Part 2 - Powell Defends Bush-Style Diplomacy
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Barry.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, can I try you on something a little less rosy than some of the things you cited? <font size=4>Iraq U.S. inspectors are pulling out. Carnegie, in a report today, says the threat was vastly exaggerated, Iraq posed no immediate danger to the U.S.<font size=3> They have some recommendations that the CIA Director's job be made a career job instead of a political appointee. <font size=4>A lot of probables, a lot of maybes were left out by senior officials in describing what intelligence had uncovered.
Looking ahead, but also looking back, would you -- would you have rephrased your speech to the UN, in light of all of this, if you had another chance?
SECRETARY POWELL: No. I knew exactly the circumstances under which I was presenting that speech to the UN on the 5th of February: the whole world would be watching, and there would be those who would applaud every word, and there would be those who were going to be skeptical of every word.
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That's why I took the time --- -- I took the time to go
out to the agency and sit down with the experts. And
anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced,
we did not use in that speech.
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What the Carnegie report, which I have not read, but I'm familiar with it from press accounts this morning, it said that there was that capability within Iraq and they were doing these kinds of things. And they believe that we, perhaps, overstated it, but they did not say it wasn't there.
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The fact of the matter is, Iraq did have weapons of mass
destruction, and programs for weapons of mass destruction,
and used weapons of mass destruction against Iran and
against their own people. That's a fact.
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Now, that's back in 1988 when they used it against their own people. But throughout the '90s, when they had every opportunity to come clean, make the declarations, and get right with the international community, they had the chance to respond to every one of those UN resolutions during the '90s, when they were threatened by President Clinton in 1998 with a bombing and they still didn't come clean, and then they caused the inspectors to have to be forced out of the country, there is, I think, a solid case that has been made to many governments by their intelligence agencies, and that has been the consistent view of UN inspectors and of the United States intelligence community, that this was a danger we had to worry about.
Now, in terms of intention, he always had it. And anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein, last year, was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up, even though he was given the opportunity to do so, he didn't do it. What he was waiting to do was see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections, and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction. And he kept the infrastructure. He kept the programs intact.
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Where the debate is, is why haven't we found huge
stockpiles, and why haven't we found large caches of these
weapons. Let's let the Iraqi Survey Group complete its
work. There has been the movement out of some of the
individuals from the group. I presume that their
particular job is finished.
But I am confident of what I presented last year. The
intelligence community is confident of the material they
gave me; I was representing them. It was information they
presented to the Congress. It was information they had
presented publicly, and they stand behind it. And this
game is still unfolding.
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Yes.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, the Palestinian Prime Minister said in an interview today that if the Sharon government goes forward with some of the ideas that were outlined in Prime Minister Sharon's December 18th speech, incorporating some land that Palestinians see as theirs, that the Palestinians would effectively abandon the idea of a two-state solution and demand full rights in -- with the Israelis in a single state.
Do you see -- he also suggested that Sharon's ideas in that speech were tantamount to an apartheid solution and sort of pushing the Palestinians off into cantons. I wonder if you think this idea of a single state has any sort of viability --
SECRETARY POWELL: No.
QUESTION: -- and what you think about his apartheid comment.
SECRETARY POWELL: No, we're committed to a two-state solution. I believe that's the only solution that'll work: a state for the Palestinian people called Palestine; and a Jewish state, the state of Israel, which exists. And what we have to do is get to a table where we can negotiate the terms of existence.
I don't believe that we can accept a situation that results in anything that one might characterize as apartheid or "bantuism." What we need right now is for the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority to get control of security forces and to use those forces and use the other tools available to him to put down terror and to put down violence. And if that happens and we see that kind of commitment, then I am confident that we can move forward on the roadmap.
Mr. Sharon's comments recently and some of the plans that he has talked about or have been speculated about are just that right now -- plans. Mr. Sharon begins all of his discussions by saying he would like to see a solution; he is looking for reliable partners he can work with. And his plans that he has spent some time presenting recently suggest what he feels he might have to do if he doesn't have a reliable partner. What we are trying to do is to get that reliable partner to stand up and start acting......
..........QUESTION: Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. Let me, let me -- some new faces I haven't seen.
