 Thank you so much, everybody, for coming and watching this press conference. The DG will give you a few new words, so we should be happy to take your questions. Well, thank you. Thank you, Frédéric, and I want to thank you very much for having taken the time, as he said, short notice to come, but I felt it could be important to update you on the situation that we had at the border governors. There's been a lot of interest around this, and I felt that it would be necessary and perhaps do it in an efficient way by having you together and, of course, take any individual request later on. But at this point, let me start. Normally I like to take your questions directly, but let me give you a bit of an update because there are so many things piling up and coming one after the other that perhaps it would be useful to give you the latest. So the most important thing that I would like to report to you today is that as a result of very intensive consultations I had with Iran, Iran has finally welcomed and accepted my initiative to engage in a focused and systematic effort aimed at attempting to clarify the number of outstanding issues that you are, I suppose, familiar with that have to do with different things, presence of uranium particles and also doubts about certain material that exists in Iran which were not declared before and that we had been discussing about for quite a long time. You may remember when I returned from my last trip to Tehran that I told you that I had raised this issue directly with the Foreign Minister Zarif and the Vice President and President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Dr. Salehi, indicating that it would be important if we could try to go beyond the exchange of letters and messages which, to me, seemed a lot like talking past each other on this issue and try to really tackle them and try to solve them. So this happened in Tehran and this week I raised the issue again with colleagues in Tehran and here with a permanent mission and finally we were able to have an understanding and we are going to be starting this process of focused analysis of the situation with technical meeting which will take place in Iran at the beginning of April which I hope will be followed by other technical or political meetings as agreed by both sides. We have to start the process and see how far we can go. My intention is to try to come to a satisfactory outcome for all of this in time for the next regular session of the Board of Governors next June. But of course this is my intention and we have to see, we have to roll up our sleeves and start working. I'm very glad to tell you that the Board of Governors has just welcomed this understanding, this agreement between Iran and the IEA so we are encouraged by this development. So I don't want to get too much into considerations and perhaps leave that to the questions that you may have but these are the facts and with that I'm in your hands. Thank you very much. Hi, Raghida Bahnam from Al Arabiya. Does this new agreement that you reached with the Iranians have to do with the additional protocol that was the essential problem? And did you do these talks within this week to try and avoid the Board of Governors to issue a statement in fear of retaliation from Iran? The first question, no. This has nothing to do with the additional protocol. The additional protocol, its provisional application or the suspension of it is something different that has to do with the way in which we interact with Iran and the kinds of authorities that we have. This thing is about some very concrete cases that we have, which we have not been able to clarify up until now. So we have decided together, I had this initiative and I proposed this initiative and they agreed that we should sit down at technical level in Tehran and start looking into them one by one. Finally, on your consideration of whether I have done this to avoid something else, no. I do this because this is my job. My job is to clarify everything which is outstanding, which is open. The results or the consequences of our actions is of course in the eye of the beholder and there can be many interpretations. But what we had was, in this case, one very serious set of questions which made me justify a separate report from me to the board and we have now agreed on a specific track, specific channel to try to avoid that. Hi, Digi. Hello. Can we start by having a slight little more level of detail? Yes. Maybe on two points. You say it's at a technical level. Does that mean you'll be meeting Dr. Salehi? Will that be your counterpart for these talks? Would it be you, in fact? Eventually, later on, we are starting at a technical level. It's technical experts. I'm just wondering who that means concretely. We will decide. It's technical experts. You say you want to go through the issues one by one. At the same time, it sounds like you're really talking about everything that was encompassed in one report. Does that mean you have a top issue, if there are several, of which one you want to focus on? What order you want to do these on? What we have decided is that we are going to be talking about all of these issues. We haven't set any priority for any order or any sequence. We are going to be tackling all of them. Of course, in a rational process, you start with something and then you follow with another. But I couldn't tell you now. We just agreed to do it. And now, as you can imagine, the hard part starts. We are going to sit down and see how we do this technically. Perhaps you could spell out how this is different from the usual process then, because you've said you shouldn't be like the usual formal exchanges of letters and talking past each other. One could argue that this is the same thing in a slightly different format. It's a very good point. Let's say that in the normal interactions between a country and the secretariat, there are many ways in which we can try, or we should try, to solve issues when there are doubts. There is one which is, I would say, more formal, whereby we send the communication to the country, indicating that there is question A, B, C, where we don't know why this is in a certain way or another, and we request information. In many cases, in most of the situations, in fact, if you're setting aside Iran, and when we talk about other countries, including Iran, we receive information. This information is analysed by our safeguards experts and analysts. Perhaps there is an iteration, a new question, and then we conclude the issue. In this case, what we saw, what I saw, is that these exchanges were, as I said in my introductory remark, was like talking past each other. We said we had found these things. Why are they there? And what we got were explanations that were not technically credible in some cases. So we asked the same question, we got the same answer. So of the two things, one, either you continue with this, you know, like, you know, a merry-go-round that can last for a long time, or you try something else. And what I said to our