10 September 2004
Terrorism Aimed at All Civilization, Powell Says
Terrorists threaten the sanctity of human life
Secretary of State Colin Powell says there should be no doubt, after the recent terrorist attacks in Russia and elsewhere that killed hundreds of people, that terrorism is aimed at all of civilization, and not just the United States, its allies and interests abroad.
"Terrorism threatens civilization itself, because it assaults the most precious of all civilized principles: the sanctity of human life. Terrorism recognizes no distinction between soldiers and civilians, even children," Powell said.
Terrorists know no limits, no principle of proportionality, and they seek to reverse efforts over the past millennia to limit the destructiveness of human conflict, he said.
Even though the United States did not invite this struggle and it doesn't relish it, there is no choice but to meet the challenge of terrorism and defeat it, he said.
In a far-ranging speech September 10 at Georgetown University in Washington, Powell discussed America's response to terrorism, the role of its long-standing relationship with its NATO partners, the struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the continuing strength of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Powell said the motives of terrorist groups vary: while some like al-Qaida have global ambitions and apocalyptic motives, others are more geographically focused with narrowly defined political aims. "But the murder of innocents that defines modern terrorism is common to them all," he said.
There is no political justification for the deliberate murder of innocent people, he said, and the United States opposes it unconditionally.
He said it is difficult to measure success in a war on terrorism, something unlike any that civilized men have fought before, but several things are true.
Al-Qaida enjoyed a sanctuary in Afghanistan three years ago where it plotted, trained and dispatched terrorists across the globe, but today that sanctuary is gone and al-Qaida is on the run, he said.
Three years ago, Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with a regime that had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, dug mass graves for its own people, and associated with known terrorists for many years, he said. But through the sacrifice of many, that regime is gone today.
Powell said the success in defeating these threats depended on a strategy that combined the judicious use of force with a skillful diplomacy. He credited skillful Anglo-American diplomacy that helped persuade the Libyan government to relinquish its weapons of mass destruction and choose a new future.
Although the United States no longer sees the world, as it did in the Cold War, through the prism of a Euro-centric alliance, and although the Europeans are engaged in a revolutionary experiment in continent-wide federalism, Powell said, none of these developments prevent the United States and European nations from being partners.
Finally, Powell said he sees the new trans-Atlantic partnership in three ways: the need to assure a secure Europe, the continued day-to-day security cooperation against terrorism, and the expansion of the partnership to operate more extensively beyond Europe.
(begin text)
Remarks at the 2004 Herbert Quandt Distinguished Lecture
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
September 10, 2004
(2:00 p.m. EDT)
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. President, Jack, for that warm introduction. And I was nervous as you got to the part about my education and I didn't know what would be the response when (laughter) you got to George Washington University and -- phwew. (Laughter.) Well, my son is a Georgetown graduate, so that's okay. I made out all right. (Applause.) Thank you for the invitation to be here today and let me also thank Jeff Anderson of the BMW center for German and European studies for their support of this lecture series. It's really an honor for me to have been chosen to deliver the fourth Herbert Quandt distinguished lecture.
I also want to pick up on something the president said a moment ago about the wonderful collaboration that we have with the Foreign Service Institute; and you've heard of all the things that were mentioned by the president: The work we do together on HIV/AIDS, on women's programs and so many other programs where this collaboration has benefited both the Institute, the university, as well as the State Department, but more importantly, people around the world who benefit from such programs. And you feed us, you are a farm team for the State Department here at the Institute and for that we are deeply appreciative.
So it's great to be back at a wonderful university, a university with a remarkable history and tradition, and with a great future in front of it. The president also noted that you recently have had, here at the university, President José Maria Aznar, former President of Spain -- a man I know well, a man of great courage and commitment. I know that the entire Georgetown university community is grateful that he will be here on a regular basis. As a visiting professor, you will learn a great deal from President Aznar.
All of us are particularly grateful to the Herbert Quandt Foundation, above all, for making this lecture possible. But the Quandt foundation does so much more than that. Its generosity has spread across several continents since its founding in 1970. And in all that it does, it strives to connect the next generation of leaders of the world to all other leaders in individual countries because there must be a connection between leaders throughout the world as we move into this globalized 21st century world. We can no longer be separate or distinct.
Boundaries have changed. Political boundaries have fallen. The world has changed so much, that the kind of work the Quandt Foundation does is that much more important in the 21st century, as it reaches out to leaders all across the world. It's crucial, because this next generation of leaders will face challenges that are quite unlike those of my generation. When my friend and colleague German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave the third Quandt lecture here four years ago in the year 2000, we were between epochs.
The Cold War and its dangers were over, but there was a debate about where we were and where the world was headed. Our sense of uncertainty at that time showed in the fact that the period took its name, the "post-Cold War" era, not from what it was, but from what it wasn't any longer. It wasn't any longer the Cold War.
We still don't have an agreed name for this era, but no one confuses the emotional and strategic pulse of September 2004 for the pulse that was beating in September of 2000, when Joschka was here. That pulse changed abruptly almost exactly three years ago -- three years ago tomorrow, to be precise -- when a beautiful late-summer morning over New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania was transformed into a pall of ash and sorrow that will remain forever imprinted in our hearts and in our memories.
And that sorrow spread. It wasn't just restricted to America. We have seen similar tragic moments in Djerba, Tunisia, and Bali, Indonesia; in Istanbul, Riyadh, Casablanca; in Jerusalem, Baghdad, Madrid; and most recently to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and, of course, to tragic scenes we saw last week from a place called Beslan, in Russia.
In recent weeks the Russian people have suffered so greatly from terrorism. They have seen planes, commercial planes, blown out of the sky and innocent people fall to their deaths. They have seen bombs explode in subway tunnels, killing people who were just going home or just going to work. And then they saw a fellowship of teachers and students devastated on the first day of school. A place of singing and flowers and new hope as children came out to learn was turned into a charnel house, into a morgue, a makeshift morgue to receive the bodies of over 300 souls.
The motives of terrorist groups differ. Some, like al-Qaida have global ambitions and apocalyptic motives. Others have more geographically specific and narrowly defined political aims, but the murder of innocents that defines modern terrorism is common to them all. That is what we oppose and must fight against unconditionally. There is no political justification for the deliberate murder of innocent people, period. End. Stop. There can be no rationalization, no nuance. It's what it is: the murder of innocent people.
After the horrors of Beslan, surely no one can doubt that terrorism is aimed not only at America, not only against America's allies and interests abroad. Terrorism threatens civilization itself because it assaults the most precious of all civilized principles: the sanctity of human life.
Terrorism recognizes no distinction between soldiers and civilians, even children. No limits. It is an all out war against civilization. We didn't start this struggle. We didn't invite it and we don't relish it. But we have no choice but to engage and to prevail in this struggle because our freedoms and our hopes for a better world depend on us meeting this challenge and defeating it.
