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13 November 2003

IAEA Report Raises "Serious Concerns" about Iran's Nuclear Activities

Rice says international community must hold Iran accountable to IAEA obligations

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised serious concerns about Iran's nuclear activities.

"I think that the IAEA report raises very serious concerns about what has been going on in Iran and what might be continuing to go on in Iran," Rice said November 13 in response to a question at a press briefing in Washington. "So the international community has an obligation, knowing now what we know about Iran's behavior, past behavior, to make sure that anything that is signed on to with the Iranians takes account of that past, and really insists on performance from the Iranians."

Rice said that although the IAEA found no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, the international community must insist on "performance" from the Iranians in cooperating with the IAEA.

Following is an excerpt from the transcript of Rice's press briefing, containing her comments about Iran's nuclear program:

(begin excerpt)

Q My question on Iran is, the IAEA turned out this fairly detailed report you're probably seeing now. The Iranian position on this is that it proves that they do not have a nuclear weapons program. I was wondering what conclusions you drew from that and what conclusions you drew from the public CIA report --

DR. RICE: Well, I saw one Iranian statement that it should lay to rest any concerns about what's going on in Iran. I think that's a, shall I say, an overstatement of the case. The IAEA report made clear that the Iranians have been concealing, that they've not been truthful in the past. And I think the issue now is are they going to be truthful in the future? Are they going to come clean about what had been going on Iran, what is going on in Iran? Are they going to agree to verification measures and protocols that give the international community some confidence, given that they weren't transparent in the past, that they're going to be transparent in the future? I think that the IAEA report raises very serious concerns about what has been going on in Iran and what might be continuing to go on in Iran.

So the international community has an obligation, knowing now what we know about Iran's behavior, past behavior, to make sure that anything that is signed on to with the Iranians takes account of that past, and really insists on performance from the Iranians -- not promises from the Iranians, but performance from the Iranians. And that's the discussion that we're going to have in the IAEA Board of Governors.

But I think the IAEA report was very strong. And while it said that there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, they made very -- quite clear that given what they had learned, and given this long history, that it was going to take a while to really understand the full extent of the Iranian program.

(end excerpt)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=November&x=20031113180705atarukp0.9695856&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html