05 May 2002
Powell Gives Views on Ending Mideast Crisis on "Meet the Press"
(Says vision of Palestinian state will be essential element) (750)
Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking May 5, said the "vision of a
Palestinian State" will be an essential element in efforts to reach a
resolution of the Middle East crisis.
Interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," Powell also said the United
States "will always be there for Israel. But we think being for Israel
also puts an obligation on us to work with the other side, with the
Palestinian side to find a way forward, so that we're not just in a
constant period of conflict."
Following is the State Department transcript:
(begin transcript)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
May 5, 2002
INTERVIEW
Secretary Of State Colin L. Powell
On NBC'S Meet the Press with Tim Russert
May 5, 2002
MR. RUSSERT: First, we are joined by the Secretary of State Colin
Powell. Mr. Secretary, welcome back.
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Tim. Good morning.
MR. RUSSERT: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon heads for Washington.
He will meet with you and the President. What will you tell him?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we want to hear from Prime Minister Sharon his
assessment of the situation in the region. In all of my recent
conversations with Prime Minister Sharon, even after he has had to
respond forcefully to the terrorism directed against the Israeli
people, he has made it clear that he is committed to a peace process;
he is committed to ultimately finding a way to have a Palestinian
state that lives side by side with Israel. So we want to hear from him
what his ideas are with respect to how we go forward, and I am sure we
will also let him hear some of our ideas of how we go forward.
MR. RUSSERT: His party, the Likud Party, is going to meet on May 12th
and once again vote against a Palestinian state.
SECRETARY POWELL: I think we all have to realize that we need to keep
the vision of a Palestinian state alive, because the only way you're
ultimately going to solve the crisis in the Middle East is for these
two peoples to find a way to live side by side, in peace and security,
respecting one another, with good relations between the two. It is a
tough vision to achieve, but it's a vision we must not turn loose of
because, otherwise, we will just have continuing violence, continuing
terror, and it is not a problem that's going to be solved by violence,
terror or military action.
MR. RUSSERT: One of the difficulties in the negotiation are the
Israeli settlements, about 145 settlements on the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Thirty-four settlements have been built since Sharon became
Prime Minister. Will you tell the Prime Minister that he's going to
have to close down some of those Israeli settlements in order to get a
peace deal?
SECRETARY POWELL: I think it's clear, both in the previous
administration and in this administration, that something has to be
done about the problem of settlements. The settlements continue to
grow; they continue to expand. And as the President said in his speech
on the 4th of April, where he laid out his vision of a Palestinian
state, he made the case in that speech that something would have to be
done about the settlements. The previous administration tried to deal
with this issue, and they didn't find a solution, but it is not going
to go away as a problem, as an issue toward finding a solution. And
I'm sure this will be part of our discussion with Prime Minister
Sharon.
MR. RUSSERT: In terms of the borders, Sharon has said that the land
that the Israeli army conquered, captured in '67, that's Israeli
territory, as far as he is concerned. Will he have to accept and move
the borders back to pre-'67?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, as you know, he is firmly of the view you just
expressed. And at the same time, the Arab League, when it met in
Beirut a couple of weeks ago, talked about normalizing relations with
Israel, all 22 Arab nations having a normal relation with Israel, but
they said we should start with the premise that we'll have to get back
to the '67 borders. So we're going to have to discuss this issue.
The only way you're going to find a way forward is to have people
start talking in order to bring ideas to the table and discuss how we
can determine what the borders of a Palestinian state might be. How do
you get to that final vision? One of the things we're going to do at
the meetings that we'll be having, and the one I announced on
Thursday, is to start to explore how we can move forward. Do you go to
an interim state, a provisional state? Or do you just have phases that
go to the final state solution that we're looking for? These are tough
issues. They have been on the table for many months and years. They're
not going to be solved overnight. They're not going to be solved in
one meeting. But they have to be discussed.
MR. RUSSERT: What do you think of Prime Minister Sharon's idea of
building a 600-mile security fence; in effect, fencing Israelis away
from Palestinians?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I would like to hear if that really is the
Prime Minister's position, and if it is, I'm sure he'll discuss it
with the President on Tuesday. But I don't know that you're going to
solve the problem with a fence unless you solve the underlying
problems of the Palestinians feeing that they are disenfranchised,
that the occupation continues. We'll just have to see.
