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STATEMENT BY ASSISTANT SECRETARY PHILIP J. CROWLEY ON potential IRANian talks and fuel swap

U.S. Department of State

October 29, 2010

Excerpts

 

. . .

QUESTION: P.J., on the indications that Iran has told the EU that they’re ready to have some talks over the nuclear program, is there any reason to expect that it would be more fruitful than it was a year ago when they went through this process?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, first of all, we welcome the Iranian response to Catherine Ashton. They have indicated in principle a willingness to have a follow-on meeting to the one held just over a year ago. And I’ll defer to Catherine Ashton’s office in terms of whatever follow-up they will do with the Iranians in choosing a date and location for that meeting.

It is something that we have long sought, to have a sustained engagement, sustained discussions with Iran on a range of issues. And we hope that Iran will work with Catherine Ashton’s office to rapidly confirm a specific date and location so that we can have the kind of meeting that we did have a year ago, and anticipated a year ago that we’d have follow-on discussions. Unfortunately, a year has gone on before we have the chance to further this discussion.

QUESTION: My question is: Why would you expect that it would be more fruitful than it was last time when nothing happened?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, we’ll see. We – it’s a very fair question, Bob, and the answer is we don’t know. We would hope that Iran would come to the table prepared for a meaningful engagement. We had strong signs a year ago when the first meeting took place. We thought it was a constructive engagement. We thought we went through areas of substance. From that meeting, Tehran expressed interest in the Tehran research reactor proposal, and unfortunately, there was no follow-up. So the P-5+1 will be at the table whenever this meeting does take place, prepared to engage seriously, and we hope that Iran will do the same.

QUESTION: Is it a fair assessment that the bite that you keep on saying that the sanctions are having on the Iranian economy has anything to do with their willingness now to come back to the table?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, I don’t want to get too far ahead of the process here. What Iran has signaled is that it’s willing to have a discussion now about a date and a location. We hope that this can be confirmed rapidly. But when we get to having an actual meeting, we would hope that Iran will be prepared to have a serious discussion, but we’ll just see what happens.

. . .