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U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

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QUESTION: I have a Moscow question. Yesterday Sandy Berger said that three more Russian entities were involved in, I believe, transferring technology to Iran. I don't know whether he was that specific. The Russians have now denied that these entities have been engaged in this activity. How sure are we of our information; how seriously do we take this?

MR. RUBIN: Let me give you a fairly comprehensive answer to that. Over the last several years, we have been working very closely with Russia to try to deal with real concerns we have in the missile and nuclear area. This was done first through the services of Frank Wisner and his counterpart Mr. Koptyev on the Russian side, and now has been taken over by Bob Gallucci.

The objective is to not only provide information to Russia about the concerns we have and the disturbing reports we have about cooperation in the missile and nuclear area, but to convince them to take it more seriously, to investigate those reports, to stop this activity and to pass laws that create a better deterrent for that activity in the future.

During the initial phases, we saw a significant amount of success. Laws were passed - or rather, export control regulations were set forth, in particular a catch-all export control, and the Russian Government took active steps to stop problems and fix problems that we had identified. That movement in the right direction has stopped, and there has been a steady deterioration in this area.

We have brought to Russia's attention for many months now the fact that two entities on the nuclear side - and they are the Nikyet Scientific Research and Design Institute of Power and Technology and the Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology. We have made clear to the Russians that on the nuclear side, we believe material contributions to Iran's nuclear weapons program have been made. We are very confident in the information we have. We have provided it to the Russians and given them several months in which to deal with this by stopping it. They are quite familiar with the level of detail our information consists of.

We made very clear to the Russians that if they failed to act, that we would be taking this kind of step well before we took it. And prior to the decision to announce the sanctions, we alerted the Russians to the fact that we would do so. So any suggestion on their part of surprise or diplomatic precedent being somehow affected is simply untrue.

Secondly, on the missile side, we believe that the Moscow Aviation Institute has provided material contributions to Iran's missile program. In both cases, we believe that militarily significant activities are taking place. We have very good confidence in the information that we've made available to the Russians to justify them stopping it. We do not believe that these are groundless charges; we believe that Russia's government must do more to deal with the problems.

QUESTION: The follow-up to that, I imagine the Secretary is planning to take this up on her trip to Moscow, and what concerns on the part of the US of how these sanctions could impact the success of her trip to Moscow.

MR. RUBIN: The Secretary, from the beginning, has made clear that we and the Russians have a lot of work to do together. We and Russia need to work very closely together on the security of Europe and the security of other parts of the world. In her many, many conversations over many meals and many discussions with then-Foreign Minister Primakov, she made very clear to him the seriousness with which we approach the problem of non-proliferation and the determination we have to use whatever means are at our disposal to respond and deter action in this area. This is no surprise to the Russians.

Clearly, the US-Russian relationship has many areas of agreement and some areas of disagreement. What we consider our goal to be, in the broadest sense to advance America's interest, is to work together where we can and cooperate together where we can and manage the differences where they exist. Clearly, this is a difference.

Now, rhetorically, there isn't a difference. The Russian Government has made clear to us that they do not support activities to promote the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iran or assistance to their missile program. But we believe that these entities that I've described to you have done just that; and this will be a part of the discussion. It won't be the most pleasant part of the discussion, but the business of diplomacy requires one to deal with the hard issues more often than the easy ones.

QUESTION: Jamie, why do you think there has been this backsliding?

MR. RUBIN: That is not something I would care to speculate from on the podium. I am prepared to describe to you the assessment we have about the situation and the deterioration. I'm sure there are many different views in the expert community about this, but we are going to try to reverse the trend and I think the seriousness with which we approach this issue has been made clear by these actions.

QUESTION: Jamie, there were a series of entities that had previously been cited in this way.

MR. RUBIN: Seven, yes.

QUESTION: Do we consider these current breaches to be more serious then those?