It is, therefore, our obligation to understand and defeat terrorism as a tactic in a newly dangerous technological environment. But that's not enough.
It's also our obligation to understand and to defeat the ideology of the small, fringe groups of evildoers who have deeply distorted the principles of great and profound world religious tradition. Weapons of mass destruction are animated by ideas of mass destruction, and we must defeat both.
It's hard to measure progress in a war that is unlike that civilized men have fought before. But I do know this: We are making progress. Three years ago al-Qaida enjoyed sanctuary in Afghanistan as it plotted, trained and dispatched murderers across the globe. Thanks to President Bush's leadership, thanks to a coalition of leaders that came together, that sanctuary is gone and al-Qaida is on the run and most of its top ranks are dead or behind bars.
Three years ago an Iraqi regime that had made and used weapons of mass destruction, that had dug mass graves for its own people, and that had associated with terrorists for many years, that regime, three years ago, was defying the world. Thanks to President Bush's leadership and, once again, a coalition of willing nations, committed leaders, often going against their own public opinion, came together and undertook the hard work and sacrifice of so many others to make sure that that regime would no longer threaten the world, and that regime is gone.
Three years ago the peoples of Afghanistan and the people of Iraq were in thrall of dictators and fanatics, their fears cultivated and their hopes crushed.
Today more than 50 million people in those two countries greet each other in the new sunrise of freedom. That freedom is challenged. Yes, we can see it. We can see it in the bombings that take place in Iraq. We can see it in the presence of terrorists in Iraq and former regime elements who still fight against the hopes and dreams of free Iraqi people. We see it also in Afghanistan, as it gets ready for an election, an election that would have been unthinkable a few years ago when the Taliban was in charge. But now 9 million Afghans have registered to vote, men and women; 3 million of them have just come back to Afghanistan from the refugee camps of Pakistan and Iran to join in this new nation that they are building.
And, yes, the Taliban tries to interrupt and interfere. Al-Qaida, still hiding in its sanctuaries, tries to reach out and strike. And we see how innocent people are killed in both Iraq and in Afghanistan. What for? Because they merely want peace and freedom and to live in security.
Genuine democratic government lies before them. We're getting ready for elections in Iraq, just as we are close to elections in Afghanistan. Opportunity and justice now can come to the forefront and shape their destiny.
There's been more progress as well in the war against terrorism. Three years ago, terrorists raised money without any hindrance in Saudi Arabia, the government of Pakistan supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the A.Q. Khan global supermarket for nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, operated from Pakistani soil. Today Saudi Arabia stands against the benefactors and inciters of mass murder. Today Pakistan is a key ally in the war against terrorism. Today the A.Q. Khan network is out of business.
And here is something else I know. All of these achievements have come about because the United States of America was willing to stand firm, because President Bush was willing to stand firm, to lead coalitions that were prepared to do the difficult work required of that coalition in both Afghanistan and a coalition in Iraq.
Diplomacy opened the doors for coalition use of military bases and transit rights. Diplomacy turned many states that were once refuges and way stations for terrorists into partners against terrorism. It was a skillful Anglo-American diplomacy, working against the background of American and allied power, that persuaded the Libyan Government to give up its weapons of mass destruction and to choose a new kind of future for itself.
Every day, all around the world, American diplomats, many of them graduates of your Foreign Service Institute, are building the web of law enforcement, cooperation, intelligence sharing, immigration controls, and financial monitoring that's choking terrorist organizations, choking them slowly but surely, ultimately, to death.
Every day terrorists will find fewer places to run, fewer places in which to hide. So our world is safer than it was three years ago, but there is still much more work to be done and we've had to pay a price for our progress.
Our men and women under arms, along with those of our many partners, have been asked to do dangerous and difficult things, including some that they haven't always been specifically trained for. They've performed bravely and they've performed brilliantly. We're proud of them. And we know that the sacrifices they've made, and the sacrifices that their families have made, were not sacrifices in vain. They were doing important and noble work. Each and every sacrifice has been transformed into a stone in the citadel of resolve we are building to prevail in this struggle. And prevail we will.
How do I know we'll prevail? Because the United States has capable friends and allies who are true partners of the heart, who share our most basic principles and who share a common experience of prevailing against wicked foes and against long odds. We must prevail. We must not waiver. We must not grow weary. We must not grow faint. The world is looking to us for leadership. Once again, destiny has placed upon American shoulders the obligation to defeat an enemy, an enemy that is not just an enemy of the United States, but an enemy of the world: terrorism. We will defeat it and we will prevail, of that you can be sure. We must succeed.
It's a great pleasure, really, for me to have this opportunity to talk to you about the transatlantic relationship and to do in this beautiful hall. I have spoken here on a few occasions previously, but there is one day in this hall that is most meaningful to me, and it was a day in the spring of 1993, when I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and my son, Michael, was graduating from the Georgetown Law Center, and proud father, along with proud mother, we were out in the quadrangle for the ceremony and then it was time to come in here and watch the students go across the stage to receive their degrees.
I was at a slight disadvantage, however, in that I was supposed to be somewhere else at that almost very same moment. And so, I didn't sit in the audience, I was by that door, just outside, looking in because I had about 10 minutes to get to the White House and to get out of the suit I was in and into my uniform, in order to catch up with President Clinton and go with him over to a ceremony at the Vietnam Wall. And the law students were not lining up as quickly as I like to see people line up. (Laughter.) So I gave them all a dirty look through the door and that shaped them up. That's all it took. (Laughter.)
And I watched patiently because this was an important moment in the life of my son, obviously, but in the life of my family. And at the pointed moment I heard his name called, and he came up on the stage and he had in his arms my young grandson, the third generation of Powells, who were here that day, and he walked across and got his degree and I shot out the door as soon as I saw it in his hand. (Laughter.) Got in my car, raced over to the White House, dragging a bag with my uniform behind, went into the men's room, did one of those Superman changes, came back out, caught up with President Clinton and away we went.
It was an important moment for our family, not only the achievement of my son, but it was a new career for him because he had started out as a soldier, not to be a lawyer, but to be a career soldier. And it's interesting in that he started out the same way I started out, as a soldier, so many years earlier. Both of us started out in Germany, as part of that great transatlantic organization NATO. He was a 1st Lieutenant at the time he was injured and then had to leave the Army. And he was a 1st Lieutenant patrolling the border between the east and the west, patrolling the Iron Curtain.
So many, many years earlier, I was a young lieutenant patrolling that same border a little bit further north than where his unit was located. He was in the Second Armored Calvary Regiment. I was in the Third Armored Division, some 30-odd years earlier. We both had the same mission over that two-generation period because that mission was clear and it was in direct response to the Soviet Union's challenge. It was in direct response to the strategy we were applying.
