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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (99946)	6/3/2003 1:29:36 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Wolfowitz Highlights Saddam Hussein's Terrorist Links~ 02 June 2003 -Part 2 of 3 Part 2 of 3-- Q: What about Iran? What policy will the U.S. pursue? Wolfowitz: We have concerns about Iran. It's sort of actually a welcome development that our concern about Iran's nuclear program is now finally being shared by other countries that were dismissive about that concern for a long time. We have a big concern about Al Qaeda in Iran. We are not quite sure whether the Iranians hold them or don't hold them or what they are going to do with them if they are holding them. We are concerned more generally (about) Iran's support for terrorism. But I believe that one of the ways that we can help to influence Iran to a different kind of policy is by getting things right in Iraq, because the example of a free and democratic Iraq I think is going to increase the pressure the Iranian regime already feels to its own people and that s a good thing. Q: Is the threat of military action a possibility in Iraq? Wolfowitz: You know, I think you know, we never rule out that kind of thing. But let me put it this way. I think the most effective way we have to persuade the Iranian regime to change is the fact that some 75 percent of the Iranian people voted (a) few years ago for a different government. They didn't get the government they voted for, but nevertheless this is a regime that is susceptible I think to some extent to pressure from its own people. Q: The thoughts of Senior Minister Lee have been mirrored often by other Muslim leaders in Southeast Asia, by the Indonesian, by the Malaysians. And within the Muslim world, it seems to be amplifying into a paranoia that the U.S. is going to attack and pick them out one by one. I've heard that said also. How do you respond to something like that this growing paranoia in the Muslim world that the U.S. with its power can pick them out one by one? Wolfowitz: I think there are many Muslims, like the foreign minister I referred to earlier, including many Arabs, who welcome the positive change in Iraq. They wish that they had been able to do it and didn't need us to do it. But they don't see it as picking off. They see it as liberating a major important Arab people. I do think it is important to make progress now in the Arab-Israeli issue. That is something that will do a great deal to balance the concerns that we are one-sided and that we only worry about one kind of justice. I think it is very important also to see this Iraq thing through to success, and while we've had some spectacular gains - it's barely two months since the war began, let's remember that -- there is a lot of work to be done. I think those are two very positive contributions that when, if we can achieve them, I think the whole issue will look different. Nobody likes war. It's not a pretty thing. It's only compared to mass graves and the kind of terror that Saddam Hussein was putting forward that you can say it's the lesser of two evils. Q: (Inaudible) A: Well we have an opportunity now. The President is meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, I think Monday, with leaders of three Arab countries and with Prime Minister Sharon and the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, and then he'll go on to Aqaba to meet with just the Israeli and Palestinian. There is a new atmosphere there. There was a new atmosphere there, it's worth remembering, in 1991 after the defeat of Saddam Hussein that I think is what opened the way to the Madrid conference, opened the way to the Oslo agreements, which were two of the most positive steps that we have seen in that process. Removing the neighborhood bully has got to improve the environment. But also the United States now goes into this with a credibility we didn't have before. And I think that's going to make a difference for everybody. Q: Do you think that that is the source that fueled a lot of the extremism? Do you agree with that analysis of it? The Middle East? Wolfowitz: I think it's overstated. There's no question that it fuels extremism. But the idea that if you take that away, none of the funding of Madrases would take place, nonsense. None of the hatred of the United States would be there, nonsense. In fact, let's be clear, if you read Bin Laden's proclamations, the thing that he most complained about was the presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia as part of the containment of Iraq. So that I believe is progress also -- that the Saudis have no longer have to carry the burden of large American forces on their territory, bombing Iraq almost daily, to support a containment policy that was failing. Q: But wasn't the U.S. in its own way supporting the Saudis who were also exporting Wahabism. Isn't that going to be changing? Wolfowitz: Well, it doesn't mean we are supporting the Saudi export of Wahabism. It does mean there are worse things than the government in Saudi Arabia, and we certainly didn't want to see it taken over by a hostile neighbor. I believe in fact that the bombing that took place in Riyadh about two weeks ago, ten days ago, was a kind of wake-up call for Saudi Arabia just as I believe Bali was a wake up call for Indonesia, and 9-11 was a wake up call for us. And while the terrorists achieved a certain, from their point of view, tactical success, I think it was a strategic failure and I think the Saudis are much more serious now about dealing with their own problems than they were before. And they have a much freer climate to do it because Saddam Hussein isn't over their shoulder and the Americans aren't on their doorstep. Q: In Southeast Asia, there has been a lot of arrests over the last month. Intelligence reports are saying that there were really two main places Al Qaeda operatives fled to post-Afghanistan -- there were five areas where Al Qaeda was operating but two main places the Horn of Africa and southeast Asia, southeast Asia having the most Al Qaeda operatives coming in here. How large of a threat remains here in your perception? Wolfowitz: It's hard to know because if we knew it, we d pick them up. So we are guessing about what we know we don't know. And by the way you have to count Pakistan and Iran as two other major places. And northeastern Iraq, by the way, which is no longer a sanctuary. So it wasn't one place. My sense of the Al Qaeda problem here is that it was more indigenous, not so much that people fled from Afghanistan into southeast Asia, but that the penetration into southeast Asia was more extensive than we had understood at least before 9-11, and in some ways we first started to get an inkling it from materials we captured from Afghanistan that led us to that group in Singapore and those arrests. But Bali brought home just how bad it is here. The fact is it doesn't take more than a few hundred people of that kind, in a country of 200 million to create a serious problem. But I'm very impressed by the professionalism with which the Indonesian police have gone after the Bali bombers. I think there is a new spirit in Indonesia. The Philippines and Malaysia and Thailand were already quite serious and of course Singapore -- well they were a little shocked that terrorists could be even in this nice tightly controlled little country. We are not going to eliminate terrorists overnight or with one magic bullet but I do believe that the last year has been much more a series of defeats for them with minor tactical successes here and there.