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U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

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QUESTION: Can I ask you about Iraq, please? There is this new stand-off over documents. When the President addressed it earlier in the dispute, he made some reference to needing some more facts, and there's been some analysis drawn that the President was backing off a little bit because documents --

MR. RUBIN: Those analysts have to stop analyzing.

QUESTION: I was one of them. The documents were one of his five criteria a week earlier, which could bring the mighty power of the United States down on them if they didn't fulfill their obligations. Anyhow, we're several days into this now. Can you address this? And are you still deferring to the UN to make all the proper judgments? I don't mean just about where you inspect - a judgment as to whether Iraq is in compliance. Is that now a consensus decision of the United Nations, where a lot of people would have let Iraq get away with probably bloody murder?

MR. RUBIN: Well, let me address the last part of your question first. The short answer to that is no, and it has never been our policy, and no one has ever suggested it's our policy. On the contrary, we've made very clear that in this case we have very important national interests at stake.

With respect to technical issues, however, there is a technical organization called the UN Special Commission that was set up by the Security Council. And as the country that has probably done more than any other to assist the Special Commission in its work, through information, expertise and other requests for assistance that they have made, we have great faith in their technical expertise to make technical professional judgments as to what information is being provided, why it's not being provided. They are in the best position to know whether particular documents are available, or the dog ate them during some interregnum period. "The dog ate my homework" is not an excuse that's acceptable. But we need to be very careful and make these judgments very carefully, because to the extent that the judgments are made and understood to be professional, technical judgments, it is more likely that we will get international support for a firm posture towards Iraq. Simply having the United States state what its view is on a professional technical matter prior to Ambassador Butler having an opportunity to discuss very detailed, very specific things - for example, today we had a new letter from the Iraqis to the President of the Security Council, which happens to be Ambassador Burleigh this month. It's a 20-page document that goes into a lengthy rebuttal of the points that Ambassador Butler made in his letters.

We do think that Ambassador Butler and his technical experts should be the ones that analyze the document, see how it compares and explains the issues that he was seeking cooperation on. But let's be very clear - a clear path has been set forth for Iraq to follow: Turn over the appropriate documents; cooperate with UNSCOM inspectors; allow for follow-up interviews with key individuals. We expect Iraq to cooperate across the spectrum of UNSCOM's requirements.

Clearly the initial responses were insufficient. We've now received another response, and Ambassador Butler and his team of experts - technical experts - are going to be examining a 20-page document that just arrived in the last few hours, to be able to assess whether this is another case of shifting the blame, or whether there is any validity to the arguments that are made. That is the proper, professional, judicious way for us to approach this problem.

QUESTION: Can you respond to Iraq's argument -- Mr. Hamdun was making it again today - that - it's sort of a two-part argument that Iraq's sovereignty is being compromised and that a lot of these demands are really mischievous. They're attempts by the United States and others to push them around.

MR. RUBIN: Claims that the requirements of Security Council resolutions are infringements on Iraq's sovereignty should be addressed to the President of Iraq , who made a decision to invade another country, which led the Security Council to establish very clear requirements and impose those requirements. These are not voluntary requirements; these are mandatory requirements. The sooner Iraq gets used to the fact that it is not in the position of being able to pick and choose which of these requirements it needs to follow, the sooner we can get on with compliance, and get on with the comprehensive review, and some day, if relevant resolutions are complied with, get on with lifting sanctions.

But these are mandatory, and to the extent they impose on Iraq's sovereignty, it is a direct result of the decision by Iraq's leader to invade another country, and the rules and requirements imposed on it.

With respect to your second question, if you could repeat it, please.

QUESTION: I suppose you could say it's the UN's decision to make the commission, but Iraq sees a lot of these demands - or professes to see a lot of these demands -- as mischievous, as basically just trying to push them around a little bit.

MR. RUBIN: We have great respect professionally and politically, in the sense of his public posture, his private posture for Ambassador Butler. It's not an easy job to go day after day, head-to-head with the Iraqis in trying to get them to cooperate, when they've shown a pattern of deceit over the last six or seven years and tried to deny documents. I remember the story that Ambassador Butler's predecessor used to tell; which was that documents like these would be provided by Iraq only after UNSCOM showed them to the Iraqis and then they would revise their "full and final disclosures" and include them.

So if Iraq hadn't spent the last six or seven years denying access, denying cooperation, refusing documents and engaged in a pattern of deceit, they wouldn't find themselves in a situation where the burden of proof is on them. But clearly, as a result of this pattern of behavior over the last six or seven years, as a result of the Security Council's resolutions, the burden of proof is on Iraq to turn over the information, to provide the cooperation, and to provide the access that the UN needs to do its job. That's where the burden lies, both because of their pattern of misbehavior, and because this all began when Iraq violated all international laws by invading Kuwait.

