Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Remarks on China's Impact on Iran's Nuclear Program in Interview with George Stephanopolous of ABC's Good Morning America (Excerpts)

January 18, 2011

Weapon Program: 

  • Nuclear

Related Country: 

  • North Korea

. . .

 

QUESTION: We also have to see on the issue of security whether they're going to do more to crack down on the North Korean nuclear program and stop undermining efforts to stop the Iranians from building nuclear weapons. Are we seeing any progress there, because it doesn't seem like it from the outside?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think I see it a little differently. On Iran, for example, China joined with us in the tough sanctions. The Israelis just said about a week or so ago that they see a slowdown in the Iranian program. We believe that sanctions have had an impact. In North Korea, they also joined with us on sanctions.

So I think you have to look at the steps that we have taken to date and the fact that we need to be doing more. We are still --

QUESTION: You don't believe they're undermining the sanctions in Iran?

SECRETARY CLINTON: We think that there are some entities within China that we have brought to the attention of the Chinese leadership that are still not as, shall we say, as in compliance as we would like them to be. And we are pushing very hard on that and we may be proposing more unilateral sanctions.

Now, the Chinese response is they are enforcing the sanctions they agreed to in the Security Council; they did not agree to either European, American, or Japanese sanctions that were imposed unilaterally. Our response to that is, look, we share the same goal, we need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state; so therefore, even though technically you did not sign up to our unilateral sanctions, we expect you to help us implement them. Because what is the alternative? Some kind of conflict in the Persian Gulf which would disrupt oil supplies, which would have a terrible impact on your economy? So it's that kind of very clear-eyed, realistic discussion that we are having. And I think that we've made progress, we have a ways to go.

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