I like to kid my audiences as I kidded my son at the time. I said, "Mike, let me tell you what the strategy of containment is all about. And you know, it came down from George Kennan so many years ago, but let me tell you how they explained it to me when I was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant, just out of New York City and Fort Benning. And I showed up in Germany, 1958, early '59, January of '59."
They said, "Come here, Lieutenant Powell, we're going to explain to you the strategy of containment." And they put me in a jeep and they took me up to a place called the Fulda Gap, just on the other side of the Iron Curtain, our side of the Iron Curtain. That's where the war would break out if it ever came. And my commanding officer said to me, "Lieutenant Powell, listen very carefully. You see that tree right there?" "Yes, sir." "You see that tree over there?" "Yes, sir." "That's your zone. That's containment to you, friend. (Laughter) And your mission in this grand strategy of containment is when the Russian Army comes, don't let them through." "Got it, sir. No problem."
And I did that successfully and the Cold War came to an end 35 years later. (Applause.) Twenty-eight years later, I went back and I was a corps commander. I had gone from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant General and the Fulda Gap was still there, still had a regiment there and I was still sending 2nd Lieutenants up there to guard the Fulda Gap. But now my own son was a little further south. I was a corps commander. He was a 2nd Lieutenant guarding the Fulda Gap -- all those years dominated by this strategy of containment.
We had a clear understanding of what the dangers were and what we had to do to defend our values. Students here may not remember what it was like during those days, but I remember those days so vividly. I was so privileged to be a National Security Advisor to President Reagan, as those days started to come to an end, when we met with President Gorbachev in '87 and '88, and it was clear that Gorbachev knew that the Soviet Union had to change. He tried to change it. He thought it could be reformed. History and time showed that it couldn't be reformed; it had to be taken apart, it had to be broken up. It was a failure; it wouldn't work.
Reagan knew it. We sensed it. And it all happened during the time that I was Chairman. It's hard to believe now my own grandchildren don't even want to hear about it. "Come here, son. Let Granddaddy tell you about the Cold War." (Laughter.) "Here he goes again."
And for most of you, the Cold War doesn't have the same kind of vivid meaning that it does for me. But it was a real thing. It wasn't a game. It was for real: The red side of the map versus the blue side of the map. I remember going into East Germany after the Wall came down and Germany was unified. And my German colleague, Claus Von Neumann, taking me to a warehouse and showing me the stacks of money that the East Germans and the Russians had printed so they could use it when they got to Berlin after the war started and they had taken Berlin and defeated NATO.
In those Cold War days, it was clear what we had to do. The Western alliance, NATO, recognized the clear and present danger that clarified both our strategy and our need to come together, to close ranks, to be a solid alliance to deal with this potential threat that could end our world and our value system in our lives as we knew it.
But even then, with the clarity of a Cold War, the clarity of the Soviet Union just sitting on our doorsteps, even then, we had disagreements, we had problems. I remember the Suez Crisis of 1956. The French withdrawal from NATO's military command in 1966 and ordering NATO out of Paris to go find a new home in Brussels, arguments over the Vietnam War, bitterness over the 1973 October Middle East War, the Euro-missile Crisis of the 1980s, where there was so much disagreement within the alliance about bringing in intermediate range nuclear weapons to meet the Soviet challenge of intermediate range nuclear weapons. Hundreds of thousands of people marched all over Europe, saying, "Don't do this. It's wrong."
We put them in anyway, and several years later we brought them out and destroyed them because the Soviets knew that we would meet their strength. And we can bridge the disagreements that existed within our populaces at that time.
My Russian colleague and I joke about the time, some years later, when an example, a sample of the Russian missile, the SS-20, and the American missile, the Pershing II, was put in the Smithsonian, and we had a big celebration to show how the Cold War was coming to an end, things are different, and look, we have got this treaty to destroy these missiles and here they are, the three-warhead SS-20 and the single-warhead Pershing.
And to show you just how clear this contest was and how understandable it was to the American people, my wife, Alma, was with me when we went to the Smithsonian that evening at the reception. And I said, "Come on, honey, let me show you this treaty I worked on that's getting rid of these missiles." And so I took her over the missile display and she looked up and she said, "How come theirs was bigger than ours?" (Laughter.) It was clear. Clear.
That clarity has gone, to some extent, because we don't have that kind of threat, that kind of enemy. It's amazing what's happened.
The lesson from this that I would like to draw is that even though we have disagreements and from time to time issues will come up within the transatlantic community that might suggest Europe and the United States are spreading apart and we don't have a mutuality of interests, don't believe it. Never despair. Never acknowledge just our fears, but acknowledge our courage, acknowledge the common values that have bound us together for half a century and will continue to bind us together as we go into this 21st century.
Our past differences across the Atlantic were never so significant that they prevented us from acting on shared interests, acting on principles that related to matters of the highest importance. And that's still the case. And today we really need to work together. We don't have a Soviet Union again, but we do have common enemies so we must again make common cause.
There's some doubt that we can restore the bonds this time around. The world is different now. They say the Cold War is over. The Soviet threat no longer binds us together. We have a capabilities gap and a values gap that are too wide to bridge we're told. Not true. Don't believe it.
It's true that the United States no longer sees the world through the prism of Eurocentric Alliance as we tended to during the Cold War. It's true too, that Europeans are engaged, now, in a revolutionary experiment -- in continent-wide federalism that absorbs much of their energies.
In light of that effort, that project, Europe's relationship with the United States has inevitably taken on a different hue. But these developments don't prevent us from being strong partners. They do require us to adjust our partnership, which now has, I believe, a greater potential to contribute to the common good than ever before.
I'd be worried if we weren't restructuring and reconstructing our relationship in the face of the dramatic changes we've experienced over the past dozen years. That would be a sign of a falling, failing alliance. That would be a sign of stagnation. That would be a sure formula for failure ahead.
But just this past year -- just this year, 2004 -- we've seen vivid evidence of the continued success of our alliances and we have seen evidence of how we are rejuvenating and reconstructing our relationship with Europe.
As you all know, both NATO and the European Union have been enlarged: the NATO to 26 nations, European Union to 25 nations. But even more important than new members are the new concepts that have been emerging from these key institutions. NATO used to be an alliance based, largely, on the defense of common territory: Europe, the Fulda Gap -- the two sides of the Fulda Gap -- Eurocentric.
It's now more an alliance that is based on the defense of common interests, the defense of common values that are no longer just restricted to Europe. The European Union has come to a critical juncture in its development. It not only has to accommodate 25 members in devising common policies, the European Union now seeks to move from devising common policies on issues that barely touch the emotional core of its member-state identities to issues of the greatest foreign policy significance and security significance that touch those identities to their essence.
We're watching the beginning of the European Union's constitutional construction with great interest. And of course, we wish our partners all the best in this grand, historical undertaking.
Despite all of these changes and challenges, the essence of the transatlantic partnership remains, and that won't surprise anyone who understands the origins and character of this partnership.