MR. RUSSERT: In a curious way, it took Richard Nixon, a fervent
anti-Communist, to go to Red China and normalize relations because the
American people trusted anti-Communist Richard Nixon to do that. Do
you think Ariel Sharon, as a Likud Party member, as a warrior, can
play that same kind of operational game out where he would be trusted
to be the one who could make peace?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't want to put thoughts into Ariel
Sharon's mind. He can speak for himself. But the one thing I do know,
that in my conversations with him he has spoken passionately about the
need for security for the Israeli people. He has spoken passionately
about his need to respond when the people of Israel are attacked. He
has spoken with equal passion about the need to go forward, the need
to find a political solution, the need to get into the Mitchell
process, for example. And so we'll be anxious to hear his ideas about
how that is possible.
MR. RUSSERT: When you announced the peace conference, international
conference on the Middle East, on Thursday, the New York Times had a
front page story yesterday which said, "Colin is Having a Ministerial
Meeting, one senior official said." It seemed almost like to
trivialize your attempts.
SECRETARY POWELL: Not really. The President and I were joking about it
on Friday morning, the difference between a conference and a meeting,
and whether -- at what level it's held. But we have a common view
within the administration of what we're talking about. This meeting
will be a continuation of events and activities and meetings we've
been having since the President's April 4th speech, where he laid out
his vision.
He sent me to the region to talk to our Arab friends, to pull together
the Madrid Quartet, as it's now called -- the United States, the
European Union, the United Nations and the Russian Federation. I then
went into the region, spoke to Chairman Arafat, spoke to Prime
Minister on multiple occasions. We've solved the problem at the
Mukata'a. I hope we're on the way to solving the problem at the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
So there are new things in play. Chairman Arafat is out of his
isolation and now has to take responsibility for what's been happening
while he has been in isolation. They had a town hall meeting in
Ramallah yesterday where they kind of -- some of the people started
saying to Chairman Arafat, "Where are we going? What's this all about?
Look what's happened to us."
And so we're having a lot of things take place right now. We're trying
to reestablish security coordination between the two sides --
humanitarian, economic reconstruction. And I think the meeting that
we're going to have in the summer should be at ministerial level,
meaning let's talk about ministerial level issues. It's been over a
year and a half since there -- almost a year and a half since there
was a head-of-government/head-of-state level meeting. And with all
that's happened in the last 18 months or so, to suggest that we start
out with head-of-government type issues, I think is a bridge too far.
So let's continue this process of discussions, meetings. We have King
Abdallah of Jordan coming this week. We have Prime Minister Sharon.
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was just here. Foreign Minister
Saud of Saudi Arabia will be here tomorrow. Lots of things are taking
place. It's appropriate to have a meeting where these ideas can come
forward. We can talk about security. We can talk about reconstitution
of the Palestinian Authority in a non-corrupt, more responsive and
more democratic way, a transparent organization, rebuilding its
infrastructure and security apparatus. There's lots to talk about at
such a meeting, and the meeting is just a continuing of the work that
began when President Bush made his April 4th speech.
MR. RUSSERT: Where will it be?
SECRETARY POWELL: Haven't decided yet. And over the next month or
month and a half, we'll be fanning out -- not only United States
diplomats, but others from the European Union, the United Nations, the
Russian Federation. Japan wants to play a role in this. Many nations
want to play a role in this.
And the most important role, perhaps, is going to be played by the
Arab nations that now want to have a greater stake in the outcome of
such efforts. I hope that the Arab League and all of the members of
the Arab League will be working with the Palestinian Authority and
with Chairman Arafat to move them in the right direction -- away from
violence, away from terror, and onto a new path that will lead to a
state for the Palestinian people and to restore hope for the
Palestinian people.
MR. RUSSERT: Will you be returning to the Middle East soon?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't have a plan yet to return, but I'm ready to
do so when it is appropriate and when there is a purpose to be served.
MR. RUSSERT: So Yasser Arafat will not be at the ministerial meeting?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, right now it's a ministerial level meeting
with ministerial issues, and we won't make a determination yet as to
who is going to attend and not attend. That remains to be determined.
