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What would it look like in Iraq? Instead of letting the inspectors grope for answers in the dark, Iraq would bring all of its documents out and all of its scientists into the light to answer the outstanding questions. Indeed, Iraq would be besieging the inspectors with information. Mobile labs would be driven up and parked outside of UNMOVIC headquarters. All of the missiles of the al-Samoud variety would be destroyed immediately. They wouldn't be hesitating. They would go and find the infrastructure for these missiles and what machinery they have hidden to produce more and make them available for destruction.
I return to the fundamental question: Is he complying? That's it. Is Iraq complying with 1441? And the only reasonable answer is no.
Last November, when 1441 was passed, the international community declared Saddam Hussein a threat. In four months since, that has not changed; he is still a threat. He was given one last chance to avoid war. If Iraq complies and disarms, even at this late hour, it is possible to avoid war.
He is betting, however, that his contempt for the will of the international community is stronger then the collective resolve of the Security Council to impose its will. Saddam Hussein is betting that some members of the Council will not sanction the use of force despite all the evidence of his continued refusal to disarm. Divisions among us -- and there are divisions among us -- if these divisions continue, will only convince Saddam Hussein that he is right. But I can assure you, he is wrong.
So those who say that force must always be a last resort, I say that I understand the reluctance to use force. I understand the hesitation to undertake human -- human -- to take human life. I have seen the horrors of war. I have been where the dying is done. I agree with those who say that lives must only be sacrificed for the greatest of causes. We should do everything possible to avoid war. We have done that, and no one believes that more deeply than President Bush. That's why he went to the United Nations. That's why he persuaded all 15 of us on the Security Council to give Saddam Hussein one last chance.
It is always a hard thing for citizens to accept the prospect of war, and it should be. But consider the chilling fact that Saddam Hussein also knows what war is like. He has used war and weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors and against thousands of his own citizens. And in this post-September 11th world, getting those appalling weapons out of his hands is the only way to guarantee that he won't use them again, or he won't make common cause and pass them on through his terrorist connections for use practically anywhere in the world.
Consider what could happen if Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who has no scruples and no mercies, concludes that the governments of the world will not condone military action under any circumstances, even as a last resort, as at least one member of the Security Council feels. Under those circumstances, he will never comply with his obligations. All he has to do is wait us out. And a terrible message will go far and wide to all those who conspire to do harm, to all those who seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It is now for the international community to confront the reality of Iraq's continued failure to disarm.
The Security Council resolution put forward last week by the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States says precisely that: "Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded it in Resolution 1441." That is a simple statement of fact, as well. Iraq has refused to disarm and cooperate. It serves the interest of no one for Saddam to miscalculate. It doesn't serve the interest of the United States or the world or Iraq for Saddam to miscalculate our intention or our willingness to act. By passing this new resolution, the Council will remove any doubt that it will accept anything less than Iraq's complete disarmament of its weapons of mass destruction and full cooperation with the inspectors to verify its compliance.
If Saddam leaves us no choice but to disarm him by force, the United States and our coalition partners will do our utmost to do it quickly, do it in a way that minimizes the loss of civilian life or destruction of property. We will do our utmost in such circumstances, should they be forced upon us, to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. And we would take responsibility for the post-war stabilization of that country. We would be responsible for establishing and maintaining order, destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction once and for all.
Dismantling terrorist networks with nodes in Iraq would also be a priority.
And soon after these immediate needs are met and internal security is established, we would want to move as quickly as possible to civilian oversight of the next stages in the transformation of Iraq, working with the many coalition partners we will have, working with all the elements of the international community that would be willing to play a role in such an effort. Then, legitimate Iraqi institutions representing all Iraqis, representing the people, can be raised up; institutions created and a formal government put in place that will make sure the nation does not rearm, that the treasure that exists in Iraq in the form of its oil is used for the benefit of the people of Iraq. The United States has a superb record over the past 50 or 60 years of helping countries that we found it necessary to do battle with or in, put themselves on a better footing for a brighter future.