Iranian counterparts in Iran is that I felt that we needed to try to discuss this in a different way. Sit down around the table, as we have done in the past, with our technical findings, with our technical doubts and questions, and compare notes. Do it, you know, with a sense of, you know, solution or solving them, instead of limiting ourselves to reiterate things. And I'm glad that this was, you know, welcomed, and we will see how far we can go. But it is different. Yes, it is different because we are trying to sit down around the table and see if we can solve this once and for all. Albert Otti, DPA, German Press Agency. In this agreement or understanding that you have reached with Iran, is there a timeline that you agreed on? Did you agree that you wanted to reach certain steps or something in a specific time? Well, my initiative, and I emphasize it, my initiative is to try to solve this as soon as I can, and in any case, to be able to report back to the Board of Governors on progress that we are making, and hopefully by the next Board in June to have a final outcome. But as you know, and I've said it before, I'm not very adept to deadlines or, you know, setting a date. Sometimes this is done technically, but for this kind of process where we have to discuss difficult matters, I'd rather set a timeline which is notional, which is there. Otherwise, I wouldn't say it. I would say someday. I'm clearly aiming at having a far more clear understanding of these issues by the summer or before. I think this is possible. This is not something impossible. We have information. We want to compare it with our Iranian counterparts. We have a few questions to put to them. And if there is good will, I'm sure we will be able to be in a much better place. I don't know if to solve it, I shouldn't talk about the facts, but this is my aspiration, really. Jordi. Hi, this is Jordi. So you were in Iran and you discussed this bilateral technical agreement for 90 days, and this was in parallel, but you're just announcing it to us today because you had to follow up more discussions in Vienna or how was this working out? Well, this is, as you rightly say, this is in parallel. This is in parallel. The temporary bilateral technical understanding with Iran is in force, continues. And it will continue hopefully for 90 days or until there is an agreement, a political agreement at other levels, as I already explained. Maybe it will change in its nature. This is something that comes on top of it. And this is why, if you allow me, Jordi, your question allows me to see this as something very positive because what we have done this week, really, is to make progress, concrete progress. We've confirmed what we had, we consolidated what we had, and now we are looking into a concrete way to solve a group of issues, a family of issues that is proving quite intractable. So in terms of our work to clarify the situation, in terms of our non-proliferation efforts, it is clearly a gain. That we are achieving by opening this door. For me, it's about opening doors and preventing doors from shutting. On the one hand, the Iranians are clearly telling you you will have less access. That's why you had to make this deal. And at the same time, you expect to clarify more. At the same time, they are limiting your usual access. Isn't that some kind of a contradiction or wishful thinking maybe? A professional optimistic person. Hi, sorry, one more question. Do you think without a political push, political agreement of some kind, you can move forward? Because it seems to me that you keep pushing the deadlines with the Iranians on technical talks without getting anywhere. Why would you expect that this time would be different? And if I may, just one more question from my colleague in AFP because he's not here. So if the Iranians have suspended uranium metal production at Isfahan. Well, on the issue of whether we are going to get a solution, certainly it is my hope. If I don't think I have the right to stop my work or to throw the towel, it's my professional obligation to continue, to continue and to continue. And I don't know if there will be a solution on these matters this time around, but what we are doing is facilitating. We are opening technical channels, which is what we can do. We are not on the political level. This is something to be seen by countries among themselves. What we are doing is offering technical avenues, technical channels through which these issues can be solved, hopefully. On metal, as you know, we have informed the Board of Governors about production of small quantity of uranium metal. We haven't seen any new information. We don't have any additional information about that. If we have it, we will promptly inform everybody about it. This isn't the first time there has been an attempt to bring new momentum into this process with Iran. There have been quite a few over the years. This time it seems that the unspoken arrangement is that this initiative has enabled Iran to avoid resolution criticizing it at this Board meeting. Why is this time different? What is different about this attempt? Regarding the external consequences of the steps we have taken, I leave it up to you. What this achieve or not, whether a resolution was prevented or not. What I believe is that this whole thing is moving forward. It is obvious for everybody that all these matters need to have some resolution. When it comes to Iran, and I'm not saying anything that Iran itself has not said, everything is interconnected, of course. These are different parts of a single whole, where you have on the one hand what is going on at the level of the JCPOA, which is of course very important. You have at the same time what happened with the new law, the way in which we have dealt with it through the technical understanding. But we had this sort of an often issue, which had been there reverberating without a dedicated attempt to tackle it. I think the net gain, the added thing this time is this. Of course, in terms of results, we can be sceptical. I don't know. But we are getting into this with a sense of purpose and trying to solve it. So is it fair to say that this is an attempt to finish the job of the final assessment in 2015? No. The final assessment is the final. I leave those past documents, and this is not attached to that. It's part of the same. It's the same country. It's issues that have been there floating around. And as I have said in the past, there's new information coming. We have new capabilities, and we are looking into them. But please don't see this as a way to change, or perfect, or otherwise what was said in the past. As I always say, nonproliferation is a constant issue. There is no definitive declaration that everything is in order. One has to, and not only Iran, every country, one has to show that everything is in order. So I think, of course, it's an effort, and it's going to be very difficult. Of course, now comes the hard part. I would agree with that. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much.