"The Chinese foreign minister will arrive in Tehran on Tuesday and he will talk with our president as well as his counterpart (Manouchehr Mottaki)," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

China along with the other UN Security Council veto-wielding powers -- the US, France, Britain and Russia -- have imposed two sets of sanctions on Iran and are considering more.

Iran has so far defied international calls to suspend uranium enrichment, saying its programme is solely for civilian energy purposes, and not, as other world powers suspect, for manufacturing a nuclear bomb.

But China and Russia are reluctant to go ahead with another set of sanctions against Tehran partially because they are heavily commercially engaged with Iran.

Although it opposes a nuclear-armed Iran, energy-hungry China has consistently opposed tough action against the Middle Eastern state, a potential major supplier of oil and gas.

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