Transcripts
Pull Aside Interview by Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation John C. Rood with Russian Press Representatives
Astana, Kazakhstan
Monday, June 11, 2007
Question: Are efforts by the Global Initiative integrated with the International Atomic Energy Association and if so, how?
Assistant Secretary Rood: The main objective we are trying to address as part of the Global Initiative to combat nuclear terrorism. The IAEA has an international database in which they record incidents of nuclear smuggling and that database has shown hundreds of incidents over the last decade.
What these incidents show is that this is a problem which has a broad implication. There are many nations that have been involved and therefore our solutions need to focus not on a single country but on the activities of many.
In the case of Russia, obviously Russia has a large number of sites with nuclear materials and a large history of involvement in this area. So naturally that is one of the important countries where we would like to work in cooperation with the Russian government to assure the secure nature of those materials.
Question: So how you assess the level of development of Iran and North Korea? And how are they close to creation of nuclear weapons?
Assistant Secretary Rood: In the case of North Korea, the United States assessment is that North Korea has the capability to have nuclear weapons as we saw last October with their nuclear test. This is obviously of significant concern to us and we're pleased to be working with a group of six nations, including Russia, in the Six-Party Talks to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear interests and to receive benefits from the international community and integration into the international community as a result.
In the case of Iran, we do not believe Iran today possesses a nuclear weapon, but we believe they are working hard to achieve that capability in violation of their international obligations including their Non-Proliferation Treaty Obligations like their IAEA Safeguards Agreement.
Iran's nuclear activities are of significant cocern to us and smething we think is very important that must be addressed. I cannot underestimate the critical national security importance of dealing with Iran's nuclear program effectively. It's something we've worked on together with the Russian Federation in the UN Security Council, but we're also working elsewhere with other allies and other friends to try to address this problem.
Question: Is it possible to stop the development of Iran nuclear program by non-military means?
Assistant Secretary Rood: We are focused today on a diplomatic effort in order to achieve the objective of Iran not achieving a nuclear weapons capability. That's our focus and our full intention. I think it remains to be seen how willing the Iranian government is to engage in a negotiation, to engage in a diplomatic process, that addresses the international community's concerns and also provides some objective assurance that that government is not seeking nuclear weapons.
There's been a long history of Iran pursuing a covert nuclear activity, set of nuclear activities. Tehrefore I think it's only right that the international community require a certain amount of confidence that Iran's activities are purely peaceful given the nearly two decade history of doing things in secret, in violatin of Iran's international obligations.
We are currently very focused on a diplomatic effort and we're engaged in the hard work of diplomacy that we hope will produce the result that we all want.