08 June 2003
Powell Says Don't Let Terrorists Derail Peace Process
(June 8 interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer) (3450)
Terrorists must not be allowed to derail efforts to find a peaceful
resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Secretary of State
Colin Powell said in an interview on CNN's Late Edition June 8. He
spoke hours after terrorists killed four Israeli soldiers in the Gaza
Strip.
Powell said the United States is "investing in [Palestinian] Prime
Minister Abbas."
Powell said "we believe that he is a leader committed to peace" who
was elected to deal with terrorist groups like Hamas, adding that
Abbas "has to take them on carefully and in a way that best suits his
current situation and the capability that he has -- his police
strength, his military strength, his political strength."
In response to a question concerning the establishment of an interim
government in Iraq, Powell said that "what Ambassador [Paul] Bremer
[the head U.S. civil administrator in Iraq] has decided and briefed
the President on last week ... is that he has to move more
deliberately, he has to reach out to more leadership circles within
Iraq and put together a more broad-based council of advisors and
ministers to help him begin to get the institutions of the government
running."
"We and our allies picked up quite a bit of responsibility when we put
in place the coalition provisional authority and when we got the U.N.
resolution, and we have to use that authority wisely to make sure that
we don't move so fast that we're putting in place something that is
not viable," he continued. "I think Ambassador Bremer is going about
it the right way."
With respect to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Powell stated that
"Iraq had chemical weapons."
"They used chemical weapons. They had biological weapons. They
admitted it. We have no doubt whatsoever that over the last several
years they have retained such weapons, they have retained the
capability to start up production of such weapons," he said.
When asked whether or not Iran should undergo a "regime change,"
Powell said that it is "up to the Iranian people to decide what is
going to happen in that country."
"[R]egime change is not ... on our list right now," he said. "It is up
to the Iranian people to decide this. And we will continue to talk to
the Iranian people as to why it is in their benefit to demand a better
political system from their religious and political leaders."
Following is a transcript of the interview, as released by the
Department of State:
(begin transcript)
Interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
June 8, 2003
MR. BLITZER: Mr. Secretary, welcome back from this historic trip to
Europe and the Middle East. The roadmap towards peace in the Middle
East -- has it come to a dead end, given what's happened only today
with the killing of these four Israeli soldiers?
SECRETARY POWELL: Not at all. I think both sides now realize that this
roadmap is an essential way to move forward, they must have something
like this to achieve the President's vision, and both sides know that
there would be terrorists out there who would try to stop progress.
And even with these tragic events of the morning, we have to keep
going. And I hope that both sides will keep going and I hope the
entire world will come down on these organizations -- Hamas,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, all these other organizations which leap up
and take credit, and not only take credit but are responsible for
these kinds of terrorist activities. We cannot allow terrorism to stop
us from achieving the President's vision, the world's vision, of two
states living side by side in peace.
MR. BLITZER: But can Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Prime Minister,
get tough with these groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade? All of them have taken responsibility for this latest
incident.
SECRETARY POWELL: He is planning to get tough. I think he has spoken
out rather clearly that this kind of terrorism is not just directed
against Israel; it's directed against the aspirations of the
Palestinian people. They will never achieve their goal of having a
state of their own as long as these kinds of Palestinian leaders --
Hamas, al-Aqsa Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, all of those --
continue to resort to terror. That's why he called for an end to the
armed Intifada.
Now he has to build up his capacity and his capability to deal with
these kinds of organizations. But based on the conversations we had
with him over the past week, and the past several weeks, for that
matter, I know that he is committed to doing that, taking these
organizations down.
MR. BLITZER: Well, when you say taking them down, specifically, do you
want him to engage in military action and to bring them down?
SECRETARY POWELL: If that's what it requires. But we have to make sure
he has the capacity to do that. In the first instance, what we have to
do is make sure the entire world, the entire international community,
is coming down firmly on the side of peace and against terror, so that
there is no support for these organizations any longer.
One of the important things that came out of the President's meeting
last week is that the Arab nations said they would no longer allow any
kind of financial support to go to these organizations for their armed
activities. That's a start. It's going to take time. We did not arrive
at peace forever last week at Sharm el-Sheikh and at Aqaba, but it's a
start and we cannot let terrorism derail us. We must punch through
this terrorism and bring it under control, both sides working against
terrorism, but not lose sight of the promise of the roadmap.
MR. BLITZER: Is the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat,
part of the problem, part of the solution, or irrelevant?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'd like to think that he's irrelevant, at least
from the United States point of view. I recognize that he is the
elected president of a Palestinian Authority and he has standing among
Palestinians, but he has now got to use whatever standing he has to
make sure that terrorism doesn't derail us again by speaking out
against it. We don't find that he has been a helpful interlocutor for
peace over the years, and that's why we won't work with him, even
though others in the world will.