We've never based our relationship solely on a negative -- common opposition to Soviet power. Our partnership has never required or wanted or expected Europe to remain weak, wounded and divided as it was in the late 1940s. Our partnership has been based on a positive, on a common love of liberty and peace, and our partnership has always embraced change and looked to a better future because the status quo of the Cold War was, by definition, unacceptable to us.
We didn't want to see the Cold War continue. We always wanted it to come to an end, just as George Kennan told us it ultimately would. Our partnership has been based, too, on cultural and historical links that sustain a true, transatlantic community.
Undergirding our political relationship is a dense web of cultural and economic ties. We're literally invested in each other to an extraordinary degree, as you'd expect among economies that, together, account for about 60 percent of the world's GDP.
We're more integrated across the Atlantic as a cultural and scientific-technical community than most countries are among regions within their own borders. It's because we have so much in common across so many dimensions that we can adjust our partnership when we need to. We've done it before; we're doing it now. We've done well, but we still have a ways to go.
I'd like to describe this new emerging transatlantic partnership in terms of three interlocking circles: The first circle is the need to assure a secure Europe, to complete the already well advanced process of creating a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. The second is our day-to-day security cooperation in the war against terrorism -- the new threat -- the new transcendent threat that we all have to be concerned with. And the third circle is the expansion of our partnership to cooperate and to operate more extensively beyond Europe, not just to deal with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction but to build a better world for all humankind.
As to the first circle, never have the NATO and EU agendas been so closely linked. Never have NATO and the European Union cooperated so intensively on European issues.
When I became Secretary, I thought, well, you know, I was in NATO all those years as a soldier, so I'm going to be spending a lot of my time with NATO. And I was and I am and I do. But to my surprise, I'm spending just as much time, if not more time, with the European Union and the leaders I have to deal with in the European Union, either the presidency of the European Union or High Representative Javier Solana or Commissioner Chris Patten, former Commissioner Chris Patten.
So much time spent with the European Union and we're not even a member of the European Union. But we work so closely with them because of our mutual interests. The twin enlargement of NATO and the European Union has gone forward in a mutually reinforcing way, spreading democracy and deepening the peace across Eurasia.
Both NATO and the EU have developed constructive relations with Russia. That country, in its former self as the Soviet Union, which dominated so much of our last century's strategy, is now more and more a partner working with us. Close NATO-EU cooperation in the Balkans is another signal success of the transatlantic partnership. NATO and the EU also cooperate on a number of still frozen conflicts of the post Cold War era, in the Caucasus, for example, where we jointly use the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to good effect.
In consultation with our allies, we're also adjusting our military footprint in Europe to bring it into harmony with new circumstances and new needs. When I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Cold War came to an end, the American people expected a peace dividend. If the Soviet army was no longer there, then we should readjust our posture, and we did. We brought home over a period of just a couple of years over 200,000 troops and their family members and all of their household goods and pets and children and we reintegrated them back here into the United States.
It is now another ten years along and Secretary Rumsfeld is going through that same process of rationalizing our force presence in Europe. Which bases do we still need? What forces do we need? What kind of transformation of our forces do we need?
But the one thing that will not change is our commitment to Europe and our understanding of the obligation we have to Europe to always be seen as present in Europe as the foundation for transatlantic cooperation in military and security matters.
We have deployed the principles and programs of NATO's Partnership for Peace ever further eastward along the rebuilt Silk Road. We've also created something called the Adriatic Charter, through which Croatia, Albania and Macedonia can increase cooperation among themselves as prelude to joining the larger Atlantic world. All want to be part of this transatlantic community. Most often they want both NATO and EU membership, and there's no competition with these new countries becoming a member of the EU, participating fully in the EU, but also having a good relationship with the United States. There is no conflict in this desire on the part of these countries.
For me, this is so refreshing because at the end of the Cold War when I was, once again, still Chairman, so many people would come up to me and say, "Well, the Warsaw Pact is gone, so why do you need NATO? General, come on, get with it. Get with the 21st century coming up. Let's eliminate NATO because the Warsaw Pact is gone." Well, it's, you know, it's a little hard to eliminate a club that people keep asking for membership applications to. And so, every member of the Warsaw Pact wanted to join, what? NATO.
When I first suggested this to many of my military colleagues back in 1989, when I left Reagan's White House and went back to the Army as a four-star General, I gave a speech at one of our war colleges to a group of Army Generals and said, "The Cold War is coming to an end and I predict that when it comes to an end, all the members of the Warsaw Pact will immediately ask for applications to join NATO."
Well, they didn't fire me right away, but they looked at me very skeptically. But several years later, it was happening. Well, why? Why would they want to be part of NATO, having gotten out of one alliance? The simple reason is they want that connection to North America. They want that connection to the United States of America and to Canada. They want that connection to the other side of the great transatlantic bridge.
Ultimately, they see their security founded in Europe, but also founded in the relationship that they have with the United States. And that's why they are anxious to be part of this great transatlantic community. With respect to the second circle, our cooperation in the war against terrorism, it's very extensive. Together, we are staunching the proliferation and transfer of weapons of mass destruction, of which the President's Proliferation Security Initiative is a major facet.
Our cooperation in bringing down the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation supermarket is an example of a success in hand. Our joint effort working to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program is an example of a success to come. We also cooperate closely on intelligence and law enforcement issues. We can still do better. Freezing terrorists bank accounts in the United States doesn't do much good unless those bank accounts are also frozen in European banking centers.
But we're in synchronization with our allies most of the time because we all recognize the common threat that we are facing. So we're working more and more on securing our ports, securing our vessels, securing our borders, cargo and supply chains, safety in air travel, harmonizing the operation of our satellite navigation systems, doing all of these things do a better job in the second circle of protecting us against terrorist activities.
As for the third circle, here, too, we've made important progress, which is exemplified by NATO going out of area, as it is called. For years in the 1990's, people debated whether or not Europe had any business going out of Europe, whether NATO should go out of Europe to deal with other problems in the world. And now we see NATO playing a critical role in Afghanistan. We see its engagement in the building of a new Iraq. Neither of these areas have been easy ground for the alliance.
In Afghanistan, NATO has had trouble meeting some of its force goals, getting the troops and equipment that it needed to support the International Security Assistance Force. But what strikes me as astonishing is not how hard it's been to meet our force goals in Afghanistan, but how fast NATO has been able to adapt to a changed world so that it is in Afghanistan at all. Within Iraq, the alliance has a large number of its nations committed on the ground with troops, 16 of the 26 nations of NATO.
All nations are helping in one way or another, if not with troop presence then supporting the training of Iraqi police, a success that came out of the Istanbul-NATO Summit. There is no question that over the issue of Iraq, we had a falling out with some of our oldest and closest friends and allies in Europe. That falling out also split Europe just as it was trying to come together politically in new ways. Yet even in Iraq we now all agree that failure isn't an option. It isn't a good option for America; it's not a good option for the Iraqis. It's not a good option for NATO or for anyone in Europe. And so all of the nations are now helping in one way or the other.
