U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Special Briefing
Sean McCormack, Spokesman
New York City
September 24, 2008

Briefing from UNGA

(7:30 p.m. EDT)

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QUESTION: If they do take this step next week and bring the material into the processing center, will there still be a way forward at that point?

MR. MCCORMACK: Look, we'll deal with the facts as they are before us. The facts are that they are now taking – they are taking steps to get them to the point of operationally reversing what they have done, meaning restarting the reprocessing facility or starting the reactor. They haven't done either of those things yet. And Secretary Rice, just in her conversation with Foreign Minister Lavrov, last night with the Chinese Foreign Minister – or the night before with the Chinese Foreign Minister, and that same day talking to the South Koreans, we're trying to use all points of leverage here and encouraging the other members to use all the leverage that they have to get North Korea to reverse this, I guess, microtrend that we've seen evolve over the past several weeks.

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