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PRESS: Let's start with Iran. The Iranians evidently rejected a request that they give their answer by the 5th of July. There is a meeting pending with Laranjani and Solana apparently next week. What do you make of this latest rejection?

UNDERSECRETARY BURNS: The G8 spoke very clearly yesterday, in fact I think Mark will give you, if you haven't seen it, a copy of the statement of the Ministers on Iran yesterday. But we spoke very clearly.

The G8 is unified and the P5+1, the group that authorized the offer to Iran is unified. We all believe that negotiations make sense, that Iran should accept the offer of the P5+1 to come to negotiations. We are serious about having negotiations that would center on the question of Iran's nuclear program.

There is one condition that Iran has to meet and that is it's got to suspend all of its enrichment related activities. We've seen lots of different statements from lots of different Iranian political figures. We are waiting for the authoritative channel which is the Laranjani channel to Solana. As you know there will be a meeting here in this city next week where we expect and hope that Laranjani will give us the answer to the offer that was made back on June 1st for whether or not Iran would like to sit down with the United States and other countries and have a negotiation on nuclear issues. The G8 could not have been more clear yesterday.

There was also a meeting of the P5+1 political directors two nights ago in Moscow, and I can say there is absolute unity among all the countries - Russia, China, the United States, and the European countries. We reaffirmed the offer, we reaffirmed our belief this is a good offer, and it's now up to Iran to decide and it's high time, frankly, that we had a response from the Iranian government.

PRESS: Could you understand it if they weren't in a position to give you an answer then? How long would they have?

UNDERSECRETARY BURNS: President Bush said last week, they've had a lot of time to decide this, to look at this offer.

This is not a complicated offer. The offer that was made to them is quite straightforward, and we think it's time that they respond. The statement says the G8 countries are disappointed that there hasn't been a response yet, so we fully expect Minister Laranjani to come with a response.

PRESS: If there were no response would that have consequences in terms of [inaudible]?

UNDERSECRETARY BURNS: I think what will happen is, in either case the P5 and German Foreign Ministers will meet July 12th here in Europe to assess what Laranjani has told Javier Solana, and then will look forward to St. Petersburg and to help to make some essential decisions about what direction we should go in.

We always thought this was a process of weeks, not months. We're looking forward to a clear Iranian response to this very straightforward offer.

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