Downing Street Says

» Thursday, January 12, 2006

Iran

Asked who the Foreign Secretary was meeting in Berlin, and what was the message, the PMOS said that Jack Straw was meeting his counterparts from France and Germany. The message would be that the Prime Minister had spoken to Chancellor Merkel yesterday, and there was a recognition that the latest developments in Iran were serious. What we needed to agree was what happened next. We had argued for some time for a referral to the UN, and we believed it should be considered next by the IAEA Board. We hoped that that would be the case, and we were happy to go through the procedure and argue a case at each step of that process, and we would do so. The PMOS said that today was the starting point of that process.

Put that presumably, that meant that the Prime Minister had spoken to Chancellor Merkel on the back of the German Deputy Foreign Minister who had said that it might be counter-productive to refer Iran to the Security Council, and what did Chancellor Merkel think, the PMOS said it was generally the case that Prime Ministers agreed to speak to each other, rather than as a result of what happened when Deputy Foreign Ministers spoke. The PMOS said this had been a pre-arranged phone call, and he was not going to get into the details of it. It was for the German Government as a whole to brief on what their position was. Chancellor Merkel was meeting President Bush, where she would no doubt have a chance to set out her views herself.

Asked if there had been any phone conversations between President Bush and the Prime Minister about Iran this week, the PMOS said he did not give a running commentary on when the Prime Minister spoke to President Bush. People could take it that they shared views on Iran and other subjects on a regular basis. There was no difference in our position and that of the US Government, and the PMOS referred journalists to the remarks of his counterpart in Washington.

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» Thursday, January 12, 2006

Iran

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