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QUESTION: A couple of things. Iran's UN Ambassador has asked the United Nations to tell the U.S. to stop making military threats against Iran. I don't know if you've seen that.

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I hadn't seen that.

QUESTION: Also, over the weekend, Secretary of State Rice said that the U.S. would consider ways outside the United Nations to pressure Iran, and since you've often said that the U.S. is basically sanctioned out, what was she -- what kind of things was she suggesting?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, a couple things. One, I hadn't seen the comments from the Ambassador. I think that just judging by what you've given me right there, it sounds like another effort to distract the international community from what is at issue here. And what is at issue is Iran's behavior, continuing pursuit of a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian nuclear program. We're now and I suspect that you are seeing these diversionary tactics sort of increase in sort of the rapidity of their coming out as well as their specific nature, just because it's getting very, very uncomfortable for them up in New York.

Right now we have -- just to walk through the timeline a little bit with you, Under Secretary Nick Burns is going to be traveling to Paris along with Kristin Silverberg, who's our Assistance Secretary for International Organization Affairs, is going to be leaving tonight. They're going to have some meetings tomorrow and I believe into the next day, with their counterparts from the so-called P-5+1. And they're going to be talking about a number of different issues related to Iran. The larger issue is about how to get -- how to bring about a change in Iran's behavior.

They're also going to be discussing, I would expect, specific language of a UN Security Council Resolution -- Chapter 7 resolution, which would compel Iran to meet the demands of the international community, I would expect that such a resolution would reflect what has been requested of them in a UN Security Council presidential statement which, in turn, reflected the demands of the IAEA Board of Governors. But there is a qualitative difference between a presidential statement and a Chapter 7 resolution. Chapter 7 resolution has the force of international law. It is -- it compels a state to comply with what is outlined in that resolution. So they're going to be talking about that, both in Paris and I would expect, up in New York. There's specific texts that they're going to look at.

And then a week from tomorrow, Secretary Rice is going to be in New York. She's going to have a couple of meetings. One, she's going to have a Quartet meeting which deals with Israeli-Palestinian issues. Then she's going to have a P-5 +1 dinner among -- with her counterparts up in New York. And again, this is an opportunity to discuss Iran, sort of, the wider issues, the way forward. It's a follow up to the meeting that took place in Berlin. And so that's sort of the timeline now that we're working on. I can't predict for you exactly when the Security Council would take up voting on a particular resolution. But as you can see, that process is moving forward. I think we are now at the point of looking at specific text. So that's moving forward. And as it moves forward, I would expect that life in the international community for the Iranian regime is becoming more and more difficult. They are now faced with a chapter -- the prospect of a Chapter 7 resolution; certainly, not a place where they wanted to be. So that's a long way of answering your first question.

QUESTION: But you didn't answer the question about what was she suggesting the U.S. might do, outside of this process.

MARCIA: Well, in terms of - (inaudible) on the Security Council and you rightly point out that in terms of sanctions ourselves, we're sanctioned out. We're virtually sanctioned out. I think we're down to pistachios and rugs, in terms of commodities. There are other states that are considering what they might do individually or as groups of states.

Certainly, there are other states -- I just use the example of the EU because they have talked about it in public. They have a number of different possible diplomatic levers at their disposal. And I know that based on their public comments, they have looked at these. And the point here is not to try to punish the Iranian people, but it is to try to compel a change in behavior among the Iranian regime. So states are looking at various diplomatic levers that they might have at their disposal, including sanctions, travel restrictions, asset freezes.

So there are a number of different levers that are available to members of the international community. Likeminded states can look at what actions they might take. That doesn't preclude action within the Security Council. As you can see, we're continuing to work on a Security Council Resolution, a Chapter 7 resolution. But again, that doesn't stop you from also thinking about what other measures you might be taking.

In terms of the United States on the sanctions, part of that is it's pretty limited. And also in terms of travel restrictions, it's also very limited in terms of the government official's ability to travel here to the United States already.

QUESTION: Can I follow up on that?

MR. MCCORMACK: Peter.

QUESTION: On the specific text you were talking about -- two questions. One is that, can you say who they were prepared by? I mean, we understood, I think, a couple weeks ago that the French and the British were working on the text.

MR. MCCORMACK: I think that this was a text originally proposed by the Europeans.

QUESTION: By the Europeans. Okay. And the second thing is that the nature of these texts, do these texts include specific mentions of specific sanctions or is this just an advance step before that to say --

MR. MCCORMACK: I wouldn't expect it.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) or something.

