China Pledges To Stop Selling Missiles To Iran, Official Says

China has promised the United States it will stop selling anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran, a senior Clinton administration official said Friday.

The pledge came in a meeting two weeks ago between Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen at a United Nations gathering in New York, the official said.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said Albright brought the matter up with Qian, as she has in all their encounters leading up the Oct. 29 summit here between President Clinton and China’s President Jiang Zemin.

“Secretary Albright has raised in all her meetings with the Chinese foreign minister our deep concerns about the sale of conventional weapons and cruise missiles to Iran,” Rubin said. “I have no comment on his response.”

China also has agreed in principle to halt assisting Iran’s nuclear program, although the details of that arrangement still are being worked out in hopes of making a summit announcement, other senior U.S. officials said.

“We are still negotiating,” one administration official said.