And so we ought to watch Mr. Arafat very closely during this difficult
period of getting the roadmap started and see whether he is going to
be a help or a hindrance. And if he is a hindrance, if he continues to
be a hindrance, then I think all the other nations who still work with
Mr. Arafat have to make a judgment as to whether or not they want to
work with somebody who is not assisting Prime Minister Abbas in moving
forward.
MR. BLITZER: As you know, some Israelis believe he is still calling
the shots -- Yasser Arafat -- and giving the green light to Hamas and
these other groups to continue these kinds of acts.
SECRETARY POWELL: I can't answer that particular charge. What I can
say is we are investing in Prime Minister Abbas. We believe that he is
a leader committed to peace and is not giving those kinds of signals
to Hamas and the others. In fact, he has elected to take them on. Now,
he has to take them on carefully and in a way that best suits his
current situation and the capability that he has -- his police
strength, his military strength, his political strength. But what we
have to do is to isolate Mr. Arafat and make sure he understands that
if he does anything which undercuts Prime Minister Abbas or does not
allow us to achieve the promise of the roadmap, he has to be held to
account for that.
MR. BLITZER: Held to account? Take him out? Arrest him? What do you
mean?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, no, no. Held to account means the international
community has to look at his failed leadership over all these decades
and make a conscious decision that they will no longer in any way deal
with Mr. Arafat, the way the United States has come to a conclusion
that we can't deal with Mr. Arafat.
We tried to deal with Mr. Arafat. I tried for over a year in the first
part of this Administration to get him going, to see if he would not
take the kinds of actions necessary to put us on a path to peace. And
he failed, and we made a judgment we couldn't deal with him.
MR. BLITZER: As you know, the Israelis were supposed to -- this week,
the government of Prime Minister Sharon began to dismantle 12 or 15
what they call illegal outpost settlements in the West Bank. Do you
expect them to go forward with that in the aftermath of what happened
today?
SECRETARY POWELL: That was the commitment they made, and I think Mr.
Sharon will meet that commitment. I haven't spoken to them in the last
few hours since this tragic incident overnight, but I hope we do not
allow acts of terror to stop us from what both sides know they have to
do to move forward.
MR. BLITZER: The Washington Post has a story this morning on the front
page, which I'm sure you saw, suggesting that Paul Bremer, the chief
U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, is now going to delay getting
some sort of interim Iraqi regime in place, and he's losing confidence
in the former exiled opposition leaders like Ahmed Chalabi and others.
What does that mean for U.S. policy, the length that the United States
is going to have to stay and rule, effectively, Iraq?
SECRETARY POWELL: Ambassador Bremer is working with Mr. Chalabi and
other members of the external opposition, but he's also working with
leaders who were inside Iraq over these many years. And what
Ambassador Bremer has decided and briefed the President on last week
when we met with Ambassador Bremer, is that he has to move more
deliberately, he has to reach out to more leadership circles within
Iraq and put together a more broad-based council of advisors and
ministers to help him begin to get the institutions of the government
running. And that will ultimately lead to a political process that
will permit us to put in place an administration, and then finally
turn the country back over to a fully elected government.
So Ambassador Bremer, I think, is absolutely correct in moving a
little more slowly and a little more patiently to make sure that all
the various groups in Iraq are represented and that we focus on
institution building and put responsible leaders into institutions.
The fact of the matter is that we are the governing authority in Iraq
right now and we have to do that well. We have to restore security, we
have to make sure the people are being taken care of, and then slowly,
slowly build up -- not so slowly that it's going to take us forever,
but patiently and correctly build up institutions and leaders for
those institutions in this council that Ambassador Bremer is
proposing.
MR. BLITZER: How long is this going to take, this process?
SECRETARY POWELL: I can't tell you how long there will be a coalition
provisional authority before we are able to turn it over to a freely
elected Iraqi government. I think it is not unwise to throw out a time
frame because then people clock you on that the very next day.
But I think Ambassador Bremer is on the right track of making sure
that he is talking to all the leadership groups within Iraq, to
include the external opposition, and not just grabbing six guys and
saying, "Here, you're now the interim administration and we're giving
you this authority," until he is sure that that group represents all
Iraqis and that it has the capacity to help begin administering the
country, under the supervision and under the authority of the
coalition provisional authority.
We and our allies picked up quite a bit of responsibility when we put
in place the coalition provisional authority and when we got the U.N.
resolution, and we have to use that authority wisely to make sure that
we don't move so fast that we're putting in place something that is
not viable. I think Ambassador Bremer is going about it the right way.
MR. BLITZER: Was the Bush Administration ill-prepared for the postwar
situation in Iraq? I say that because since May 1st when the President
spoke on the Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier, and declared major
combat operations over, on the average, about one U.S. soldier or
Marine has died a day and many others have been injured, wounded, in
attacks by various groups within Iraq. Did you not brace -- were you
not -- were you ill-prepared for what was expected?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, the President was correct when he said on the
Abraham Lincoln that major combat actions were over. You're not seeing
battalion or brigade level operations right now. You're not seeing
pitched battles between large forces. What we are seeing are some
Baathist elements, some Fedayeen who are left over, some criminal
elements who are attacking our soldiers, and we are taking some
casualties. But these are not -- this is not major combat operations.