MR. MCCORMACK: I wouldn't expect at this point, Peter, that the first resolution, first Chapter 7 resolution you see on this would include sanctions. And I think that, again, what it is intended to do is to compel Iranian behavior -- to put down the marker -- have the international community, specifically the Security Council put down a marker. The Iranian regime is now compelled by the force of international law to comply with the demands of the IAEA and the presidential statement.

Yes.

QUESTION: About more and more voices calling the U.S. Administration to speak directly to the Iranians, Denise Ross today in the Washington Post (inaudible) to even think about it.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, at this point, we have not seen good faith on the part of the Iranian regime in the discussions which it has had with other international partners: the EU-3, the Russians. Every step along the way, they've gamed the process in order to get more time to move forward on their nuclear program. And the international community has now said that it has had enough of that kind of behavior and that we are going to do everything that we can, acting as a group of nations, building a larger consensus, a larger and larger consensus to try to compel a change in the Iranian behavior as a group. So that's where we're focused right now. That is where we are focusing our efforts right now. It's where the international community is focusing its efforts as well.

What the specific resolution will demand, we'll see. But I think certainly, a couple of guides would be the IAEA Board of Governors statement, as well as the UN Security Council presidential statement, which demands certain things of Iran, one of which is a suspension of all enrichment-related activities, as well -- among other things. So what has to happen now, because Iran has eroded the trust with members of the international community, they need to build up that trust. They need to reestablish that trust, or whatever trust existed prior to this, and take steps to suspend their enrichment program and to heed the call of the international community and to engage, in a serious way, in negotiations.

There are a lot of -- there were very attractive offers out there on the table from the EU-3 as well as the Russians and the Iranians have rejected them out of hand. And I'm not sure that the Iranian people know what was put on the table for them. You hear a lot of talk about the Iranian regime using the nuclear issue as a point of national pride. Well, I'm not sure that they're leaving out the second half of the sentence there in terms of what might be possible. They always talk about the fact that Iran has the right to civilian nuclear power. Well, nobody disputes that; they do have a right to it. But because of Iranian behavior over the past two decades, the international community has said there will be conditions on your having civilian nuclear power, because you have tried to obtain a nuclear weapon with your, supposedly, civilian nuclear research.

And in exchange for those objective guarantees, which would reassure the international community that you're not engaged in research on the nuclear weapon, there are certain steps the international community is willing to take. But I don't think the Iranian -- I'm not sure the Iranian people have heard any of that, because certainly, they -- and they certainly haven't heard it from the Iranian regime.

QUESTION: I don't know if you're prepared to get into this kind of detail, but it's not clear to me -- your description of the first resolution is not carrying sanctions.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: But what was said here often in the last few weeks, it will be more than a presidential statement.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: It would be more serious or more powerful.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: I'm lost. Because it sounds like something like the presidential statement -- hey, you're obliged to do this, this and this. You're not -- there's no punitive angle to it. So how is that different from putting them on notice? Because they have been put on notice God knows how many times?

MR. MCCORMACK: Right. Well, that's a little bit -- It's what I was talking about with Teri and Sylvie. And that is, there's a qualitative difference between a presidential statement from the Security Council and a Chapter 7 resolution. A presidential statement is a -- I guess you could describe it as a request from the international community. It is not backed up by the force of international law. A Chapter 7 resolution does have the force of international law. A state who is a member of the United Nations is compelled to comply with Chapter 7 resolutions. So that's the difference there.

QUESTION: But what's the threat if they don't comply?

MR. MCCORMACK: That there would be further diplomatic actions, that there's the --

QUESTION: More Chapter 7 resolutions?

MR. MCCORMACK: That there's the potential for a whole array of actions, either in the UN or by individual states or like-minded states to apply other diplomatic pressures. We talked about a few of those possibilities in terms of sanctions, asset freezes and travel restrictions.

Yeah.

QUESTION: We've heard many times about the behavior of the Iranian regime. But in this particular case, are you referring to the supporting of terrorism, as -- when you're not talking only about the nuclear issue?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, we do talk about the whole array of behaviors. We do talk about their support for terrorism. We've referred to them as the central bankers of terror in the world, the most significant state sponsors of terror in the world. I think the record bears that out. And their treatment of their own citizens in terms of human rights is deplorable and they're going in the wrong direction. They're going in the opposite direction from where the rest of the Middle East is heading. So, our focus on the nuclear issue should be in no way interpreted as a diminution in our interest in seeing a change of behavior on other fronts as well.

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