To be sure that there will be lots of work to do. The work of reconciliation and rehabilitation and reconstruction will be a long and hard one, but we are up to the task. But the true test of our collective commitment to Iraq will be our efforts to help the Iraqi people build a unified Iraq that does not threaten international peace, one that is a welcome presence among the nations of the world, not an international pariah.
For 30 years, Saddam has fed off the blood, sweat, and tears of his people. He has murdered, tortured, and raped to stay in power. He has squandered Iraq's vast oil wealth on lavish palaces and secret police and weapons programs.
The United States and the international community want to help free the Iraqi people from fear, freedom from want. We in the world community desire to help Iraqis move their country toward democracy and prosperity. We want to help the Iraqi people establish a government that accepts principles of justice, observes the rule of law and respects the rights of all citizens. In short, we want to see an Iraq where people can look to the future with hope, and not be seen as a pariah on the world stage.
We aren't just thinking about that famous day after. We know it's not going to be just one day after, but many days after a long, formidable challenge that will lie ahead of us and our coalition partners, until such time as Iraqis are prepared to govern their own land.
Even as the Iraqi people are liberated, we are determined to do all we can to renew hope in other parts of the region. To strive for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. President Bush has recently again emphasized his own personal commitment to achieving the vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, security and dignity, and to implementing the roadmap, the Quartet roadmap, that will help make that vision a reality.
We stand ready to lead the way to this better future. To get there, all those in the region who yearn for peace -- the Palestinians, the Israelis, and their Arab neighbors -- will have to fulfill deep commitments and make difficult compromises. But the tough choices will be worth it. While the process of peacemaking poses obligations for all, the benefits of peace will be felt for generations to come by millions of people.
But if the international community wants the hopeful prospects for the days, months and years ahead to materialize for Iraq, we must confront the reality of Saddam Hussein's intransigency. We must confront that reality here and now. We must face the reality that Saddam's Iraq is Exhibit A of the grave and growing danger that an outlaw regime can supply terrorists with the means to kill on a massive scale.
Last November, the entire Security Council declared his weapons of mass destruction to be that threat to international peace and security. And if that threat existed last November when we voted for 1441, it certainly exists now. If the international community was resolute then, it must be resolute now.
Resolution 1441 was not just President Bush and the United States saying Saddam is a menace to the world. It was France, Britain, Russia, China, Syria and all the rest of the Security Council going on record saying so. We spent seven weeks working over and weighing every single word of that resolution. All of the members of the Council knew when they passed 1441 that the time might come when we would have to meet our responsibility to use force in the absence of Saddam Hussein's strategic decision to disarm and comply.
For the past four months, he's been trying to avoid the consequences of his noncompliance, to escape the moment of truth. Now is the time for the Council to come together once again to send a clear message to Saddam that no nation has been taken in by his transparent tactics. Now is the time for the Council to underscore its unanimous conclusion that Saddam remains in material breach of his obligations.
Now is the time to tell Saddam once and for all that the clock has not been stopped by his machinations, that the clock continues to tick, and that the consequences of his continued refusal to disarm will be very, very real.
The goal of the United States remains the Security Council's goal: Iraq's disarmament. One last opportunity to achieve it through peaceful means remains open to Saddam Hussein, even at this late hour. What we know for certain, however, is that Saddam Hussein will be disarmed. The only question before us now is how. The question remains as it was at the beginning: Has Saddam Hussein made that strategic choice? He has not and we will see in the next few days whether or not he understands the situation he is in and he makes that choice. And that is the argument we will be taking to the Security Council.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much. I have a few moments to take a couple of questions before I have to get to a meeting, if there are any questions. There shouldn't be after that presentation.
(Laughter.)
Anyone? Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Sir, if the case was that you wanted to make the Security Council resolution as you said, now what the Security Council is saying, they do not see this suitable. So why don't you want to respect the will of the Security Council in this?
SECRETARY POWELL: At this point, we are respecting the will of the Security Council. There's a lot of speculation about what the Council might or might not do when it meets next week. I think that's when it is more than likely that action will be taken on a resolution, if that seems like the appropriate step after we hear from Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei.
But at the same time, we have also made clear that we believe that the threat is so great that if the Security Council is unable to take action, despite our best efforts to work with it, we must, in the interest of our own safety and, we believe, the safety of the region and the world, reserve the option to act with a coalition of willing nations if the Council does not act.