We are not shocked by this. We regret any loss of life or any of our
young men and women being injured, but we expected that there would be
a period of instability where this would be a problem.
Now, we will adjust our force posture and presence and we will adjust
our activities as the situation evolves. Some of the things that we
were worried about didn't happen. There wasn't massive starvation.
There wasn't massive displacement of people. We were prepared to deal
with that. When that didn't happen, well, then the capacity we put in
place to deal with that we took out and put in new capacity, new
organizations to deal with the situations that we're facing now.
MR. BLITZER: Ahmed Chalabi says Saddam Hussein is alive and regrouping
and organizing what he calls resistance against the U.S. Is that true?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know if Saddam Hussein is alive or dead, and
if he's alive I don't know where he is, and if he's dead I don't know
where he is. I admit perhaps Mr. Chalabi has some information that the
rest of us are not aware of, but I do not know whether Saddam Hussein
is alive or dead, nor does our intelligence community.
MR. BLITZER: Speaking about intelligence, there's a big uproar over
whether the intelligence was good, bad, exaggerated. Let me play for
you what President Bush said on September 26th in the Rose Garden.
Listen to this:
"The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi
regime is building the facilities necessary to make more biological
and chemical weapons."
And this followed a DIA, a Defense Intelligence Agency report, among
other things, one sentence in there said this:
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and
stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its
chemical warfare agent production facilities."
That nuanced, as all intelligence assessments usually are. But the
President was categorical. Did he go too far, and did you subsequently
go too far when you testified or spoke before the U.N. Security
Council?
SECRETARY POWELL: No. The DIA sentence you made reference to is taken
out of context in all of the reporting. The very next sentence after
the sentence that says we're not sure what they're doing says we have
information that they have transferred chemical weapons within the
last few weeks. Let's put this in context and then I'll get to my
presentation on the 5th of February.
Iraq had chemical weapons. They used chemical weapons. They had
biological weapons. They admitted it. We have no doubt whatsoever that
over the last several years they have retained such weapons, they have
retained the capability to start up production of such weapons. And
the presentation I gave on the 5th of February before the United
Nations Security Council, I spent four whole days and nights at the
CIA going over all the intelligence in order to make sure that what I
presented was going to be solid, credible, representing the views of
the United States of America. And I stand behind that presentation.
One element that I presented at that time, these biological vans, all
I could show was a cartoon drawing of these vans, and everybody said,
"Are the vans really there?" And, voila, the vans showed up a few
months later. We found them. So slowly but surely, we are finding that
capability.
Now people are debating whether or not these vans truly are biological
vans. Sure they are. What other purpose are there? And let me give you
the killer argument as to why these vans are exactly what I said they
were and what the intelligence community said they were: I can assure
you that if those biological vans were not biological vans when I said
they were on the 5th of February, on the 6th of February Iraq would
have hauled those vans out, put them in front of a press conference,
gave them to the UNMOVIC inspectors to try to drive a stake in the
heart of my presentation. They did not. The reason they did not is
they knew what they were.
And the intelligence community has reviewed all of the comments that
have come in about those vans and reaffirmed yesterday to me again,
through Director Tenet, that they are confident of their judgment,
they are confident that these vans are exactly what we said they were.
So there's no question that Iraq has this capability and has tried to
hide it from the world. This is not only the judgment of the President
and the Secretary of State; it's the judgment of the United Nations
that they had this capability, it's the judgment of every nation that
voted for the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, it was
the judgment of the previous administration. President Clinton made
statements quite similar to what President Bush said in the statement
that you just quoted.
MR. BLITZER: One final question before I let you go. Iran. Is it time
for regime change, one way or another, in Iran?
SECRETARY POWELL: It is up to the Iranian people to decide what is
going to happen in that country. There is quite a bit of churning
taking place inside Iran. Many young people -- it's a very young
population. They are not satisfied with their political leadership. I
don t think they continue to be satisfied with their religious
leadership. They want Iran to join the rest of the world, in my
judgment.
And what we have to do is keeping showing to the Iranian people that
there is a better world out there waiting for you, and you can become
a more responsible member of the international community, if you stop
supporting terrorist activity and if you stop trying to develop
weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons.
Iran and Syria are similar in that both of them need to stop taking
actions which make it harder to get the peace process going between
the Palestinians and Israelis. They've got to stop sponsoring
terrorist organizations. They've got to stop providing weapons to
Hezbollah. They've got to stop providing support to Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and similar organizations.
So that is the clear message we are giving to Iran. But regime change
is not in our -- on our list right now. It is up to the Iranian people
to decide this. And we will continue to talk to the Iranian people as
to why it is in their benefit to demand a better political system from
their religious and political leaders.
MR. BLITZER: I know you have a big trip coming up. Good luck on your
next journey to South America. Thanks for joining us.
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much, Wolf.
(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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