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INTERVIEWER: When you were asked about relations with Iran and...and putting up the hand of friendship, you replied if I recall "It's very hard to be friendly with people who spit in your eye." How worried are you about Ahmadinejad and the regime in Iran at the moment? How worried are you about relations between them and Israel?

MARGARET BECKETT: We are concerned. I think everybody has to be concerned. When you have the President of a country talking about wiping another country off the map, it's hard not to be alarmed and...and we are...

INTERVIEWER: The Israelis are racheting things up too aren't they?

MARGARET BECKETT: . . . I think everyone in the Middle East - in fact most people across the world - are seriously alarmed by what is perceived by most of us to be Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. I know that Iran says that all they want is civil nuclear power and no one denies that they have every right to have it but that is absolutely on offer. The international community - there are 6 of us - on behalf of others have made Iran an offer that could give them everything they could possibly want for modern civil nuclear power and they don't want to negotiate on it.

INTERVIEWER: We have done everything we can it seems to negotiate peacefully and got absolutely nowhere at all and so when we hear from Washington and Israel that there are plans for some kind of military strike, it makes perfect sense doesn't it?

MARGARET BECKETT: Well you say we hear from Washington and Israel. People who are not speaking on behalf of the American or I think the Israeli government make remarks but certainly a White House spokesman said only the other day what we have consistently said, which is that there is no planning for military action against Iran.

INTERVIEWER: Well we know sometimes things are planning and sometimes they're not planning but if diplomacy doesn't work, if sanctions don't work - and that's the case with both of those things - what other options are there?

MARGARET BECKETT: Well we've barely started with sanctions and I know people usually say....I don't....I don't dispute that sanctions are not always an easy route to travel and we didn't want to travel them and so....

INTERVIEWER: They didn't work with Saddam. They didn't work with Mugabe. Any real reason to think they'll work with a country as rich and surrounded by as many relatively friendly neighbours as Iran?

MARGARET BECKETT: Iran's position is not quite as rosy as that. They have real economic difficulties at present and they're extremely dependent on yes substantial income but from an oil industry which is lacking investment and which is under quite considerable pressure. So it's not a simple picture with Iran and this is why it's so sad that at the moment up till now the Iranian government has not shown signs of wanting to come into the negotiations that everybody in the international community wants them to join but we shall see.

INTERVIEWER: But sanctions are the next step?

MARGARET BECKETT: Well we have, as you know, at the Security Council just before Christmas took....taken a decision to bring in a sanctions regime. That of course is now being worked through. The European Union discussed it last week and how we move forward with that. So it's a bit early to say it isn't going to work. It's definitely going to be tried.

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