Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried Interview with Deutschland Funk Radio Brussels, Belgium

Question: For weeks -- and months -- there has been a serious conflict between Moscow and Washington about the missile defense shield -- and this is only one difference if you think of Iran. How would you describe the quality of your bilateral relationship? Has it become worse?

Assistant Secretary Fried: Secretaries Rice and Gates had very productive meetings in Moscow last week -- despite some of the press reporting to the contrary -- and they were dealing with issues like missile defense. We made some progress. We put some new proposals for cooperation on the table. Today, at NATO we briefed the alliance and the NATO-Russia Council on these proposals, and I must say I was quite gratified by the radically changed atmosphere in the alliance about missile defense. There is great support for the cooperative multilateral U.S. approach and our outreach to Russia. We hope we can work with the Russians so that missile defense becomes something not that divides us but that unites us in our efforts against common threats. That, at least, is our hope.

Question: Putin said on Tuesday in Tehran that the latest contacts with the American partners showed a certain transformation in their position. Is that so?

Assistant Secretary Fried: I’m certainly gratified that President Putin recognizes that we’ve put considerable energy into coming up with cooperative ideas on missile defense as well as on some other issues like CFE. Secretaries Rice and Gates have sent a strong signal to Russia -- in fact made concrete proposals for cooperation. We hope this can work. The allies here today at NATO expressed support for a cooperative approach on missile defense. Again, this is quite different from the atmosphere of last spring that we all remember without a lot of fondness, I must say.

Question: Putin questioned the area of Conventional Forces in Europe.

Assistant Secretary Fried: Yes.

Question: Then he announced that Russia might leave. Is this now history?

Assistant Secretary Fried: No, it isn’t history yet, but on CFE -- that’s the English acronym for the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty -- the U.S. put some new ideas on the table, ideas that reflected some of our earlier work with allies and ideas we hope will provide a basis for progress. We don’t think that it would be a good thing for Russia to pull out of the CFE treaty regime. We hope that through constructive, creative diplomacy we can come up with a way forward. We’re certainly gratified by the fact that the Russians regarded our proposals as serious and forward looking.

Now we’re going to be working with our allies and other countries. Right now as a matter of fact I am off to a meeting with some of the allies -- on CFE -- where I will brief them on our discussions in Moscow and the way ahead -- hopefully a constructive way.

Question: Talking about Iran --

Assistant Secretary Fried: One last quick question.

Question: Putin stressed Iran’s right to use nuclear power for civilian purposes. Has this been helpful in solving the problem?

Assistant Secretary Fried: We’ve never disputed – we don’t dispute -- Iran’s right to use nuclear power for legitimate civilian purposes. The problem is they are not abiding by the demands of the Security Council which are intended to resolve this question. This is a serious problem and we need to step up our diplomatic and economic efforts.

Thank you very much. I’m terribly sorry that I have to go, but it is in the interests of good multilateral diplomacy.

Question: Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, thank you very much.

Assistant Secretary Fried: My pleasure.