26 January 2006
U.S., Europeans Set To Refer Iran to Security Council, Rice Says
Secretary of state also discusses War on Terror, Middle East, East Asia
By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The United States and key European nations are ready to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for tougher diplomatic action against that country’s nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26.
Rice also defended U.S. actions in the war on terrorism, saying that democracy and open societies, while imperfect, are self-correcting when wrongdoing is brought to the public’s attention.
In addition, she said the Middle East is going through an important but often-difficult transition to democracy, and that East Asia has achieved prosperity and openness much faster than anyone expected.
Rice addressed the World Economic Forum via an interactive videoconference between Washington and Davos. She began with a statement on the preliminary results of Palestinian elections, noting that while the voters opted for political change, “we believe that their aspirations for peace and a peaceful life remain unchanged.” (See related article.)
IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM
In response to questions, Rice said, “It’s our very strong view that it is time to refer Iran to the Security Council. “That is not only the view of the United States, but also the view of the European Three, who tried to bring the Iranians into the community of state.”
The foreign ministers of the European Union Three (EU-3) -- Germany, France and the United Kingdom -- declared January 12 that Iran’s resumption of uranium enrichment research effectively destroyed the basis for efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. They called for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. (See related article.)
Iran has announced that it is ending a two-year moratorium on its nuclear activities and broke IAEA seals at its Natanz facility, where it is engaged in research aimed at building a centrifuge plant for enriching uranium.
Rice stressed that the United States wants to use diplomacy to solve the Iran nuclear issue. Referring the Iranian nuclear program to the Security Council “is only the start of a new phase of diplomacy,” she said. “A certain set of negotiations will have failed, but … we still have diplomatic means to try and get Iran to return to more sensible policies.”
The international community, Rice said, “has got to react, and it has got to react strongly. You have seen the condemnations of the terrible statements by the president of Iran [Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad]. And you have also seen the condemnations of Iran’s behavior in removing seals and threatening to restart its nuclear processes. We must now turn that condemnation into action by referring Iran to the Security Council so that the weight of the Security Council can be behind the International Atomic Energy Agency as it tries to deal with the Iranian issue.”
U.S. ACTIONS IN THE WAR ON TERROR
Rice also addressed questions about U.S. actions in the War on Terror, particularly the treatment of terrorist suspects. (See related article.)
“I want to assure people that what the president has done and what the United States has done since the terrible attacks on this country of September 11th [2001] have been fully within our international obligations, within our laws and within the principles and values that the United States holds dear,” she said.
Fighting global terrorists is especially challenging to all democracies, Rice said, because terrorists purposefully target innocent civilians. “Innocents are not killed as collateral damage,” she said. “They are killed by intent. … in order to terrorize and to make free people turn away from their values.”
Rice said some isolated actions, such as the mistreatment of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison have been “inexcusable.” But she also said democratic and open societies such as the United States have a legal process to investigate and punish wrongdoing. For example, American service members in the Abu Ghraib case have been tried by military courts, and those found guilty have faced prison terms or demotions.
Democracies are not perfect, Rice said. “But … when abuses happen, they are openly discovered – in our case by our free press. They are openly dealt with in accordance with law, but they are not hidden as would be the case in a dictatorship.”
The United States has faced “hard struggles and hard dilemmas,” she said. “But I’m quite confident that when the history of this period is written, the United States will have managed to fight the War on Terror and stay true to its principles and values.”
DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Democracy and freedom gradually are taking hold in the Middle East, but the process will not be swift or free of setbacks, Rice said.
“We have to realize that the Middle East was not a stable place and a place of hope before the freedom agenda became core to Middle Eastern politics,” she said. The Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” seeks to place a top priority on democracy and freedom throughout the world, including the Middle East. (See related article.)
“When we look at what is obviously a difficult transition to democracy in the Middle East – obviously one in which people are trying to replace conflict with politics, trying to replace repression with compromise – this is hard,” Rice said.
But she cited recent “positive developments” including elections in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as “the emancipation of Kuwaiti women with the vote.”
“Perhaps we have to step back and remember that our own journeys to democracy were also rocky and difficult,” she said. “I come from a part of the United States in which my parents were not even guaranteed the right to vote until 1965, when I was 10 years old.” Rice spent her early childhood in Alabama during the violent struggles of the civil rights movement, which sought to overturn centuries of government-sanctioned oppression against African Americans.
“So we have to remember that democracy is hard,” Rice said. “But it is always worth it.”
TRANSFORMATION IN EAST ASIA
Responding to another question, Rice said the dynamic economic growth of East Asia is a sign of the power of democracy.
“There are certainly challenges,” Rice said. “But if you look at the East Asia of 20 or 30 years ago, you would not have expected to see a China that is opening to the world in the way that it is, a South Korea that has become a full-fledged and stable democracy, Japan continuing its democratic processes in a consolidated democracy.”
The United States has good relations with all those countries as well as increasingly good relations with India, she said. “So on balance, I think the trends have been overwhelmingly positive for this region.”
With China’s growing political and economic importance, it is important for other nations, especially the United States, to encourage China to become a responsible power that understands that “it has an obligation in the international system to promote and, in fact, to defend peace and security,” Rice said.
“That is why the work that the United States is doing with China in the Six-Party Talks concerning the North Korean nuclear program is so important,” Rice said. “It is why the discussions that we are having with China about how to manage the Iranian [nuclear] proliferation problem are so important.”
For additional information, see U.S. Policy Toward North Korea.
A transcript of the videoconference is available on the State Department Web site.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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