US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called his Chinese counterpart and urged Beijing to use its influence in the Middle East to prevent other state or non-state actors from attacking Israel and widening its war with Hamas, the State Department said.
Blinken spoke with Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi before departing from Riyadh, where the top US diplomat was attempting to shore up support for Israel among Arab nations, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
President Joe Biden’s envoy is on a whirlwind diplomatic tour of the Middle East, having made stops in Israel, Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain as well as Saudi Arabia over the past few days.
The US has been particularly concerned about Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group in Lebanon, opening an additional front in the war on Israel’s northern border. China has close relations with Iran, and assisted Tehran in brokering a landmark diplomatic detente with Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
Saturday’s call with Wang, which lasted about an hour, was made possible in part by the diplomatic outreach the Biden administration has done with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over the last few months, Miller said.
That included a trip Blinken took to Beijing in June that reopened lines of communication with China after months of tension.