We believe the situation is that clear and the situation is that dangerous.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you said at the beginning, you pointed out that 1441 demonstrated in its 15-0 vote a common perspective on what needs to be done to disarm Iraq. Yet right now we seem to be perceiving a completely different sense of the imminence of the threat between those very same members of the Security Council. How do you explain the difference in the perception of the imminence of the threat that seems to have emerged right now?
SECRETARY POWELL: There was always a difference in the perception of the threat. Some of my colleagues in the Council have never quite seen it as strongly as we have seen it and that was the case during the seven weeks of the debate and before the debate. There are even some members of the Council who argue most vociferously now for delay or something else, who were anxious to see sanctions go away years ago when it was clear there was something still going on in Iraq.
The one thing that we all agree upon is that there is no doubt that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and the capability to develop them, or else I don't think we would have gotten a 15-0 vote. The debate really is, well, how much should we be concerned it, how much should we worry about it?
What we came together and said in 1441 is that they're in breach, continue to be in breach, they have not accounted for so much of this horrible material that they have, they have not allowed the inspectors in to verify the claims that they have made, and that this is a threat to the security of the region.
We believe what highlights the threat, at least in our eyes, is the nexus that now exists in the post-9/11 world that it was one thing, and it was a bad enough thing for Saddam Hussein to have these weapons of mass destruction available to him, but if, per chance, he also served as a source for these weapons of mass destruction, either accidentally or deliberately putting them in the hands of terrorists, we would all look back on this moment in time and feel awful if, at some future moment in time, a horrible attack took place and we discover one of these weapons was used, and when we had the chance to do something about it and we had the obligation to do something about it, we didn't do something about it.
But there certainly is a difference in perspective among the members, some of the members, as to the seriousness of this threat. And many of my colleagues agree with us on this issue. Some of my colleagues, three of whom I was watching on television earlier today, believe that the problem is there, the threat is there, but the solution to it is just, oh, let the inspectors keep going.
What I didn't hear in their press conference today is for how long, and how many more inspectors do you think will do, will do what the number of inspectors there are unable to do. And there was very little comment from them today or in earlier days about the basic fact that you still don't have somebody who is complying. He is not -- he has not made that strategic choice. And I don't think any one of them would argue that he has.
One final, then I do have to go.
Steve*.
QUESTION: You just said that you didn't hear your colleagues be very concrete on what needs to be done. Suppose they were to agree with you and others to set a series of very specific benchmarks with very specific deadlines, almost in the form of ultimatum, focusing on specific items, such as the VX, or the anthrax, or the biological labs, with the presumption that if there is not a concrete response on these specific items, as to some extent there has been on the rockets, then there would be common action for the purpose of disarming Iraq?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'm not sure that even some of them would find that, or if we laid out such a series of benchmarks now, and a month or two or three months later we found some of them had been met and others had not been met, we'd be right back in the same boat, in my judgment. Let's give them some more time.
I don't think it's a question of additional benchmarks. All of these benchmarks have been out there for years. Some of the benchmarks that are spoken of and some of the elements that I'm sure we'll be hearing about later in the week are not new elements. They have been there all along. They have been the basis of previous resolutions. They've been there all along.
And it is not the need for new specific benchmarks to measure Saddam Hussein. I think we have a lot to measure with -- against -- with him -- to measure him with already. As a result of his lack of performance on the declaration, his lack of answering the basic questions that people have been asking repeatedly with respect to VX, with respect to botulinum toxin. He doesn't need to have these benchmarks repeated. He knows what they are, and he has not demonstrated a willingness to answer the questions that have been out there for so many, so many years.
And that's our -- that's the reason we are reluctant to yet see another resolution come forward that starts listing benchmarks in that resolution as a new measure of merit. We've given him enough measures of merit and I think we can pretty much judge now that he is not compliant, not made that decision, and is not cooperating in a way that would verify if he had made that decision.
I do regret that I have to get to a meeting, so thank you very much.
(Applause.)
[End]
Released on March 5, 2003 |
