The White House Briefing Room
November 2, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY JOE LOCKHART
2:45 P.M. EST
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release November 2, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY
JOE LOCKHART
The Briefing Room
2:45 P.M. EST
MR. LOCKHART: Good afternoon. What can I do for you?
Q Nothing.
MR. LOCKHART: Okay. Thank you very much. We're not going to
pursue that, Mark. (Laughter.)
............
Q How do you assess the status of the presidency in
the wake of the events of this year? Is it held in as high esteem
around the world or has it been diminished?
MR. LOCKHART: If you're asking for my opinion, I think
if you look at the goings on and what's happened in the last month
alone, the President has been strong and forceful for getting a
budget deal that has unprecedented investments in education as far as
100,000 teachers and Pell Grants, Head Start, things like that -- to
the agreement that they reached on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
between Israel and the Palestinians. So I think if you look at the
results and try to peal away some of the partisan rhetoric that seems
to pervade the dialogue recently, you'll see a President that is
leading and that is strong.
Q Is the President going to be talking to any foreign
leaders on Iraq, or has he done so already today?
MR. LOCKHART: I don't believe he's had conversations
today. I think you can assume that conversations are going on
throughout our government with our allies. Let me tell you a little
bit. The President met with his foreign policy team for about an
hour, starting about noontime. The meeting was -- participating in
the meeting were Sandy Berger, the President's National Security
Advisor; Secretaries Albright and Cohen; CIA Direct Tenet; Joint
Chief Chairman Shelton; John Podesta; Jim Steinberg; and some others.
They reviewed the situation on the ground, discussed the
new Iraqi position as articulated over the weekend, and discussed the
strong and unanimous reaction from the international community. The
President and his team reviewed and discussed potential options for
next steps. No decisions were made beyond the President asking the
Secretary of Defense to travel to Europe and to the region to consult
with our allies. The details of that trip you can get from the
Pentagon.
Q Are military strikes among the options?
MR. LOCKHART: I think we have said repeatedly that all
options are on the table, and that means all options are on the
table.
Q Do you feel that the allies in the region, the
Saudis and the others, will support the use of force, if necessary?
MR. LOCKHART: I'm not going to speculate on a
hypothetical.
Q We've heard the President say that all options are
on the table many times before. Isn't there a danger that Saddam
Hussein could just view this as more empty threats from the United
States?
MR. LOCKHART: I think that we're going to review the
situation. The steps he's taken are unacceptable. The threat and
the inhibiting and restriction of long-term monitoring is a very
serious situation. But I'm not going to get into what the options
are that are being considered.
Q Does the U.S. think it has, currently, the
authorization to engage in a military strike against Iraq should it
so decide that that's the proper course of action?
MR. LOCKHART: Yes.
Q Joe, with President Clinton facing impeachment
proceedings in perhaps two weeks, is there any concern that Saddam
Hussein might be emboldened to engage in adventurism because of his
perceived weakness?
MR. LOCKHART: You know, I think Saddam Hussein has a
history of miscalculations on a very grand scale. I think if you
look at it from his situation, what he's been trying to do this year
is get out from under the punitive sanctions that the international
community has placed upon him. And he's trying to do that by
dividing the international community. And every step he takes,
he gets the opposite result. We know that the U.N. articulated a
very strong statement in August when they withdrew the six-month
review of sanctions, and they acted decisively and unanimously over
the weekend in issuing a statement. So what he's trying to do to get
out from under the sanctions is just not working.
Q It doesn't enter into the mix then?
MR. LOCKHART: Well, you're asking me to get inside his
head, and I think that's a very precarious and not necessarily
fruitful venture for me.
Q Joe, you say he hasn't been successful with each of
these steps he's taken. But at the same time, there's been no
adverse action against him. I mean, the sanctions haven't been
lifted --
MR. LOCKHART: I think there has been an adverse action.
If you look at where we were earlier in the year, there was some
belief -- there was some split in the international community, and
his actions against UNSCOM brought the international community back
together firmly committed to getting cooperation from him. And as
his end game -- his end game is to get from underneath these
sanctions. And the U.N. in August suspended the sanctions review,
thus creating a serious problem for him.
Q What makes you think that's his end game? Why
couldn't his end game just be an end to the U.N. inspections that
let's him reconstitute his weapons program?
MR. LOCKHART: Well, I think we'll take him at his word
on what his end game is because he's repeatedly and clearly
articulated that he thinks the sanctions are unfair and need to be
lifted.
Q His Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, said that
the reason they suspended this cooperation is because the U.S. has
decided -- the Clinton administration, like the Bush administration
before it -- that no matter he does, as long as Saddam Hussein is in
power, the sanctions will never be removed. Is that the Clinton
administration's position?
MR. LOCKHART: Our administration and I think the
international community's position is that he ought to cooperate
fully with UNSCOM, that we need to deter his ability to threaten his
neighbors and to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction. And
they can play all the word games they want, but none of it matters
until they actually do what they agreed to do at the end of the Gulf
War.
Q Can they be removed with Saddam Hussein still in
power?
MR. LOCKHART: We need to have cooperation and
compliance before that discussion happens. As you'll remember, what
may have precipitated some of the things over the weekend is the U.N.
Security Council said come into cooperation with UNSCOM, and we'll
review the sanctions with or without any predetermined idea whether
they could -- whether they were in compliance or not. But that's a
discussion for down the road.
Q Joe, is the administration now having to fix a
problem that it handed off to Kofi Annan last February?
MR. LOCKHART: No, I don't think so. I think the
international community is united from the Security Council, Kofi
Annan, the U.S. government, that we need -- UNSCOM needs cooperation
and Saddam Hussein needs to get that message. And until he does,
there will be no further discussion of lifting any sanctions or
reviewing sanctions.
Q Do the allies, Joe, have adequate military forces
in the region now in case the military option has to be exercised?
MR. LOCKHART: Without speculating about what options
might be used or might not be used, you'll remember from earlier this
year we talked about reconfiguring the forces in the region so that
they could act quickly and forcefully.
Q Joe, you've made a point of saying that no options
are off the table. As long as the inspectors remain inside Iraq,
though, it would seem that at least one option is constrained while
they're there. Does the United States feel that it's time to remove
those inspectors since they are not able to inspect at this point and
are --
MR. LOCKHART: I think the United States believes it's
time to let those inspectors do the work they were sent there to do,
and I'm not going to go beyond that.
Q If Iraq moves against Israel again, would the
President ask Bibi to sit it out? And if he did, do they have that
kind of relationship?
MR. LOCKHART: We're getting way too far down the road
and I'm not going to speculate on hypotheticals like that.
..........
Q Thank you.
END 3:15 P.M. EST
#012-11/02
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