MR. RUSSERT: But you do expect the Israelis and the Palestinians both
to be represented?
SECRETARY POWELL: I would expect that.
MR. RUSSERT: The difficulty, some point out, is the rhetoric being
used by some. The Palestinian Foreign Minister had this to say: "This
is a Holocaust of the Palestinians. We have to be supported by the
international community to stop the Nazi Israelis from killing the
Palestinian people." That's the Palestinian Foreign Minister. How do
you negotiate with someone like that?
SECRETARY POWELL: If I were to spend every day that I'm in office
responding to the rhetoric that comes out from various parts of the
Middle East, that's all I would do. I have to try to blow through this
rhetoric, get to the basic problems, try to deal with the basic
problems, and not be deterred by the statement du jour.
MR. RUSSERT: The problem is here at home, both houses of Congress have
passed resolutions very supportive of Israel. One of the leaders of
the Republican Party in the House, Tom Delay, had this to say, and
I'll show you and our viewers: "The United States should not pressure
Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority because Yasser
Arafat is completely untrustworthy. During four decades of terrorism,
Yasser Arafat has proven his total contempt for human life. We should
support Israel as they dismantle the Palestinian leadership that
foments violence and fosters hate. No one should expect the people of
Israel to negotiate with groups pursuing the fundamental goal of
destroying them. The defense of freedom demands more from us than a
value-neutral brokerage."
Is that helpful?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, let me say this. It is up to the Israeli
Government to determine who they want to negotiate with and not
negotiate with, or who they want to sit across the table with and not
sit across the table with. We will try to create a set of
circumstances where both sides find it in their interest to sit across
the table from one another at some level.
I also take note of a poll this morning done of the American people
where a large percentage of the American people want the United States
to play the neutral, honest broker role. This doesn't mean that we are
in any way weakening our support for Israel. We have been there for
Israel and with Israel since the day it was founded, and we will
always be there for Israel. But we think being for Israel also puts an
obligation on us to work with the other side, with the Palestinian
side to find a way forward, so that we're not just in a constant
period of conflict.
So what we are trying to do, and the fact that we are in touch with
the Palestinian side in trying to make this happen, is not something
we're doing to Israel; it's something we're doing for Israel as
Israel's strongest, best friend in the world.
MR. RUSSERT: When the Republican House leadership passes a resolution
saying Israel should get more aid, and one of the primarily Republican
leaders in the House makes comments like that, does it make your job
easier?
SECRETARY POWELL: My job is difficult in many respects, and I get help
from all quarters. Now, we would have preferred not to have a
resolution at this time, but the House felt it appropriate, and both
bodies felt it appropriate to go on record with these statements. And
that's part of our democratic system.
MR. RUSSERT: The Saudis have been making a major PR offensive here in
the United States -- television ads, newspaper ads -- and yet their
ambassador to London writes a poem saying that the martyrs are
wonderful people, suicide bombers are wonderful people. Have the
Saudis ever completed an investigation of the 15 Saudis who were
hijackers on September 11th?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know if they've completed an investigation.
I know that they were as shocked as we were as to where all these
individuals came from and their involvement with Saudi Arabia. I must
say that Crown Prince Abdullah, the vision he has put forward and the
cooperation that the Saudi authorities have shown with the United
States in all we have done since 9/11 has been positive. We are
appreciative of what the Saudis are doing. And more importantly, they
have clearly indicated that they want to play a more active role as we
move forward in trying to find a solution to this crisis.
MR. RUSSERT: The Israelis say they have documents that show the Saudis
gave a half million dollars to Palestinian martyrs, including families
of suicide bombers. Are the Saudis being duplicitous?
SECRETARY POWELL: The Saudis have -- we've talked to them directly
about this. They say that the donations that they are making and the
telethon money they are raising are going through the International
Committee for the Red Cross, going to UNRA, the United Nations Relief
Agency, and going for humanitarian purposes to families, and not a
reward for suicide bombing, but taking care of people in need. That is
their position.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe them?
SECRETARY POWELL: From what I have heard, yes.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. Time Magazine cover story: "Saddam
Working Feverishly to Build a Nuclear Bomb." Do you think that's true?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, he is always anxious to acquire nuclear
weapons. I haven't read the story so I don't know what new evidence or
information they're putting forward. We have always suspected him of
trying to do this. I haven't seen that he has made -- I haven't
noticed that he has made any breakthroughs, but I'm sure he's working
feverishly.
