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

U.S. Department of State

Remarks With Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran

R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs
Hyderabad House
New Delhi, India
October 21, 2005

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QUESTION: What are your views on Iran and the November 24 IAEA meeting? Have you asked India? Are you going to watch India's voting behavior if it comes to voting on November 24? And what happens if India abstains or does not vote for the resolution at that time?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, the first thing I learned when I was State Department Spokesman 10 years ago was: never answer hypothetical questions. And you're asking hypothetical questions here today.

But let me give you a serious answer. What do we think about Iran? We're concerned about the attitudes and the behavior of the Government of Iran. Iran is a state trying to build nuclear weapons capability and I don't think there is a single country in the world that wants to see Iran acquire nuclear weapons. You'll notice at the IAEA vote in September, that Russia and China and Brazil and South Africa abstained. They didn't support Iran in that vote and that probably came as somewhat of a surprise to the Iranian government. The only country that it had voted with it was Venezuela, and if you've only got Venezuela on your side, and you have the rest of the world not agreeing with where this country is heading -- Iran -- in terms of its nuclear future, then the Iranians must feel fairly isolated and fairly alone in the world these days.

Our belief is that Iran should come back to negotiations. They unilaterally abrogated the negotiations with the EU-3 in August. The EU-3 was negotiating in good faith. There is still a possibility for Iran to sit-down with the European countries and seek a diplomatic solution to this very important problem. And our advice to the Government of Iran is to do that -- come back to negotiations and resolve this issue by peaceful and diplomatic means. But Iran is a country that most of the world believes is trying to create a nuclear weapons future. It's also a country that is the leading supporter and funder of the major terrorist groups in the Middle East -- the groups that are in action in Israel, in the Palestinian territories, and in Lebanon. And as a country devoted to counterterrorism worldwide, we are extremely concerned about Iranian behavior. Our Secretary of State has spoken about, also, the very unhelpful Iranian behavior in Iraq, specifically concerning support to terrorist groups there.

So there's a lot we are concerned about and we believe that the best route forward is negotiations. Now, if Iran does not come back to negotiations, then there is every reason to believe that there will be a vote in the IAEA Board of Governors on November 24th, that there is a majority of countries that already exist, there are countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America that have voted to find Iran not to be in compliance. That is a fairly sizable and widely spread sense of the international opinion of Iraq …on Iran…excuse me.

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