral cooperation,” Chinese deputy foreign minister, Zhang Hanhui, said at a briefing.
“We should together look into how to avoid major disruption of joint projects between the two sides,” he added, Reuters reported.
China's President Xi Jinping will meet Rouhani on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting on June 9-10 in Qingdao, said Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend the summit, he added.
Wang did not include the nuclear deal in a readout of the summit's formal agenda. But Beijing, which is Iran's top trade partner and one of the biggest buyers of its oil, has signaled that it intends to keep working with the Islamic Republic despite the US move.
Chinese businesses are expected to step up activities in Iran to fill the void left by the exit of some European for fear of punitive measures enforced by the US.
Iran is currently an observer member of the SCO, though it has long sought full membership.
The regional bloc focusing on security and trade also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics and two new members, Pakistan and India.
The summit will discuss a three-year action plan to "fight the three evil forces"–terrorism, separatism and extremism–and strengthen cooperation on tackling cybersecurity breaches and drug trafficking, Wang said.
China will also push for "reforms to the multilateral trading regime" connecting the markets of SCO members, which account for nearly 40 percent of the global population, he said.
China floated the idea of an SCO free trade area in 2016, according to state-run Xinhua agency, but Wang did not say whether it would be part of the agenda.
Jointly led by Russia and China, the SCO was launched in 2001 to combat radical Islam and other regional security concerns.
