From left: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao
China's government, as President Barack Obama by now no doubt knows, loves to talk about climate change. But it's an issue that exists for Beijing at 30,000 ft., far from earthly, everyday concerns. So President Hu Jintao can play the responsible global citizen by making vague commitments, as he did at the U.N. this fall, to reduce his country's carbon gas emissions by a "notable amount" at some point in the future without actually doing anything that might disrupt China's economy. But he doesn't have the same luxury of deferring action on the increasingly urgent global concerns over nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea.
Obama's sense of urgency over Iran is pretty apparent. Before arriving in Beijing, he conferred on the issue with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the APEC summit in Singapore and warned that "time is running out" for Iran to accept a deal to send its uranium to Russia for reprocessing into reactor fuel. The implicit message was clear: unless Iran accepts the plan, the U.S. will press for further sanctions against Tehran, this time possibly seeking restrictions on investment in Iran's vital energy sector.
http://www.time.com
