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

U.S. Department of State

The United States and Europe: Addressing Global Challenges Together

Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs
Foreign Press Center Briefing
New York, New York
September 19, 2005

9:37 A.M. EDT

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Q: Could you - Mark Turner, Financial Times - could you - there's a couple of things - give us a sense of how you see the next week going with regards to Iran and U.S.-European cooperation? And also, I'd like a little bit more details on Lebanon and where we're heading. I know there were some discussions about the possibility of holding trials outside Lebanon. Anyway, those two subjects.

MR. FRIED: Yes. On Iran, I will defer to the secretary and Nick Burns. But I will say that Ahmadinejad's speech was so harsh as to be - I don't know whether I would call it surprisingly harsh, but it was a harsh speech. And that kind of a speech demands an expression of solidarity among the nations of the world concerned about Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.

We are going to be discussing this week - well, we were discussing yesterday with the EU-3, and this topic will be discussed intensely the coming days. I don't know precisely the forum. This will be - this will be discussed at the IAEA Board of Governors. It will be discussed here in New York. But it is important that we build on the growing consensus that Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions are a grave problem.

I note that this consensus has indeed grown. If we were having this discussion a year ago, your question might have been - and I recall questions at the time that focused on differences between the United States and the EU-3. You remember that period. And that was - that was - that was then, this is now. We have been working very closely with the EU-3. We intend to work closely with them and to build out to deepen an international consensus on the problem that Iran has presented the world.

Q: Where do you see China and Russia as this debate goes on?

MR. FRIED: I don't want to predict how they will - how they will come out on this, but the Russians clearly have their own concerns about Iran. They're now wrestling with the right way to proceed, and I hope that they face this clearly.

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Q: Siu Wai Cheung, Ta Kung Pao - Hong Kong. In the advance to the U.N. General Assembly, at the press conference - I mean, briefing - Secretary Rice was asked about the question of the EU's lifting of the arms embargo to China.

MR. FRIED: Yes.

Q: And I quote here. The secretary said, "We've made a lot of progress with the Europeans in beginning to work toward a common strategic understanding of Asia." Can you elaborate on that?

MR. FRIED: Yes, I can. We had a sharp debate with the European Union about the China arms embargo. I remember that embarrassing moment when the European Union delegation arrived in Washington to try to tell us why lifting the arms embargo was a good thing, which was the very day the Chinese National Assembly passed the anti-secession law. Well, my European Union colleagues were discomfitted, to put it mildly.

We decided with our European colleagues that we were simply putting this debate in the wrong order; we should not be debating the arms embargo, we should be having a deeper strategic discussion about Asia and about China and about how Europe and the United States will work with China to make sure that its development, its rise, if you will, contributes to international security and prosperity; and if we have various questions, if we have various concerns, we ought to address it in a framework of a common understanding of what our goals are and not talk about - start that discussion by talking about and debating the tactics.

So Chris Hill and I started a strategic dialogue with the European Union and with NATO about China. We did so in the spring. We will continue this dialogue this fall. This is - we take this very seriously and our purpose is to have a common understanding with Europe about Asia and about China so that the discussions within respect to the China arms embargo take place within a framework of shared views.

We've been remiss in not having this dialogue early and stumbling into a debate about tactics out of order. We've now fixed that.

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END.