“I saw some partial quotes from Mr. Solana in that regard,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
“I haven’t seen the full context of his quote.
“Certainly, we’d want to get some clarification on at least the partial quotes if that is, in fact, the entire sense of what he was saying,” McCormack said.
“We have an agreement, and we would expect that all the members of the P-5 would move forward on that agreement,” McCormack said, using diplomatic shorthand for the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
With the mandate of the council, Solana was to meet Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on Saturday in an undisclosed location in New York City on Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which Iran says is for peaceful use, but that Western nations fear could be turned into bombs.
Solana told AFP in Copenhagen earlier Friday: “I can tell you that there will be no movement in New York (toward sanctions) as long as meetings with Mr Larijani continue.”
Solana said in Copenhagen that it would become clearer on Saturday whether it would be possible to begin negotiations between Tehran and permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany. The six world powers are to meet on Monday to discuss the issue.
McCormack said Iran would like to draw out negotiations as long as possible.
“But the world said that we would not allow that to happen. And we’re going to continue the discussions in capitals, and those discussions will then move into New York,” he said.
Regarding the possible outcome of the talks with Larijani, the top EU diplomat said he was “optimistic but not naive”.
“Saturday’s meeting will enable us to see if we can prepare the groundwork” for future talks, Solana said.
“I’m sure that the conversations or discussions will be difficult, otherwise the matter would have been resolved months ago,” he said.
“But we have to go into this making every effort in order to succeed,” he said.