QUESTION: Thank you, sir. You and the President, Mr. Secretary, keep asserting your commitment to the roadmap. On the other hand, there seems to be a great deal of frustration with your other three partners in the Quartet. They're saying that there is total paralysis on the roadmap. They look at the Palestinian Authority facing total bankruptcy. They will not be able to pay the wages next month.
And on the other hand, we see Mr. Sharon with a plan for a state, maybe on 40* percent of the West Bank. How do you see their state? Where is it going to be?
SECRETARY POWELL: I've been in touch, I've been in touch with all of my Quartet partners. They are as disturbed as I am that we haven't seen the kind of progress that we had hoped for, but they remain committed to the roadmap. I occasionally read press accounts that somebody has a new idea, but I think the roadmap is a good idea.
It's an idea that has been accepted by the Palestinians, by the Israelis, by the Arabs and all of those who were represented at Aqaba last year, to include the Quartet. And so I'm always willing to hear new ideas from anybody, to include my Quartet colleagues, but at the moment the Quartet remains solidly behind the roadmap..........
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QUESTION: On the subject of weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Secretary, one of the other conclusions of that report was that there was no evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida and that there was no evidence of a likelihood that he would transfer weapons to al-Qaida.
What do you think about that, looking back? And I know that, you know, hindsight is 20/20, but to think back --
SECRETARY POWELL: My presen --
QUESTION: Do you think that there were ways other than war to have handled this threat and that the -- that it was not an imminent threat to the United States?
SECRETARY POWELL: My presentation on the 5th of February when I talked to this issue made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time, and I focused on one particular case, Zawahiri, and I think that was a pretty solid case.
There is not -- you know, I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.
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Were there other ways to solve this problem? I think the
President gave the international community every
opportunity to solve this problem another way. The
international community gave the Iraqis 12 years to solve
this problem any other way.
The President took the case to the international community
and said: For 12 years, you have been defied. What are you
going to do now? It's time for us to act.
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And the President, after a reasonable period of time -- inspectors were still being thwarted, we got an incorrect, ridiculous declaration from the Iraqi Government in response to Resolution 1441 -- and after waiting a sufficient period of time, the President decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that the region was in danger, America was in danger, and he would act and he did act.
And he acted with a large number of countries who felt likewise, and he acted under the authority that we were absolutely sure we had because we negotiated it that way in UN Resolution 1441.........
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........SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.
QUESTION: -- will be in Washington soon. And what do you expect this visit to accomplish, taking into concentration Turkey's concern on some issues like the future of Iraq, Cyprus and EU accession talks?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we're looking forward to Prime Minister Erdogan's visit, and Turkey is a good friend and an ally. And we know they have concerns about some of the developments in Iraq, particularly PKK, it used to be called, up in the Kurdish part of the country, and I'm sure we will discuss these issues. But we really are delighted to see the Prime Minister come here so we can reaffirm the strength of the U.S.-Turkish relations.
We had some difficulties last year. We have to keep in mind, though, that when we asked the Turks to take the difficult decision -- a brand new government, a brand new parliament to take the difficult decision of allowing U.S. troops to go through Iraq -- the government, Prime Minister Erdogan, took that decision and took it to his parliament. And for a few hours we thought it had prevailed, but the parliament decided against it.
It was a disappointment. We worked through that disappointment. And when we were considering again a contribution of Turkish troops a few months ago, they took that decision to the parliament again and got approval. We subsequently determined that it would not be the right thing to do to bring Turkish troops at that time or at that place, but Turkey was standing with us.
So Turkey is a good friend. We want to be supportive of its efforts. We want to work with Turkey to see if we can find a solution to the Cyprus problem using the outline of Kofi Annan's plan. And we also want to work with Turkey and our other European colleagues, as we prepare Turkey for, hopefully, eventual integration in the European Union.............
......QUESTION: Could you give us a little about your hopes for Mr. Burns' trip to Egypt, in terms of the roadmap, and will it maybe build something?
SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. Bill is going out to consult with our friends in the region, and I hope he can build a little momentum to get a little more pressure from Egyptians and others to place on the Palestinian Authority. They have got to get going and they have got to wrest authority away from Arafat that will allow the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority to start taking action with respect to terror and violence.
Now the number of incidences have gone down, but there is still a potential where any one terrorist organization, on any day of the week, can blow up any progress we have made. And I have seen it time and again over the last three years. So Bill will be encouraging them to play a more active role..........
......Thank you very much.
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