As I go to the UN for resolutions on Iraq, increasingly, I find it easier to get consensus -- unanimous agreement -- on the rebuilding resolutions for Iraq. We particularly appreciate the willingness of several EU member-states to finance the protection of the UN mission that will be going into Iraq to get ready to conduct elections at the end of the year.
Allied contributions in Afghanistan and Iraq are related to the war on terrorism, to the second circle of our partnership, but they represent more than that. They concern the first circle, too. For Europe cannot really be secure with Southwest Asia and much of the Middle East in constant turmoil. Above all, these deployments out of Europe represent an important and vital step in redefining the transatlantic partnership on a global scale.
To manage that redefinition, however, we need to see our partnership in a larger context, a context I see symbolized by a scale. One the one side of the scale are the challenges, and they are very real and they are very well known to all of us. To the other side are opportunities and the very real chances that we now have to build a better world.
I see our collective task as balancing our efforts to diminish, eliminate the dangers with our efforts to turn the opportunities into lasting achievements. We have to do both because one cannot defeat an evil except through the process of building a greater good. That's President Bush's approach. It's the very essence of his policy.
You have all heard him say that we will not be intimidated by terrorists or states that support terrorists. But you also heard the President talk at equal length and with equal passion, with equal passion, about the need to build a better and safer world. You have heard him talk about the scourge of HIV/AIDS. And he's done more than talk. He is leading the worldwide fight against this weapon of mass destruction that is destroying societies in all parts of the world. The United States now contributes more resources, twice as much money as the rest of the entire world combined, in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
You have also heard the President talk about poverty alleviation, about how important it is to create hope and opportunity where there is now frustration and desolation that would encourage young people to move in the direction of terrorism as opposed to moving in the direction of hope and acquiring the skills to be successful in life.
But even more than just talk about it, we have seen significant increases in our USAID funding around the world over the last three years. But he's gone beyond that and created something called the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which has been up and running for a few months now. It took us about 16 months to bring it from idea into existence, a separate corporation. I'm the chairman of this corporation and we're hoping that it will be capitalized by Congress with 5 billion new dollars every year by 2005. We are off and running with the first $1.5 billion worth of money and we are handing that money over to countries who enter into a compact, a contract with us. They are committed to democracy, the rule of law, the ending of corruption, market economics, human rights, and they're going to use that money to develop their infrastructure to keep them moving on that right path. And they will find the United States there as a partner to help them with advice, to help them politically and to help them financially. Why? To build a better country to be part of a better world and dry up the pools of despair that lead people into terrorism.
This is really the essence of our strategy: Partnerships, working with others, going after what's sometimes called the root causes of these problems. But also, when necessary, using force, military force -- multilateral in almost all cases. Not always the way some people would like to see it done, but the President will not step back from a challenge. He will not leave this country undefended.
And so the transatlantic community is alive and well and vibrant. It is demonstrating once again its ability to meet challenges and to get over disagreements and differences.
Let me echo what President Roman Herzog emphasized at the first Quandt Lecture in July of 1997. He said, "The transatlantic community is a community of freedom, democracy and peace." These values are today being emulated all over the world. President Herzog thus urged the transatlantic partnership to mobilize our resources, let us place our partnership, he suggested, as the world's service in the 21st century. And that is what we are doing by our work in Afghanistan, our work in Iraq, what we are doing with HIV/AIDS, what we are doing to alleviate poverty, what we are doing to alleviate suffering around the world.
If that suggestion, of course, made sense in 1997, it certainly makes even more sense now. And remember, the transatlantic community must promote freedom, democracy and peace, each in its own individual way when necessary, but together whenever possible. We are force multipliers for each other. We become more than the sum of our parts when we work together in partnership. I believe that our enlightened self-interest points us toward a new transatlantic agenda that is indeed fully global in scope. And by enlightened self-interest, I don't mean only our common security concerns, I mean also the vision we share for a better world, a world based on non-negotiable demands, inalienable rights, human dignity, freedom, justice, compassion and prosperity for all.
There are many ways we can work together on a global scale, cooperating on peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction issues in Africa and elsewhere in our hemisphere and Haiti. We're harmonizing our approach to development assistance, in line with the Monterrey Consensus of 2002. Above all, we're forging ahead together to bring the hope of decent and representative government to parts of the world where it's still much, much too scarce.
That's why the President's forward strategy for freedom and the Broader Middle East is so important. And that's why we greatly value Germany's partnership in advancing our common goal, which is to do all we can to support local reform in the Broader Middle East area.
This past February, at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Joschka Fischer called for a transatlantic initiative on the modernization and stabilization of the Middle East. We've heard that call and the transatlantic partnership, as a whole, has responded. At the G-8 Summit, you saw it. It took place in Sea Island this past June, where we responded. Our leaders adopted an ambitious program, the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative to advance reform in partnership with the nations of the Middle East.
Not to impose reform. We can't do that. Not to impose our values. We shouldn't do that, but to help them, each and every one of those nations, in their own individual way, as they seek to modernize, as they seek reform, to reach out a hand and to help. That is one of the important objectives and one of the important responsibilities of our transatlantic community.
In just a few days, Treasury Secretary Snow and I will go to New York to launch the Forum for the Future, which is the touchstone of this new G-8 program helping others reform.
The same vision of transatlantic cooperation in Middle Eastern reform was advanced at the U.S.-EU summit in June in Ireland and at the NATO Istanbul summit that same month. We devised the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which aims to enhance security and stability through a new transatlantic engagement with the region.
When I traveled a few weeks ago to Budapest and Warsaw, I found the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, most of them are now members of both the NATO and the EU, but I found them to be particularly eager to share their own transformative experiences in moving from authoritarianism to democracy, to share those experiences with the nations of the Middle East.
We are just beginning to define and give real content to this third circle of our partnership, reaching out, but I believe we'll be led steadily and successfully to our own common work by our deepest principles and by our recognition of the threats against those principles that exist.
Our common enemy today, the perpetrators of 3/11 in Madrid as well as 9/11 in the United States, know it's all about inequality: inequality between those who believe, as they do, and those who don't; inequality between men and women. Our common enemy is all about conformity and repression, dogmatism and censorship, not about liberty and freedom, tolerance and open expression.
Our enemy is afraid of change. Our enemy is afraid of the future. We embrace both, as we always have, with hope and faith and the inexhaustible resilience of the human spirit and in the compassion of a God who created that spirit.
During the Second World War and during the Cold War, free people everywhere shared a deep and abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of freedom. The transatlantic world in particular joined hearts as well as hands to do the difficult work that was before us.
So as we mark the third anniversary of a tragedy, 9/11, let us all once again make sure that we still believe to the depths of our soul in the ultimate triumph of freedom. Our hearts and hands are still joined together across the Atlantic and those hearts and hands are still open to men and women of good faith everywhere.