That's why we have the policy we have: keep the sanctions in place --
and we've had some success with that in the Security Council in recent
days; get the inspectors back in, as the President has called for, to
see what is going on as best we can with inspectors. And that's why
the United States, irrespective of what the United Nations might do
with inspectors or sanctions, continues to believe that regime change
is the best solution to get a more responsible regime in there that
will be more interested in the needs of the Iraqi people than
threatening neighbors.
MR. RUSSERT: There's the cover, "The Sinister World of Saddam."
Looking at that picture, do you wish ten years ago you had gotten rid
of him?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, ten years ago at the beginning of the war,
before the war started, not when the war was ending -- before the war
started a decision was made -- a political decision, military
decision, a decision of the United Nations -- that the purpose of that
war was to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. It was not to go to
Baghdad. And so that was not the choice we made at that time. One can
speculate as to whether we should have made a different choice, but I
think it was the right political objective at that time. And we now
see that he is place, and that is why we believe regime change is
appropriate. But I think at the time we made those decisions, they
were the correct decisions.
MR. RUSSERT: Most Americans are surprised to learn that we get about 9
percent of our oil from Iraq, and that we thought that the money were
paying Iraq would go to food and medicine for children. The Wall
Street Journal did a piece the other day which showed that Saddam has
put an illegal surcharge on each of these barrels of oil that we're
buying, and he's raised about $2.5 billion in illegal surcharges,
which he is using to develop a nuclear arms program.
Why don't we stop importing Iraqi oil, period, and not give him a
nickel?
SECRETARY POWELL: Oil is a fungible commodity. It enters the world
market; it's hard to tell where it's coming from at any one point in
time. We have done a pretty good job of controlling the money that
goes to the regime. The UN Oil-for-Food program and the sanctions
regime that we have managed to keep in place -- and I think we'll
improve in the next few days with new UN resolutions -- controls about
80 percent of the money that goes to the regime.
But he is able -- through smuggling activities and other states that
are neighbors of this, and this kind of duplicitous action in
arranging surcharges, he is able to generate an additional $2-$3
billion a year that he can use for whatever purpose he chooses. I wish
that were not the case. I wish we could shut it down entirely, but we
haven't been able to. But we have been able to keep the Oil-for-Food
program in place, and that controls about 80 percent of the funds
available for the regime.
And with a new resolution coming in, he will no longer have the
ability to claim that we are hurting Iraqi citizens. He is the one
hurting Iraqi citizens by his misuse of the money that is made
available to him through these smuggling activities.
MR. RUSSERT: Symbolically, if we stood up and said we don't want your
oil, wouldn't that be an important gesture?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't know. I don't know what it would do to
the oil markets, and I'm not sure how you would stop the oil from
being exported in inappropriate ways, not just through the
Oil-for-Food program, but out through neighboring countries.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Afghanistan. Our next guest, Senator John
Edwards, was down in Florida speaking about Afghanistan a few weeks
back. Let me show you the tape and give you a chance to talk about it.
"We've kept the peacekeeping force, the international peacekeeping
force, to 4,500 troops, right around Kabul. And while that's
happening, the rest of the country is going right back to chaos, right
back to where it was under the Taliban. This is an enormous mistake."
Do you believe Afghanistan is going back "right back where it was
under the Taliban"?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, of course not. We have an Interim Authority that
is functioning. A Loya Jirga, a coming together of all the parties in
Afghanistan, will be convening in the near future to create a more
permanent government leading to elections. A national army is now in
the process of being built with United States assistance. We have US
troops that are continuing to chase al-Qaida and the Taliban.
And there are still some problems in the country. It is not totally
secure, but I think it is not quite as bad as the Senator suggests.
And in fact, we have been meeting on this on a number of occasions
during the past week, getting reports. And one way to measure how
things are is are the NGOs and the humanitarian organizations able to
operate throughout the country, and about 75 percent of the country is
relatively, relatively stable. Relatively. You could find a warlord
problem in any part of the country, but generally it's relatively
stable. There are problems in the eastern part of the country, over
toward the Pakistani border, which causes us concern.
