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U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

MR. RUBIN: Welcome to the State Department briefing. It is close to an on-time performance, but not close enough; we will continue to try harder.

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QUESTION: Before we get on with the big picture, let's take care of a little puzzlement. McCurry, explaining why the President vetoed the sanctions, brought Albright into it and suggested that this was not a good time to sanction Russia because of the opening to Iran. Is that driving you? Can we expect that US policy will be influenced until you get an answer from Iran or some action from Iran? I don't get it.

MR. RUBIN: I spoke to Mike, and he did not say that. Secretary Albright's recommendation for the veto, like others in the Administration, was not in any way based on the discussions that she had in her speech last week before the Asia Society.

What she talked about is a long-term process, by which we would hope to improve relations with Iran, concomitant with their making changes in these policies of concern to us. She also made clear how critical it is that we stop the transfer of ballistic missile or other weapons of mass destruction technology to Iran; and that has not changed.

The reason the President vetoed this bill - at least with respect to the reason Secretary Albright recommended the veto, which I can speak to, and the White House would have to speak to the President's actual statement - was on the merits. The merits are both we and the Congress want to do all we can, all we can to prevent Russia or any other country from providing assistance to Iran. We think this bill's rigidity, inflexibility and lowering of the standard for what would require sanctioning - namely, simply saying that credible information exists rather than a conclusion had been reached - would open the door to a whole series of sanctions at the very time that the Secretary and the President are trying to make clear and hope Congress understands that these series of sanctions proposals coming out of the Congress harm our ability to conduct foreign policy, tie the Secretary's and the President's hands behind their back and make it harder to achieve the objective.

So Mr. McCurry did not say that, and any suggestion that our policies with respect to stopping the transfer of weapons of mass destruction technology to Iran have changed are wrong.

QUESTION: They made - who knows how they read it, but the argument for vetoing is fairly sophisticated. The net result is leniency toward Russia and leniency toward Iran.

MR. RUBIN: On the contrary, we don't see that at all. We see the bill's lack of flexibility and the bill's lack of subtlety as creating situations where you would have to sanction entities without knowing what really was going on; and that is not a serious way to do business. That's the reason for the veto; it has nothing to do with the desire that Secretary Albright and the President stated to overtime improve relations with Iran.

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QUESTION: I just wanted to ask about the talks in Moscow between the IMF and Russia for the release of the loan. I was wondering if there had been, in your mind, any linkage with the reactor deal with India?

MR. RUBIN: No, there is no linkage with the reactor deal. We were encourage by much of what we have seen thus far of the plan that President Yeltsin announced. The plan is broadly consistent, with the positive measures President Yeltsin has supported for some time to address Russia's fiscal imbalances and lay the foundation for growth and prosperity for the Russian people. Cutting spending, collecting taxes, adopting tax reform, for example, are key measures are governing the international financial institutions have encouraged. We'll have to see how things play out between the executive and legislative branches.

(The briefing concluded at 1:25 P.M.)

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