So joined, my friends, they must always remain. We must always remain in solidarity, not only with our transatlantic partners but with nations around the world who continue to look to the United States for inspiration, continue to look to the United States for help, continue to see the United States, a nation that can be trusted, a nation that many times in its history, but especially in the last century, has sent its sons and daughters from this place to places far away around the world to liberate, to bring freedom, to bring peace, and after the conflict to stay and rebuild and reconstruct and allow nations to live in peace and freedom.
That is now our challenge today in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the people of the world are watching to see whether we are still that country that has the will and determination to be successful. And what they will find is we most definitely are still that nation.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here and I'd be delighted to take some questions for a few moments. There's somebody running to a microphone.
QUESTION: Hi. My name is Sasha. I'm a junior in the School of Foreign Service, and I have a question.
Naturally, you must have times during your time as the Secretary of State that you've felt at odds, personally, with a lot of the decisions or actions that -- I'm sorry -- you've felt at odds with decisions or actions that the government has taken. And so, how have you handled that, personally, and what advice would you give to Georgetown students who are feeling hesitant in working for a government who might do things or decide things that they might not agree with?
SECRETARY POWELL: I've been at senior levels in government for quite a few years -- more than I'd like to admit. And the problems you face are never simple and there are always different choices that you have to make. And you always have to remember that the American people have selected a President to make those choices.
And so the way in which I do my job, the way I did my job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as National Security Advisor is to give the President and my other colleagues in government the best advice I can, based on the diplomatic perspective that I'm supposed to bring to the table. And as long as I have done that and the President has the benefit of all of our wisdom, and he is marvelous at listening to us all, listening to the debate, getting information out of all of us. And as long as I have done that, then I have done my job. And I believe, then, that my responsibility is to execute his decisions. He has not made a decision that I have found difficult to execute.
There are always judgment calls as to whether you should move a little more in this direction, a little bit more in that direction. And also, I have found that with most of the colleagues I work with and all of my cabinet-level colleagues: Don Rumsfeld, the Director of CIA, the Vice President, Condi Rice, Secretary of Energy and Homeland Security, most often we are in agreement.
And we might be debating something at the margin or the nuance and that's the way government runs. It's the way it ran when I was National Security Advisor, and we had some knock-down-drag-outs in those days, too. I remind people of my days with Mr. Schultz and Mr. Weinberger -- two strong willed individuals, so the President is served when he has differences of opinion, but everybody understands the goal we are trying to achieve.
And so issues come, issues go. You will know whether we were successful or not or we were right or not by the outcome. And I think if you're going to enter into the Foreign Service, and I hope you do -- give me your name, would you please? (Laughter.)
But if you're going to enter into Foreign Service, you have to understand there will be things that you will be absolutely supportive of, and there will be areas where you wish it had been done somewhat differently. And you will have to balance that over a period of time. If you ever feel that you have run into an issue that goes deeply against your own core beliefs and your moral, moral beliefs, then you should choose another line of work. And I would say that whether you're in the Foreign Service, the military or working for a corporation. You have to be ultimately true to yourself.
But you can't expect every issue to cut exactly the way you would like to see it cut. And I've been privileged to work for great leaders in the course of my career who took the advice, internalized it, added many other elements to the equation: Political elements, military elements, effect on the economy, effect on our alliances, and came up with a sound decision that reflected what he believed was the will of the American people. And I'm very proud to have worked for such leaders, to include President Bush. Thank you.
QUESTION: Thank you.
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for coming out today.
My question is, with respect to the situation in Sudan, is the United States and this Administration in particular willing to use sanctions or force to prevent the genocide in the event that we do not get the endorsement of the European Union or NATO?
SECRETARY POWELL: Sanctions and the possibility of sanctions are in the resolution that was passed a month or so ago, 1556. And it is in the draft resolution that we have put forward before the Security Council this week with a little more specificity as to what the nature of these sanctions might be.
But there is another point of view in the international community that sanctions would be premature and might not be the best thing to do right now. And so that's what we're debating in the Security Council. It kind of goes to the young lady's question -- different points of view, strongly held. Everybody wants to see the situation corrected. Nobody wants to see people suffering as they are in Darfur, but there are differences of opinion as to how you solve the problem.
So we believe it's time to ratchet up the pressure and that's why we have put forward what is a strong resolution that talks about imposing sanctions, to include even on their petroleum sector, if we don't see the kind of progress that was promised and which we need.
With respect to the use of force and European forces or American forces, there are no plans for that right now and I don't anticipate that. The African Union has expressed a willingness to increase the size of their presence. And I say "presence" because they're not going in as peacemakers to fight people; they're going in to monitor the situation and bring some stability to the country through that monitoring presence. They're willing to scale up and what we are committed to doing is helping them do that.
Darfur is a very large place. It is, say, 80 percent the size of Texas, roughly the size of France, and it is a very remote area. And there is a sovereign nation that has responsibility for that area, and that's Sudan.
And so we believe the best solution is to continue to press the Sudanese to bring the Jingaweit and the other militias under control and to meet their responsibilities. And we'll help them. We'll help them with the AU peacekeepers. There are some American military personnel in there working with the monitors. We'll help them with financial support. They have done quite a bit to improve access to the camps. Humanitarian aid is flowing. We need more aid to flow. But the Sudanese have met the bulk of their commitments with respect to humanitarian assistance.
We do have political dialogue going on in Abuja and the monitors are now going in in some greater strength than they were a little while ago. What we need now is greater effort on the part of the Sudanese Government to meet its responsibility to the people in the international community by bringing the Jingaweit and militias under control. We believe that's the best strategy to follow.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. Seeing that international terrorism is not necessarily a single, unified organization, how best do you believe that the United States can exploit doctrinal differences and fractures within international terrorism to help combat terrorism in general?
SECRETARY POWELL: There are many parts to it, as you know. There is al-Qaida. There is Jemaah Islamiya and so many organizations that participate in this. We have to make sure that we are getting inside their financial systems, their information systems, their communications and other systems so that they cannot draw any more closely together and deal with them individually.
We have to find out what it is that gives them sustenance in the places that they're operating in. We learned in Afghanistan that when the world wasn't paying enough attention to it and doing something about it, al-Qaida essentially took over a country. And so what we have to do is dry up these potential sources, these potential havens, for these terrorist organizations.
And then, more importantly, we've got to invest in these countries in ways that they will not find a pool of recruits or an accepting political system, a political system that now says: "Look, we're going down a road of democracy and freedom and human rights and living in peace with our neighbors and we're going to invest the treasure of our nation in our nation and help our people. We don't want you here and we found a better way to move into the future and it doesn't involve terrorism and therefore you are unwelcome here."
