Downing Street Says

» Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Iran

Asked what would be our next phase of activity in Iran in light of the IAEA report, the PMOS replied that the UN would discuss this report, and we were absolutely committed to dealing with this through the UN. We believed that sanctions were having an impact on Iran, and a process of tightening those sanctions if necessary would deliver further results. It was important that the world continued to speak with one voice on Iran, and it was. Tehran should listen.

Asked if we needed more resolutions to tighten sanctions or was this implicit, the PMOS replied that some were in progress, but if necessary we needed to go further.

Asked what evidence we had that sanctions were working, the PMOS replied that we believed that there was a genuine debate going on in Tehran about the way forward. The more this debate went on the better. It was important that Tehran knew that it was increasingly isolated on this subject. Looking back at what happened over our 15 Navy personnel, it showed that Tehran was open to pressure from the outside world. We needed to make sure that pressure was consistent, and had a consistent message.

Asked if this would prove more difficult now that our relationship with Russia was deteriorating, the PMOS replied that Russia no more than anyone else wanted to see Iran with a nuclear weapons capability. That was the bottom line. Therefore we did have issues such as Iran, such as Kosovo, and the Middle East, where we did want serious dialogue with Russia. At the same time, Russia knew that it could only succeed economically in the medium to long term with continuing international confidence in it respecting its obligations for international law. This was the only way that it would attract the necessary investment.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

May 2007

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

« Apr

Jun »

» Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Iran

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries