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U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

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QUESTION: Scott Ritter says the Secretary of State obstructed concealment inspections in order to allow the US to buy time to extricate itself from itself the bad deal it bought into when it agreed to Kofi Annan's negotiated resolution. What is the long-term plan to stop this cycle of aggression and concession?

MR. RUBIN: Well, those are terms of art that are quite loaded. One of the more interesting set of readings I did was on the subject of Iraq in reading different accounts of what's transpired in recent months. Let me just make a few points on that.

Number one, there's been a lot of reporting that the Secretary said Scott Ritter doesn't have a clue about our policy. Those of you who feel compelled to write about the subject, I hope will show some balance and some fairness in recognizing that comment was made after a series of laudatory comments about the work that Scott Ritter had done and in specific response to an obviously outrageous and ridiculous quip that the United States has stopped more inspections than Saddam Hussein. If that is one's view, then one's view doesn't understand American policy.

So those of you who do feel the need to continue to write about this, I hope will show at least the minimum level of fairness in explaining that was the context of that comment.

Secondly, there seems to be a series of misunderstandings that keep being repeated by certain officials and others - not officials of the government - and analysts and occasionally even a journalist or two. We have taken the view that if and when we are going to get into a confrontation with Iraq, that the political leadership of the United States along with the political leadership of other countries in the Security Council should try to do it not only at a time and place of our choosing, number one, but number two, in a way that maximizes international support.

That is an international political issue that we are concerned about. That is a different issue than an inspector is concerned about. He is correctly concerned about whether he gets in to get his inspection, and if not, why not. The views of the United States Government, on the other hand, are about if we are going to get into a confrontation with Iraq, making sure we've done all we can to lay the diplomatic ground work to make sure that Iraq is perceived by as many countries as possible as to be the cause of the problem and not some particularly aggressive inspection that we in the United States support but other countries may not support.

So sometimes inspectors who are focused on their job don't understand the extent to which other countries in the Security Council don't support their job. We support the job of the inspectors. We want them to get in to where they need to go; sometimes, other countries don't. So if we have to make a tactical political choice - do we want a confrontation over Iraq's intransigence or an inspection which the United States supports, maybe the British support but maybe others don't - that's a high political judgment that can best be made by those who are in contact with the members of the Security Council and the highest levels of the United Nations system.

That's what this is about - it's a different tactical judgment as to what would best force Saddam Hussein to respond and what would best put the United States in a position to act using force if necessary or any other mechanism.

What we've seen is when the Secretary did make a tactical judgment about what should happen in early August, it was designed to keep Iraq on the defensive. What you've seen now is increasingly, in the last few weeks, the Russians, the French, the Chinese and others supportive of the position that we want them to be supportive of. That's our job; Scott Ritter's job is to try to get in to do inspections; other inspectors' jobs are to try to uncover weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors during this period uncovered the fact that VX was being produced, the fact that Iraq had lied about how much weapons of mass destruction it used during the Gulf War. All those inspections conducted by other inspectors have gone forward. So this is a tactical issue that has surprisingly blown way out of proportion.

QUESTION: Will the US undertake unilateral action if the Security Council should prove to not have the will to enforce disarmament?

MR. RUBIN: We'll have to see. The position of the United States is that we are acting now in New York, working on a resolution to suspend indefinitely sanctions reviews. Saddam Hussein clearly wants sanctions lifted, so this is something he clearly doesn't want to happen. We have seen, as I suggested, greater support for that kind of a step now because Iraq has made clear its blatant non-cooperation with the Security Council.

If these steps and other diplomatic steps do not yield a change then the President and his National Security Advisor will have to make decisions as to when and where to act. But the point is that Saddam Hussein shouldn't choose the terrain; Saddam Hussein shouldn't decide when American forces do and don't get deployed. The United States should try to make sure that when and if we get into a confrontation - as we inevitably do and have on dozens of occasions with Iraq over the last six or seven years - that as much as possible that it is on our terms and with the maximum chance for Saddam being blamed and not narrow issues of inspections being a matter of controversy.

QUESTION: New subject?

QUESTION: No, still on - when will the Secretary testify to this joint --

MR. RUBIN: My understanding is that the Secretary is expected to testify on Thursday. Again, for those of you who may write about that, I sure hope that you call those who are involved. The United States Administration, the Secretary did not try to cancel or stop hearings. If you write that, you will be wrong. The United States has - sorry, the Administration has made clear that full public discussion of the extent of our cooperation with UNSCOM tends to buy into these very arguments that I was talking to you about where countries' support of Iraq or countries on the fence regard UNSCOM as an American operation. That makes it harder to get support in the Arab world, support in the Middle East and sometimes support in major European countries for action if necessary.

So we had concerns about public hearings, not hearings. Those were expressed. We never - and let me emphasize this word - to my knowledge asked that Mr. Ritter not be able to testify; that's nonsense. As you know, Secretary of State was out of town last week. So some decided they wanted to go forward with the hearings without the presence of Administration officials, and then others seem to want to write down whatever some congressional staffer tells them about how the hearings were created, which always puzzles me.

QUESTION: On the same subject, but a different aspect, a United Nations official based in Baghdad reports that the US Navy seized an Iraqi cargo ship with 15,000 tons of wheat, apparently under the oil-for-food program. What is that all about?

MR. RUBIN: I've heard that report; I don't have any information on it. I'll try to get it for you after the briefing.

QUESTION: Also on Iraq, an Iraqi official has been complaining again that the United States has been delaying medical contracts under the oil-for-food program.

MR. RUBIN: Again, I don't have any - I think I may have a little bit of information on this. What tends to happen is that we allow all the food that we think is appropriate - all the contracts to go through - 99 percent of them, but there may be problems with one or two where it's either with companies that we know are involved in weapons of mass destruction or equipment that we don't regard as medical or other equipment.

I will have to check and find out what the specific hold-up that they're referring to is. But as I understand it, we've been letting most of the contracts through and occasionally we have a question and then they re-examine the paperwork and then we approve it. These statements tend to be, in our view, designed to publicly question the support of the United States for feeding the Iraqi people. And I think those of us who have worked on this have said very clearly for some time that had it not been for the United States, there would not be billions of dollars worth of food and medicine in Iraq because it was the United States that started these programs and started the resolution and these statements are, in our view, designed to cast doubt on that objective fact.

Same subject?

QUESTION: Different subject.

MR. RUBIN: Let's stick on Iraq.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) - Iraqi Kurdish leader is coming to Washington, DC this week and I believe they are meeting for the US - (inaudible) - to some peace - (inaudible) -- . Do you have any reaction or do you have --

MR. RUBIN: We will host KDP leader Massoud Barzani for a visit September 9-11. We will host PUK leader Jalal Talibani for a visit September 14-16. He'd been invited by Deputy Assistant Secretary Welch to visit Washington when David Welch was in northern Iraq in July. There are four main reasons for this visit; we want to foster cooperation. Over the past six months, the Kurdish parties have made excellent progress working together to resolve practical problems. Since February, they have held more than 20 joint leadership meetings. When David Welch was in northern Iraq in July both parties asked us to do what we could to encourage this dialogue and this is part of that process.

In addition, we want to discuss reconciliation. The two relevant parties have been at peace with each other since November 1997 when we helped to arrange a cease fire. They may now be ready to make significant progress towards a permanent reconciliation; one that is fully consistent with Iraq's territorial integrity.

Thirdly, we want to address humanitarian concerns. In contrast to reports of problems encountered in government controlled areas of Iraq, in the north the UN Oil-for-Food Program has made notable progress and food and medical needs have been addressed, and working together with the UN, the Kurds are ready to begin rebuilding their infrastructure - schools, roads, electricity, etc.

We also want to listen to the real voices of the Iraqi people. Both of these leaders represent the interests of millions of Iraqi Kurds. In extraordinarily difficult circumstances they are working to cooperate with the international community and we hope that they will have a chance to talk to a wide spectrum of people in Washington and real leaders will be heard from. They are scheduled - the visits for two consecutive weeks and we are prepared to facilitate leader-to-leader meetings, even though they are on consecutive weeks, after the two bilateral visits are concluded if the two sides wish to meet.

QUESTION: In these meetings are there other than the US officials -- for example, the British and the Turkish officers - do you think that they will join to these meetings?

MR. RUBIN: I know that those two governments are in regular contact with us about this issue. I don't know what the roster is for these meetings; I'm sure that at some point those relevant officials will either be consulted with or involved. But those are the purposes --

Iraq, are we done with?

(The briefing concluded at 2:30 P.M.)

[end of document]