That comes about through the Millennium Challenge Account, assistance, reform. So what we have to do is target the regions that support these individual terrorist groups and use soft power programs, as well as hard power programs when we actually find them and can take them out. And so it has to be a tailored approach to the region and to the particular terrorist organization and doing everything we can to make sure that they don't develop large networks that would be a bigger challenge to us.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY POWELL: Excuse me. Did you want to join the Foreign Service, too? (Laughter.) Okay. (Laughter.)
How many of you are really thinking about a Foreign Service career? (Show of hands.) Very good. Thank you. Tough to get in.
QUESTION: As you stated before, you said that many European nations were initially against American intervention in Iraq. But do you think the creation of a stable democracy in Iraq is enough to justify our presence there?
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. I think that when you look at what happened last year, it was a serious breach in the community, in the Security Council, between the United States, France, Germany, and Russia as a member of the Security Council, if not a member of NATO. Strongly held views. They thought we shouldn't do it. They thought we were wrong.
We felt we had to do it. We thought we were right. We'd had 12 years of ignoring the UN's sanctions and UN instructions. And I won't go through the history of that, but we thought it was the right thing to do and we put together a willing coalition, just as we have done, the United States has done, at other times -- Kosovo, in the first Gulf War for that matter.
And the challenge, now, is to make sure that; having done it we are successful. I believe that if we were not fighting this insurgency right now, the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle, if we can defeat -- and we will, in due course, defeat -- these insurgent elements left over from the former regime and deal with the terrorists who have come in to make trouble, then what you would see instead of bombs every day on your television set, you would see different images. You would see schools being built. You would see town councils being formed. You would see Iraqis arguing with each other over the nature of their constitution. You would see, even in this country where it's never been seen before, you would see open debate about how they want to be governed.
We saw some indications of this as we formed the national council a few weeks ago, as they formed their national council a few weeks ago. Brave Iraqis have stepped up. Prime Minister Allawi, President Sheikh Ghazi, all of those cabinet ministers -- they wake up every day. They don't have to be there. They could be somewhere else. They could be in the United States. They could be living in Europe in comfort. They're all professional men. They all have means. But instead, they went back to Iraq or they stayed in Iraq and now they have emerged to take leadership positions, and they wake up every morning to face the threat of death.
And why are they doing it -- to support the United States? No, they're doing it because they know it's possible for Iraq, the 25 million people of Iraq, to have a democracy. And it is not foreclosed by the nature of their religion or by the nature of their history. There is no reason, they believe, that they can't have what other nations in the world have, a representative form of government. Yes, there will be a majority. The Shia will be majority. But the first law they passed, the Transitional Administrative Law, had protections for women in it. It had protections for the Kurds and the Sunnis. It had protections for all other minorities. It was a remarkable document. Why shouldn't they have that?
And so I firmly believe, the President firmly -- we all, all of us involved in this believe we've got to defeat this insurgency. And you will see that the Iraqi people will want to move in the direction that they've told us they want to move in, and these courageous leaders will be rewarded by the Iraqi people if the Iraqi people think they're the right leaders after -- for the election when the election comes up in about eight or nine months.
So we have to keep a clear view of what we're about. We can't think that we've got to give up because we're being attacked by the insurgents. That can't be the right answer. We can't give up. An old military expression from George S. Patton days: "When you put your hand to the thing, the thing must be done." And we've invested a lot in this and we've invested in creating the right kind of country.
Same thing with Afghanistan: When we first started in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, and my first visit shortly after the Taliban was gone and President Karzai came in, there was one telephone for the whole government. Money was being moved around in bales. You needed a pallet of money to buy, you know, to buy some milk, if you could find it.
Now the government is functioning. It's still being challenged -- they're coming along. If you had told me that 9 million people were going to be registered, I wouldn't have believed it, but it's happening.
Seventeen, eighteen candidates, including Karzai, eighteen presidential candidates started campaigning this past Tuesday in this place of the Taliban, where such a thing isn't possible. Eighteen candidates, to include a woman, include a woman, out there campaigning in Afghanistan. They haven't gotten to televised ads yet, and you know -- (laughter) -- I'm not sure they're ready for that much democracy yet (laughter) -- but they're out there working. And they believe it. And why can't we have it? Why should we be -- why should we not be allowed to pick our own leaders?
And so, yes, I believe to the depth of my heart that it is possible, and those nations that are committed to this are doing the right thing to give these 55 million people the same opportunity that we're going to have on the 2nd of November. Thank you.
QUESTION: Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. I am Zhida Nouri from Afghanistan. And regarding your talks, I would like to know about your idea, how do you see the perspective of Afghanistan open election for the future of Afghanistan in case of security issues and Afghanistan reconstruction, which is like, very concerning. Thank you.
SECRETARY POWELL: Of course. It's been a challenge. There are Taliban elements that want to disrupt the election. Election workers have been killed. UN workers have been threatened and injured and killed. But the process is moving forward and the campaign is underway for a president on the 9th of October, and then a parliament next year.
President Karzai is determined to move forward. He's a bold and courageous man, and I think you will have elections on the 9th of October, and you will have a freely elected democratic president at that point. And there's no reason why that shouldn't take place when we expect it to take place.
And then the most interesting part of it will be when you elect your parliament to really carry the dreams and wishes of the Afghan people forward. On my recent visits to Afghanistan, it's been so impressive to see how buildings are going back up. I went to a registration site on one of my recent trips, and it was a registration place for women to register to vote. And to sit in that school and see a line of women going outside the building and around, waiting to register to vote and not leaving until they had their voter registration card. Some of them were completely covered, as is their choice. Half of them were, you know, not so covered. But they all wanted to be a part of a new Afghanistan. And we cannot allow their dream to be denied.
And I'm pleased that NATO has stepped up, the Italians and the Spanish have sent in additional troops to help with the election process, and a French general is in command of all of that. So it's the transatlantic community at work in Afghanistan.
I think I have time for two more, and then I have to go to do a press conference. I'd rather stay here, but -- (laughter).
QUESTION: Thanks for coming.
You're obviously a very popular speaker and Gaston Hall is packed today. And for most of us, we had to wait for -- well, about a week ago -- for two hears in the hot sun, unshaded, just to get to come and see you, and today we also had to do the same. But it was all on a voluntary basis, which was good. But it reminded me of the situation that elderly people, pregnant women, young children have to do if they're Palestinian at Israeli checkpoints.
And I was just wondering, how can you just -- well, more to the point -- do you justify the fact that the U.S. has given more financial aid to Israel than it has to sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, combined. (Applause.)
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know that the numbers -- we've given a great deal of aid to Israel over the years, and we've given a great deal of aid to Egypt over the years as part of the Camp David Accords of the Carter Administration period.
We give a great deal of financial support directly to Arab nations. We've given a great deal, for example, of financial relief to Jordan in recent times, to other nations in the region. We have entered into free trade agreements with Jordan and Morocco, which also will benefit those people in those countries.
