U.S. Relations with the People's Republic of China (2005)

U.S. Department of State

On-The-Record Briefing on the UN Summit Declaration

R.Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Kristen Silverberg, Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs

Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City
September 13, 2005

(5:50 p.m. EDT)

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: I was wondering if you could give us an update on the Administration's effort to deal with the Iranian issue, what kind of meetings you've been having and where (inaudible).

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: We continue to -- Iran is a large topic of discussion here at this summit meeting and will be through the beginning of the General Assembly this weekend. We continue to support very strongly the EU negotiating effort. We call upon and have called upon the Government of Iran to return to diplomacy and to return to the negotiations. That should mean that the Iranian Government should suspend all of its nuclear activities. It should stop its uranium conversion at its plant at Isfahan. It should return to negotiations and seek a diplomatic solution to this crisis.

There is not a single country that I know of that is actually supporting Iran, and Iran unilaterally ruptured the Paris Agreement. The IAEA spoke on August 11th and said that Iran should return to the negotiations. We are in very close contact with the European governments, with the Russian Government, with the Indian Government, with the Chinese Government, as Secretary Rice told you last Friday, and with lots of other governments to devise an international coalition that will call upon Iran to return to the talks.

The problem with Iran is that it withheld information, highly important information, from the International Atomic Energy for 17 years. It's not been transparent about its nuclear activities. It's a relatively closed society. It is not a democratic society. In fact, it's an authoritarian government. And so there simply is no trust in our government about what the Iranians have planned over the long term. The Iranians say that they are constructing a peaceful civilian nuclear program. We believe that beneath that, behind that veneer is likely the ambition to create a nuclear weapons capability. And so this is a very serious issue and it's occupying a lot of our time. Secretary Rice has been very much involved in the effort in the meetings she's had so far in the first few days that she's been here. She'll continue to discuss this issue with nearly everybody she meets and she's been on the phone to a lot of different leaders over the last couple of days.

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: So what has the Secretary heard in her initial meetings from countries such as Pakistan and China, or have you --

QUESTION: Russia.

QUESTION: Russia. I don't know; has she met with the Russian --

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I don't want to talk specifically about what any of the foreign leaders said, but I can tell you that we are hearing a great deal of concern about the fact that Iran ruptured the agreement and is currently resisting coming back to talks, which is an unreasonable position. The EU had put itself forward for these talks. The EU had offered a new relationship to the Iranians, and the Iranians have essentially cast that aside. And so I think across the board in our conversations here in New York but also around the world there's a great deal of opposition to what the Iranians are doing and the great majority of countries with which we've spoken do not wish Iran to proceed along the nuclear fuel cycle. So in other words, they don't want Iran to -- nearly all countries are opposed to uranium conversion, including the United States. I haven't found anybody, any country, who believes that Iran should have the right to enrich and reprocess or go beyond that.

And so I think there is a consensus that Iran has got to return to the talks. Now, as to how we get there, that's going to unfold over the next several weeks and we'll be in the thick of that action.

MR. MCCORMACK: Thanks, guys.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much.