Remarks to the Press

MR. BOUCHER: Let me begin on the record as Richard Boucher.

QUESTION: Can you go be on the record as someone else?

MR. BOUCHER: I was thinking about it. The Secretary this evening met with Foreign Minister Tang of China, Foreign Minister de Villepin of France, and Foreign Secretary Derbez of Mexico. In all his meetings he discussed UN issues, including the session on terrorism coming up tomorrow, the questions of Korea and Iraq, and then there were some bilateral issues that came up in each of the meetings with some others.

On Korea, I’d generally characterize the discussions as recognition by all that Korea’s nuclearization has created an international problem, and they discussed how the international community can respond, including looking towards a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors soon to probably refer the matter to the United Nations, as the Secretary mentioned this morning on one of the shows.

On Iraq, everyone stressed the importance of Iraqi disarmament, a hope that Iraq gets the message and responds to the points being made by the inspectors, by Dr. Blix and Dr. El Baradei in Baghdad this weekend. We are all looking forward to the report that the inspectors will make to the Council on January 27th. And then we’ll discuss with other governments what the next steps should be.

In terms of specific meetings, with China there was also a discussion of bilateral relations and how to strengthen our ties, which have been good and growing more positive. They discussed the possibility of upcoming visits, strengthening counterterrorism cooperation, trade cooperation.

With Mexico, this was the Secretary’s first meeting with Foreign Secretary Derbez. They look forward to a very strong and productive relationship, a close one. They talked about ways to move forward on migration issues, moving step by step and keeping in mind that security was an important fundamental for all of us. On water, they talked about continuing the work on water beyond the agreement that we reached recently. They talked about moving forward on FTAA and NAFTA.

He discussed Venezuela with both the French Foreign Minister and the Mexican Foreign Secretary, more with the Mexican Foreign Secretary because they’re on the Friends of the Secretary General group. Emphasized our common purpose of helping Secretary General Gaviria and look forward to an early meeting to help organize the work of the Friends on that.