Remarks by Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, French Ambassador to the United Nations, on IAEA Director General Mohamed Elbaradei's Report on Iran

May 3, 2006

We had a discussion on M. El Baradei's report. Ambassador Jones Parry and myself, we have presented a draft resolution on behalf Germany, United Kingdom and France.

I think we had a good preliminary discussion. We will now have bilaterals and also experts's meeting tomorrow afternoon.

I have been encouraged by preliminary reactions. Those reactions are the very first reactions so I am not going to exaggerate or interpret them. But all members of the Security Council are very much concerned with the Iranian negative reaction to the request of the IAEA and the Security Council and they all understand that the Security Council has now to act again.

Everyone agrees that there will be a resolution. We think that it will be a chapter VII resolution. It is important now to make some requests of the IAEA mandatory. Mainly the request for Iran to suspend all enrichment-related activities and also the construction of heavy water reactors.

So the negotiations are starting. We have told the members of the Council that we would like these negotiations to be swift so we could adopt the resolution as soon as possible.

It is very important to point that this resolution is totally consistent with the approach we have defined last month which is a gradual and reversible approach.

Are you willing to risk possible veto of the Russians and the Chines over chapter VII?

The most important element of this resolution is to make some requests of the IAEA mandatory. I repeat : mandatory.This is the reason why chapter VII will be useful.

There is a mention of necessary measures which was not in the Presidential Statement?

Paragraph 4 is about transfer of technology. It is a paragraph that starts with "calls upon". It is not a mandatory paragraph. So the measures we are referring to are mainly related to the decisions of the Security Council, which is the question of suspension.

China already said last week that they would not agree on Chapter VII so why do you put it in the draft?

Because we are used to negociation and we know that it is probably possible.