China, which has the power to veto UN Security Council Resolutions, said today it was too early to tell if Iraq was in "material breach" of a UN resolution and that it had weapons of mass destruction.
In its first official response to Washington's declaration that Baghdad had violated a new UN resolution, for which it used the legal term that could trigger war, China's Foreign Ministry said it was still studying Iraq's lengthy arms dossier.
"Relevant UN Security Council resolutions require the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out inspections and destroy any large scale weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," a Chinese Foreign Ministry official told Reuters by telephone.
"We hold that the condition of Iraq's report should be appraised after the two organizations have carried out on the spot inspections," the official said.
"The report is very long, the Chinese side is still studying and analyzing it," the official said, in reference to the 12,000 page arms document submitted by Iraq to the United Nations this month.
China, which voted in favour of the new resolution giving Iraq a last chance to disarm or face "serious consequences", renewed calls for a political solution through the framework of the United Nations, the official Xinhua news agency said.