MS. PERINO: Well, I think that Secretary Rice said it best yesterday when she said that there might be some ideas out -- floating out there, but there's nothing concrete at the moment. In regards to us reaching out and talking directly to the Iranians, President Bush goes out of his way every time he talks about the Iranian issue, which is often; he gets asked about it and he brings it up proactively himself.

But our concern is not with the Iranian people. We respect them, we respect their culture, we respect their heritage, we think that they are good entrepreneurs. It's their regime that is continuing to isolate them from the international community. The international community is speaking with one voice in that regards, as well.

One of the things that we did last month was make sure that the incentives package that was released from the U.N. Security Council -- I'm sorry, from the EU plus 3 -- was the fact that we made that public so that everybody can see -- and hopefully Iranians that are able to have access to the media and have access to the Internet would be able to see that the United States and its allies does not have any problems with them as individuals; that we are actually wanting to work with the Iranians. We've provided a path forward for civilian nuclear energy, and we want to have a relationship with them. But their regime has to agree to halt the enrichment of uranium before we can do that.

seen at 09:00, 24 June in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
Next item; Original source; Previous item;