. . .

QUESTION: Yes, Madame Secretary, on Iran, would you agree that the United States just couldn't get the kind of tough sanctions resolution at the Security Council that you had hoped for and that without international agreement on the need for economic sanctions against Tehran, your carrot-and-stick gambit with Iran is effectively over? And with less than a year left in office for yourself, what chances do you give your whole sort of program to remake, or to give an offer to remake, the United States' relationship with Iran?

And for the Foreign Minister, do you - is your government still considering unilateral economic sanctions against Iran along the lines of those the United States announced last fall?

SECRETARY RICE: You going to stop there, Anne?

QUESTION: Yeah. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: Okay. All right, good. Let me start with the question of the resolution. We were very pleased that the six parties were able to agree on the textual elements of a Security Council resolution on Iran, the third such resolution. It has now gone to the Security Council for consultation with the broader Security Council. It is no secret that a resolution of that kind is, of course, a negotiated product. And the important thing is that it both deepens and - deepens the sanctions against Iran and it opens the possibility of new directions like, for instance, the cargo inspections.

And so I think it's a very good resolution, but most importantly, it is a resolution that shows and will show Iran that it continues to be isolated from the international community, that it has no friends when it comes to its desires to pursue technologies that could lead to a nuclear weapon.

And yes, there will continue to be activity outside the Security Council as well. The United States, as you know, has sanctioned several Iranian entities and that has made it difficult for many others to deal with Iran because the reputational and investment risk of dealing with an Iran that is under, now, two Chapter 7 resolutions and likely to be a third, those reputational and investment risks are quite grave. It's as my colleague Hank Paulson said; when you are doing business with Iran, you don't really know who you're doing business with, and so, good to beware.

As to whether or not we can improve the state of U.S.-Iranian relations, that's something that I would put to Iran. As I've said several times, the question isn't why won't we talk to Tehran, the question is does Tehran want to talk to the United States. We've made very clear that the suspension of their enrichment and reprocessing activities, which allows them -- those activities allow them to perfect the technologies that can produce the fissile materials that are needed for a bomb; that we would, as the international community has, be very pleased to engage in negotiations and discussions on anything that they might wish to bring to the table, but that that suspension needs to take place.

And as to the success of this achievement, I think that - or of the strategy, I think it continues to be a significant achievement that the world is united around Chapter 7 resolutions that say to the Iranians: drop your ambitions for the technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapons program.

FOREIGN MINISTER SMITH: Well, Australia very much supports the efforts of the United States within the Security Council to apply maximum pressure by way of Security Council resolution on Iran. So I have indicated to the Secretary that we support those efforts. And whatever support our mission at the United Nations can do give that, of course, goes without saying. Secondly, progress is only made in this area if there is significant international pressure on Iran. And that international pressure can occur through the United Nations and more generally within the international community and the new Australian Government has an open mind and will consider any other suggestions that are made to bring pressure to bear on Iran in this area.

. . .