So in a period of several or four or five months, I think we've done a
pretty good job of standing up the Interim Authority, giving them the
wherewithal to start exercising their authority throughout the
country. There are still challenges between warlords and the new
central authority, but I think we've accomplished a lot in the first
four months.
And there is no enthusiasm anywhere for increasing the size of the
International Security Assistance Force. There's not a long list of
countries standing in line saying we want to send in 10,000 of our
troops to be stationed in various parts of Afghanistan. And so it is
still a fragile situation --
MR. RUSSERT: That could not happen?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't see it happening. It is still a fragile
situation, and I am not declaring success, but I think we have made
some progress. And as the national army, the national police force and
the border forces stand up and are trained, I think stability and
security will improve throughout the country.
MR. RUSSERT: President Chavez of Venezuela gave an interview the other
day which suggested that he's investigating whether the United States
was part of a military coup to overthrow him. And on April 12th, as
you well know, Mr. Secretary, White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer said that President Chavez had resigned the presidency, when
in fact he had not.
Was the United States involved in any way, shape or form?
SECRETARY POWELL: Absolutely not. It's a canard. He can investigate
all he wants. There is absolutely no substance to any suggestion that
we would have participated in a coup activity or encouraged a coup. If
anything, the signal we have been giving out is we are now a community
of democracies in this hemisphere, except for Castro's Cuba, and the
democratic process must be followed, constitutional processes must be
followed. And we don't support coups. Coups are inappropriate and we
had nothing to do with what happened that day.
Now, we thought he had resigned, and that was the preliminary reports
we got. It turned out that it didn't quite unfold the way it was
initially suggested, and when I got back into the country several days
later I went right to the Organization of American States and gave a
powerful statement on behalf of the President and the American people
for the constitutional democratic process in Venezuela. We've had our
differences with President Chavez, and we have not been shy about
pointing out the difficulties we have with President Chavez, but we
would in no way suggest that constitutional and democratic processes
should not be followed and that a coup was appropriate. Absolutely
nothing to it.
MR. RUSSERT: Big election in France today. What's your take on
Jean-Marie Le Pen?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, not much. I'm pleased that the polls suggest
he will be overwhelmingly marginalized and defeated by Mr. Chirac.
MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, lots of speculation about your future.
This is the way the Daily News treated it. Here's the headline: "Colin
Staying, Says W. Aides. Bush aids scrambled yesterday to quash public
speculation that Secretary of State Powell is ready to quit, but they
conceded he's frustrated by bureaucratic battles with the
administration hardliners. A senior Bush insider says that while
Powell isn't remotely thinking about bailing out, the Secretary is
frustrated at what he views as Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense,
meddling on his foreign policy turf and Bush's willingness to tolerate
the interference. For his part, Powell, a retired four-star general,
thinks he's the general and should be running the foreign policy war
with a little advice from the President. Says a Bush official who is
otherwise a Powell fan, "That's not the way it works." Powell often
jokes about his feud with the Pentagon, referring to Rumsfeld and his
deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, at staff meetings as "the bombers.""
SECRETARY POWELL: The who?
MR. RUSSERT: "The bombers."
SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't think I've ever used that. I have --
MR. RUSSERT: How frustrated are you?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'm not frustrated. Are there daily -- are there
battles from time to time within an administration? Of course there
are. When you have people with strongly held views, you can expect to
have these kinds of disagreements from time to time. But we're in
agreement more than we're in disagreement, and I am in no way thinking
about resigning. I am not frustrated to the point that I am weeping in
my beer or hiding in my family room. I support the President. I am
pleased at the relationship I have with my colleagues within the
administration and with the President. We argue our points of
differences out; the President decides. It's his foreign policy, not
mine, and not Don Rumsfeld's.
MR. RUSSERT: You will serve your full four-year term?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't have a term. I serve at the pleasure
of the President.
MR. RUSSERT: But you'd like to serve for four years, the President's
first term?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I serve at the pleasure of the President. I
would not like to prejudge the pleasure of the President.
MR. RUSSERT: You're perfectly content?
SECRETARY POWELL: Do you see any look other than content this morning?
(Laughter.)
MR. RUSSERT: That has to be the last word. General Colin Powell, the
smile tells it all.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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