27 January 2006
Rice Calls for Security Council to Confront Iran on Nuclear Issue
Says international community does not seek to isolate Iranian people
By Phillip Kurata
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the time has come for the U.N. Security Council to confront Iran over its suspect nuclear activities.
In an interview with Reuters January 26, Rice said Iran showed its "true stripes" when it walked out of talks with Britain, France and Germany, known as the EU-3 when dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue, late last year and ended its moratorium on reprocessing nuclear fuel, in violation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"It's time to put this in the Security Council," she said. "The Security Council has to be able to act in order to prevent what we all want to prevent, which is access to technologies that could lead to a nuclear weapon for a state that has lost the confidence of the international system in its truthfulness," she added. (See related article.)
Speaking to CBS January 26, the secretary said that for 18 years, Iran hid its activities on enrichment and reprocessing, which the IAEA learned of through dissident groups.
Iran's sudden interest in a Russian offer to process its nuclear fuel indicates that it is feeling the pressure of possible referral to the Security Council.
"They're trying to find all kinds of ways to keep that from happening," she said.
The secretary said that Iran is the country in the Middle East that is "most out of step with the region," which is moving in the direction of democracy.
"It is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. It is a state that has now a president who says the most outrageous things about other states, like that Israel should be wiped off the map," Rice said. "So Iran is in the wrong direction."
Rice said that the international community has no quarrel with the Iranian people and does not want to take actions that will isolate them from the rest of the world.
"Iranian soccer players ought to be playing in the World Cup and coming to visit the rest of the world. Iranian university students ought to be going to universities abroad. Perhaps those Iranian musicians that apparently can't play Beethoven now in Tehran ought to be playing Beethoven outside," Rice said.
She said the United States is constantly assessing and reassessing what more it can do to promote freedom and democracy in Iran.
Transcripts of Rice's interviews with Reuters and CBS are available on the State Department Web site.
For additional information, see Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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