We are giving aid to countries here in our region. We're working hard. I was supposed to, in my budget, provide, for example, $94 million for Sudan in this fiscal year. But because of the challenge that Sudan is facing and the particular situation in Darfur, we have now raised what was budgeted at $94 million up to $600 million because of what we did inside of our accounts to find more money and getting supplemental funding from the Congress to deal with the crisis in the Sudan.
We are going to be paying more for peacekeeping in the Congo. So we have many demands on our overall assistance budget and I would like to see even more money available to me. The tragedy of the Palestinians having their lives made so difficult by checkpoints and the kinds of things you described are distressing to me.
I have worked very hard. The President has worked very hard the last three and a half years to try to get something going. We had the Mitchell Plan, the Zinni Plan, the Tenet Plan. We put out a clear statement in June of 2002 about a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel as being our goal.
But the President made it clear, and something that is obvious, that we need reformed leadership on the side of the Palestinians that we could look to to be a responsible partner for peace. And we didn't think Chairman Arafat, and we still don't think Chairman Arafat does that. (Applause.) So we've been trying to empower a Prime Minister. And President Bush invested a great deal of his political currency into this last summer when he went to Aqaba and endorsed the roadmap with Prime Minister Sharon and Prime Minister, at that time, Abu Mazen, but we didn't get it going.
We didn't get the kind of results that we were hoping for. So Prime Minister Abu Mazen stepped down. Prime Minister Abu Alaa is now in place. We want to work with him, but he's got to get more authority to do his job from President Arafat and he has not gotten that. And, once again, we see that he has now suggested he might have to resign again.
So the United States stands ready to work with both parties to achieve the goal that the President set out and that the Arab League set out two years ago, and that's we want to see the creation of a Palestinian state that will live side by side in peace with the state of Israel. We want final status issues to be decided between the two parties and we're hoping that we can find a way forward with the plan of Prime Minister Sharon to remove the settlements from Gaza and the beginning of the removal of some of the settlements, and I hope most of the settlements, in the West Bank.
And we'll have to work all that out. There are certain realities on the ground in the West Bank that have to be taken into account as we move forward, and that's what the President said, but his vision is clear: He wants to see a contiguous, coherent Palestinian state under responsible leadership, protecting itself and ending terror, ending terror once and for all as a political tool.
But as long as every now and again terrorists get loose and set off bombs that kill people on buses, the opportunity to reach that dream is deferred. We can't get there in the presence of that kind of terror. So terror is the biggest impediment we have to moving forward to the possibility of progress as laid out in the roadmap.
I have time for one more. I'm sorry.
QUESTION: Well, I'd actually say it's occupation as opposed to terror. (Applause.)
SECRETARY POWELL: We want the occupation to end. The occupation will end when we are able to bring a Palestinian state into being that is under responsible leadership and that there are agreements between the two sides that they can live in peace with each other.
QUESTION: Many people around the world have heard repeatedly from members of this Administration that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are probably our two best friends in the Middle East, our staunchest allies in fighting terrorism in the Arab and Muslim world and bringing freedom and liberty to Afghanistan and Iraq. But when you look at the track records of those countries, they probably have some of the worst records for freedom of speech and liberty and human rights in the Arab and Muslim world. And as I am sure you are aware of, that's been sending a signal of American hypocrisy towards many in the Arab and Muslim world. And many would also argue that that's probably being just as counterproductive in -- or it's acting against all the achievements that we're making using, say, ground troops in fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I guess, really, I just want to know is what is this Administration going to do to combat that image of American hypocrisy and actually bring, try to bring, some freedom of expression, liberty and tolerance to the rest of the countries in the Middle East.
SECRETARY POWELL: With respect to Pakistan, three years ago tomorrow, the regime in Pakistan, under President Musharraf, General Musharraf, was supportive of the Taliban regime and therefore was knowledgeable about what was going on with respect to al-Qaida. And we had a very strained, estranged relationship with Pakistan as a result.
Three days later, after work by my Deputy Secretary Rich Armitage with Pakistanis, I called President Musharraf after we had suggested to him it was time to make a strategic decision to move away from that and we gave him some things we hoped he would do. And President Musharraf took my call. We talked about it and he said, "I will do all of these things." And he reversed the direction in which Pakistan was moving and assisted us in our efforts to go after al-Qaida and remove the Taliban regime and get rid of this threat to America, the al-Qaida group sponsored by the Taliban.
We would have not been able to do that without even more difficulty if it hadn't been for that decision on the part of President Musharraf.
We have worked closely with President Musharraf over the last three years and we have watched as the parliament starts functioning again, as there is now a new empowered prime minister who we know very, very well, Prime Minister Aziz. There is diversity of opinion throughout Pakistan. They have an aggressive press. But it is not yet to where we would like to see it.
But President Musharraf also has to deal with the dangers that exist within his country. But we are working with him, encouraging him, and we are confident that Pakistan, under his leadership and now under the leadership of Prime Minister Aziz, is moving in the right direction. It has got a parliament that's not quite like our Congress but it is becoming fractious and they debate issues and they take positions.
And so these things don't happen overnight, but I think Pakistan is moving in the right direction.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia has now come to realize that support for madrases that do nothing but teach fundamentalism or allowing charitable organizations in Saudi Arabia to fund non-charitable extremist or terrorist organizations is something that's got to stop because it's coming back to hurt Saudi Arabia. And over the past year, I've seen a tremendous change in Saudi Arabia in their willingness to go after these organizations, to cooperate with us on law enforcement/intelligence matters. And now that they are also under assault by these people that they're going after, they are going after them with all the resources at their disposal.
Each of the countries in the Middle East is at a different state of historic development. They have different cultures and traditions. Even though you might say they're all Arabs, but they're all different. And with our modernization and reform proposals, we're taking that into account and we have to work with each one of them in a different way. Saudi Arabia is still a monarchy with a state religion and it's been that way for a long time. It's not going to change overnight. But in my most recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a few or two months or so ago, I sat down with a group of young people, and you should have heard them argue about what they wanted to see happen in Saudi Arabia. You should have heard their debate about upcoming municipal elections. They're going to have municipal elections in the very near future, something rather new and different and almost revolutionary for Saudi Arabia, but they know they have to move in this direction.
They believe that they have to move at a pace that is consistent with where they are coming from and the nature of their regime. But they know what we think. We had to do something, take a certain action last week that encouraged them to move in this direction. And I called them and told them we were going to take this action and they understood it and accepted it, and hopefully, they will use it to move their process along.
So it is not just a matter of turning a light switch and things change. It takes time, it takes patience; it takes steady, consistent diplomacy over time. And that's what we are trying to do. And I think, increasingly, you'll see that success will come from that kind of patient effort that is respectful of other countries and their stage of development and helping them do what they need to do right away to move down this road -- not pushing them faster than they can stand it, but at the same time, encouraging them so that they do move and do not stand still. And that's the way we go about this process.
Thank you all very, very much.
(Applause.)
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