MR. RUBIN: There's a big difference. In the last case, the Russian Government had identified those seven entities for investigation. We told the Russians, in light of their investigation into the activities of these seven entities, that we were going to use our executive power to prevent any trade or import or export with those entities, along with their investigation into those entities' activities.

In this case, we have been urging the Russians to act in these three areas and they have not acted to our satisfaction. That is why we took the action we took.

QUESTION: Did the activities not stop after you told them?

MR. RUBIN: Apparently not.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: No, no, that wouldn't be covered necessarily by your remarks. They may not have taken action against the companies, but did the companies keep doing what you didn't like?

MR. RUBIN: We believe that these entities are engaging in activities of concern to us. I cannot say that every one of the activities that has gone on is still going on, but there are activities of concern to us that continue.

QUESTION: Is there any question that the Russian Government was aware, even before you let them know? You sometimes say that the Chinese Government doesn't know what their companies are doing, so I wondered about the Russians.

MR. RUBIN: Well, let me say that - I named the institutes which are --

QUESTION: You did - some kind of formal and government-like.

MR. RUBIN: Right, so I'd rather simply say that in our conversations with the Russian Government at the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister level, both then-Foreign Minister Primakov and current Foreign Minister Ivanov have said to us that they do not support these activities; that they face risks from Iran that they want to stop. So that is where I'd like to leave that speculation.

QUESTION: This is somewhat of a follow-up on Betsy's question, but does the US recognize and appreciate the difficulties that the Russian Government is experiencing and, in addition to that, that these institutions would be experiencing with their economic crisis, and that perhaps some of the state subsidies that these institutions had come to rely on in years past just are no longer there? Is that something that the US --

MR. RUBIN: Well, let me give you an example of why I understand the logic of the question. We're quite aware of the state of Russian missile and nuclear facilities' finances, and we've been working very hard at that. But let me give you a concrete example of why this is not in Russia's own national interest.

We are running out of the quota under which Russia can boost American satellites. I believe the number is 16 that have been authorized. That is expected to terminate, reach 16 this year. If we don't get progress on the missile proliferation problem, we are not going to be able to support increasing that quota. That is an amount of money that is on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per year in revenue for Russia. The economics are better working with the United States and preventing Iran and other countries from getting missiles than to work surreptitiously with Iran or other countries' missile programs.

So it's not a financial question if one looks at it properly and in a macro sense.

QUESTION: How worried is the United States and how far does the US Government believe Russia is away from a, having an indigenous nuclear weapons program; and b, having --

MR. RUBIN: Russia?

QUESTION: Excuse me, Iran - and b, having --

MR. RUBIN: That would have been much easier if you had kept it at Russia.

QUESTION: And b, sort of being able to mass produce long-range ballistic missiles.

MR. RUBIN: We don't normally provide in this forum specific intelligence assessments of the Russian or the Iranian missile or nuclear programs. Let me say this - we are deeply concerned about Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons program and we are deeply concerned about Iran's missile testing and development in the medium- and long-range missile area. That is why we have been working so hard to stop it. Our efforts include not only an intensive dialogue with Russia, but using the global norms of the non-proliferation treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, et cetera, using informal non-proliferation tools like the nuclear suppliers group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, using export controls of our own and export control assistance to other countries, using interdiction of individual shipments of proliferation concern, using sanctions, as we did in this case, maintaining strong military intelligence and diplomatic capabilities. We do all this to impede the flow of sensitive technology to Iran from other countries. That is because of our deep concern about the prospects in the nuclear and missile areas.

QUESTION: So you're not prepared to increase the quota above 16, or you're not prepared to extend the program for the satellite launches? You're going to cut the program whereby Russia --

MR. RUBIN: Well, they're permitted to launch 16 satellites, and that is existing. Any effort to increase that and to permit future Russian launches of American-made satellites will require cooperation in this area of missile development and missile non-proliferation. That is a position that we have been taking. What I am trying to explain is that that involves the provision of hundreds of millions of dollars of hard currency to Russia.

