Roundtable With Traveling Press

QUESTION: What actually are you looking at in the Security Council? Are you looking at another resolution?

SECRETARY RICE: I think we'll wait for El Baradei's report and see what he says. There's also a Board of Governors meeting of the IAEA on March 5th, but we'll keep, once we have that input then I think we can begin to discuss what the best path ahead is.

QUESTION: Last week you said you thought it was likely that there'd be a push for an additional sanctions resolution. Is that still your sense?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we're going to use the Security Council, as you know, we've been pursuing this parallel tracks of trying to get the negotiations going and pursuing action in the Security Council and nothing of that changed today, but I think we want to see the report and review the report and we'll use all of our channels.

QUESTION: You haven't seen any parts of the report, not even the summary?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I've not.

QUESTION: But it seems from yesterday anyway the deadline passed and Iran said it wasn't going to give up any of its uranium reprocessing, so what do you anticipate, are you anticipating that there's going to be some kind of diplomatic measures?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the thing to remember about the report is it's not just the enrichment and reprocessing issue but it's also a report on Iranian cooperation with the IAEA and I think we have to see what El Baradei says about that. But I certainly hope, and we've hoped all along, that there are people in Iran who recognize that the path that they're on is not a useful path, not a constructive path, and there are better ways to do this, and the suspension of their enrichment and reprocessing efforts so that we could begin negotiations on whatever they would like to talk about. There's even a package offer on the table from June of last year and, you know, we remain hopeful that at some point they will want to take that up but it’s important to remember the report is not just yes/no on enrichment and reprocessing it's also a report on cooperation.

QUESTION: Are you seeing increasing signs in Iran of dissension, of dissatisfaction, of unhappiness? I know there was a statement put out by a political group linked to Khatami.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't think there's any doubt that there is some dissatisfaction with the course that they're on now. I am not going to try to read internal Iranian politics, but you've been covering the rather extraordinary discussions that are going on inside Iran, people voicing concern about the fact that there was a Security Council resolution, that that Security Council resolution was not the United States, it was 15 - 0, so this is the international community's view not that of the United States. I think those are views that are being voiced inside Iran. I hope that the voicing of those views means there are people who would like to take a different course. And I want to reiterate something else. The Iranian regime often talks about its right to civil nuclear power, to a civil nuclear program, and nobody questions Iran's right to a civil nuclear program. In fact, the United States has supported the idea that the Russians have of a consortium, we've supported the Bushehr project, which has the feature of a fuel take-back, which means that you won't have a proliferation risk, so the notion that we would deny Iran a civil nuclear program is just not true, it's a question of the fuel cycle enrichment and reprocessing, because Iran did not report for 18 years its enrichment and reprocessing activities, so we just have to underscore that.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask you about Bushehr actually - did the current dispute, Iran and Russia, come up, and do you think that (inaudible) …

SECRETARY RICE: I think we've been informed by the Russians what the state is, what the status is, but that's a matter between Iran and Russia. Last one?

QUESTION: Is the focus here on getting Iran back to negotiations or on working out how you can punish them with further steps in the Security Council?

SECRETARY RICE: The point of Security Council action has always been to try to get to a negotiating track. The idea is not that somehow the sanctions will, the UN Security Council sanctions, will produce the desired result. We would like to do that in negotiations, so the hope is that the sanctions show the Iranians the isolation that they are enduring, that that isolation is likely to increase over time, and that it's time to take a different course. We’ve got to get on a plane. Ok, thanks.

2007/T3-14