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MR. MCCORMACK: Yes, Nick is leaving this afternoon and he's -- the actual genesis for this is the -- a meeting of the G8 political directors, so this is in preparation for the G8 foreign ministers meeting at the end of this month, which is in preparation for the G8 summit in June.

So he's going to take the opportunity of those meetings, of basically having all of his colleagues in the P-5+1 minus China, to have a separate session on Iran. And the Chinese representative is going to join via either video or teleconference and they're going to have a discussion, as we talked about earlier this morning, about where we stand with Iran, what Mr. Solana heard during their last meeting, what is the strategy going forward for the next meeting between Mr. Solana and Mr. Larijani and how can we underscore our hope that the Iranian Government will take us up, meaning the P-5+1, on the offer that we've laid out for them.

QUESTION: Has anything changed since -- I mean, they met a week ago in London, so has anything changed in the last six, seven days?

MR. MCCORMACK: I know that there's been some thinking about this next meeting and what it is --

QUESTION: It's the next meeting with Larijani and --

MR. MCCORMACK: Solana -- yeah, Solana and Larijani and what it is that Mr. Solana might convey to the Iranians in that meeting.

QUESTION: And where is this G-8 meeting?

MR. MCCORMACK: Berlin.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. MCCORMACK: Okay, Lambros --

QUESTION: Can I have a quick one on this?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah.

QUESTION: Are they actually talking -- going to be talking about the possibility and maybe elements of a new resolution?

MR. MCCORMACK: New elements of a Security Council resolution?

QUESTION: Yes.

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't -- at this point, I don't think that will be on the agenda this meeting. I think they're going to focus more on the immediate of the upcoming meeting between Solana and Larijani.

QUESTION: Will Solana be at this meeting?

MR. MCCORMACK: Let me check for you. I think he -- well, no, Solana would not, but an EU representative will be.

QUESTION: And Sean, why do they need to focus on that when -- while the content of Solana's last set of talks with Larijani is hard to pin down --

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: Everything that you have said since then and Administration officials and, indeed, officials in other capitals fairly consistently seems to be; no, we're not going to accept anything less than full suspension for full suspension. So why do you need so much -- why do you need an actual -- another meeting to talk about this unless you are somehow weakening in that view and --

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I -- no, we are -- no, we're not weakening in that view, but you also want to talk about diplomatically, how can we accomplish our objectives and how, in our approach to the Iranians, we can make it clear that they can realize a different kind of relationship with us, potentially, and the rest of the world if they sit down at the negotiating table vice engaging in these exercises in defiance that they have been over the past year-and-a-half. So we want to make sure that we are able to maximize every possible opportunity without walking back on principle and the principle here is important. The principle is that they -- while we are talking can't be allowed to practice and get good at running centrifuge cascades because that defeats the whole -- from our perspective, defeats the whole purpose of talking. They can just let talks go on and on and on and on and on; meanwhile, they become more expert at running centrifuges. At this point, they've been able to install several cascades as reported by the IAEA.

And so it isn't necessarily a scientific problem; it's an engineering problem. How is that they can master -- that they can master tying these cascades together so that they can enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. So that's the reason why the principle is important. But we want to, obviously, because they are moving forward with this program, we want to make sure that every interaction that our representative -- meaning Mr. Solana -- has with the Iranians is the most effective interaction that it can be, so we want to talk about that, talk about the strategy for that meeting and talk about how he might approach the Iranians.

Yeah, Nina. Oh, same subject, yeah, go ahead.

QUESTION: Does the so-called double time out concept fit with the --

MR. MCCORMACK: The double time out?

QUESTION: Well, it's widely reported it would involve Iran not -- not developing any further its enrichment activity and the P-5+1 would not put any additional sanctions on Tehran. This is something that apparently has come out of Larijani's talks with Solana.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right. Well, in principle, you know, anything that adheres to the idea of suspension of their enrichment-related activities in return for suspension of further activity in the Security Council is something that we have signed onto. Now, the devil is in the details as you might imagine with this sort of offer. So if there's something new from the Iranian side with respect to ceasing or suspending their enrichment-related activities, certainly that would be something Mr. Solana would be very interested in hearing about, but thus far we haven't heard that. But there's no give on the idea that in order to realize negotiations and in order to realize a suspension of action within the Security Council, the Iranians need to suspend their enrichment-related activities for all the reasons we were just talking about a minute ago.

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