QUESTION: I still don't understand. So you're going to stop in total allowing them - you may stop the program completely, or - I'm just not sure what you're saying - or they can still launch 16?

MR. RUBIN: Well, we haven't made a final decision and so I'm not telling you what our final decision is. I'm explaining to you that if we don't increase the quota at the end of this year, Russia will not be able to launch any more satellites because they will reach the quota roughly at the end of the year. So we need to make an affirmative decision about whether we should increase the quota; and in so doing, we will take into account very seriously progress, if any, that we have made in getting Russia to stop its entities from supporting Iran's missile program.

QUESTION: The Secretary spoke to Ivanov late last night or early today, as Tass claims?

MR. RUBIN: Yes. I would have to get the time. I think it was yesterday, I don't think it was late last night; I think it was yesterday morning our time.

QUESTION: Strobe Talbott is meeting with the Russian Deputy Prime Minister today?

(Laughter.)

MR. RUBIN: We will check that for you.

QUESTION: Here in Washington.

QUESTION: Can you tell us any more about - you talked about material contributions for these programs. Does that mean supplying equipment or is it expertise or what exactly does it --

MR. RUBIN: Well, I think with your able research efforts, a little work on the Internet, you'll be able to determine what it is that these entities do and probably answer that question for yourself in terms of the basic activities of these entities in the technical expertise area.

QUESTION: Are there any other possible consequences from their failure to take action?

MR. RUBIN: Well, we've taken this action and I'm not prepared to describe --

QUESTION: You said you hadn't taken that action yet. You said you're considering it.

MR. RUBIN: What are you talking about? We just imposed sanctions on three entities; that's an action.

QUESTION: No, I'm sorry, I meant are there any other possible economic consequences to the Russians if these three entities don't stop, or if there isn't progress in the missile proliferation?

MR. RUBIN: Well, the first and foremost consequence is increasing the chance that Iran would get a missile, which would be very much against the interest of Russia. I gave an example of an economic consequence, and I'm not prepared to speculate on any other areas at this time.

QUESTION: At the Carnegie Conference yesterday, Bob Gallucci was on a panel concerning the subject of Iran and Russia and the missile and nuclear proliferation matter. Mr. Gallucci was confronted at the end of his talk and basically his presentation was that for six months he hadn't received cooperation from the Russians, especially from Mr. Adamov at -- (inaudible). At the end of this presentation he was confronted by a Russian gentleman who said he was a representative of Mr. Adamov. He claimed, played dumb, said Russia hadn't heard any of these requests that had come from Mr. Gallucci's travels and could he please repeat them. Mr. Gallucci's response was, that's preposterous; that's not true that they hadn't been told what he had been speaking about. Do you have any reaction to this particular tactic on the part of the Russians?

MR. RUBIN: Thank you for making me feel like I was at the Carnegie Conference yesterday, which I did miss.

(Laughter.)

Having missed it, let me answer the question as best I can. I indicated in response to Betsy's question that we have told the Russians for some months now about the concerns we have with these three entities - the two in the nuclear area and the one in the missile area. We have told the Russians not only of our concerns about the problem, but of our intention to impose sanctions for some time now. Prior to announcing those decisions, we alerted the Russians to those announcements.

I have no idea who it was that enlivened your day at the Carnegie Conference and therefore I would have no way to comment on that specific event.

QUESTION: Just one more matter, Ambassador (inaudible), an Israeli and very expert man, says that the bottom line is that it's not too late to prevent the proliferation that will bring about an operational missile and weapons of mass destruction mating and a threat to Israel. It's not too late because of the refinement that has to go into the rocketry for targeting and other purposes. Is this the view of the United States - that it's not too late for Russia now to shut off the flow of technology?

MR. RUBIN: Well, we are not doing all that we're doing and making all the effort that we're making because we think it's pointless. We think it will presumably achieve some purpose.

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