Blinken says China's talk of Ukraine peace 'doesn't add up'

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday expressed strong concerns about China's support for Russia's defense industry and questioned Beijing's sincerity in seeking peace in Ukraine .

He met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.

"When Beijing says that, on the one hand, that it wants peace, it wants to see an end to the conflict, but on the other hand is allowing its companies to take actions that are actually helping Putin continue the aggression, that doesn't add up," Blinken said at a media briefing. 

Beijing said it has not supplied Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine.

Blinken, however, said China has provided about 70% of machine tools and 90% of microelectronics that Moscow needs for military production, including rockets and armored vehicles.

The US diplomat said that China is fueling the "war machine" of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

China says US should stop "smearing"

Wang told Blinken that Beijing's position on the war in Ukraine had always stressed the need for peace through dialogue, according to a statement from China's foreign ministry.

"The United States should stop smearing and planting evidence against China, imposing sanctions indiscriminately, and using this (conflict) ... to create and encourage confrontations between different camps," he said, according to a statement from China's Foreign Ministry. 

Earlier on Friday, China and Brazil rallied developing countries behind a Ukraine peace plan.

Wang and Brazilian foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim chaired a meeting of 17 countries.

"Russia and Ukraine are neighbors that cannot be moved away from each other and amity is the only realistic option," Wang said, adding that the international community should support an international peace conference involving both Russia and Ukraine.

Wang said the group also discussed the need to prevent escalation, avoid use of weapons of mass destruction and prevent attacks on nuclear power plants.

Earlier in a UN address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced China and Brazil for promoting the negotiations to end the war, saying that forcing Kyiv to accept a peace deal was akin to colonialism.

Proposing "alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans, so-called sets of principles" would only give Moscow the political space to continue the war, he said.

dvv/lo (AFP, Reuters)