That's what we're talking about here - the cease-fire resolution, which should have been complied with in a matter of weeks; but instead, to the great detriment of the Iraqi people and the suffering of the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein still, six and seven years later, is playing games with UNSCOM's desire to get to the bottom of this.

QUESTION: Has this pattern of deceit by the Iraqis, the pattern of playing hide-and-seek, begun again? Are we in another cycle of deceit?

MR. RUBIN: Well, cooperation is, as I indicated, something that is required across the board. There are a whole spectrum of requirements that UNSCOM needs to have, including access to facilities; they need to have cooperation in interviewing people; they need to have documentation; and they need to have a climate in which Iraq understands that unless it discloses what it did with its weapons of mass destruction and how many it had, that it can't get itself out from under the sanctions regime.

Rather than forcing UNSCOM to find reasons why a particular document is necessary, it would be a lot easier and a lot better for the Iraqi people if the Iraqi regime didn't look for excuses but instead disclosed all the information it has. When they say they've done that, all we can say back is that for six long years whenever they said they did that, ooops, another document was found and they amended their "full and final disclosure."

So the boy has cried wolf too many times on the fact that they've provided all the documents; and therefore, the burden of proof is very clearly on them.

QUESTION: Could this hold up the comprehensive review?

MR. RUBIN: Absolutely. Without a pattern of cooperation with UNSCOM, that is what is needed in order to begin the review. The review is not about cooperation, as Iraq seems to want it to be. The review is about compliance - judging compliance.

We can't even begin to get to the point where we're judging compliance until we have the kind of cooperation that allows us to begin the process.

QUESTION: One of the issues the Iraqis keep bringing up is that of relevance. They say the documents are irrelevant. Isn't it uncooperative to start with for the Iraqis to challenge the relevancy of documents demanded by UNSCOM?

MR. RUBIN: Well, look, that seems like the least of our problems. They are going to say a lot of things. The question is what they do, as much as it is what they say. If they call something irrelevant but then decide to provide it, that's what's relevant to us.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) -provided on those grounds.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) - judge of relevance.

MR. RUBIN: Absolutely. UNSCOM doesn't ask for, in our opinion, things that are irrelevant. Whether they're findable, whether they've been destroyed is another technical question, which I'm not capable of answering. But clearly, they're relevant if UNSCOM needs them to make its judgments.

QUESTION: Can I change the subject? What is the latest with regard to the terrorist threat against the embassy in Vienna? Any new developments over the weekend?

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QUESTION: Jamie, two questions -- can you tell us the purpose of Albright's trip up to the Hill to meet with Congressman Livingston this afternoon; and if you have any reaction to the meeting between Great Britain and the Iraqi opposition groups, and if the US will participate in the next meeting?

MR. RUBIN: On the first question, I think anyone could imagine why a Secretary of State, who is very concerned about getting adequate resources for foreign policy, would want to take the opportunity to meet early on with the new expected-to-be Speaker of the House. She's had a very good relationship with Representative Livingston when he was Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and I think she wants to make sure that she has an equally good relationship with him if and when he becomes Speaker of the House in the coming weeks.

With respect to the meeting in London, traditionally embassy officers from the United States have worked closely or attended meetings of this kind. I think it's fair to say that we are trying to do our best to assist in the creation of an effective and viable alternative to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Secretary Albright will be announcing very soon an appointment of a coordinator for the Iraqi opposition here in the State Department. We are going to be in contact -- and have already been in contact -- with many of the relevant groups to try to see what we can do to encourage them to be as effective and coordinated as possible. In addition, we are going to be spending considerable sums on an effort to identify evidence that would be relevant if an international tribunal were created on the subject of Iraqi war crimes. So those are three pieces of the puzzle -- a bureaucratic piece of getting a coordinator named; working with the opposition to try to identify ways in which they can work better together -- talking to them - we've been doing a lot of that and will continue to do a lot of that; and thirdly, focusing a bit significantly on the war crimes issue.

QUESTION: Are there any meetings on the horizon that you know of , comparable to Indyk's meeting the other day with an Iraqi --

MR. RUBIN: I'll try to get you some; I don't have any off the top of my head.

QUESTION: Some are based in London, but the US is part of this.

MR. RUBIN: Sure.

QUESTION: Is Indyk going to meet with these groups in London tomorrow?

MR. RUBIN: Let me get you an answer to what his travel schedule is.

QUESTION: He's already met them.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) - Iranian groups.

MR. RUBIN: Assistant Secretary Indyk will likely meet with Iraqi opposition representatives tomorrow in London. How's that for a fast response?

QUESTION: Will you have a read-out of that meeting, please?

MR. RUBIN: We'll do our best to give you a read-out here in Washington from that meeting in London.

QUESTION: Is that his only meeting?

MR. RUBIN: We're degrading into - let's try one at a time. Let's try one at a time, because I'm getting a lot of questions at the same time. It's hard to hear you.

QUESTION: Will Indyk be going on anywhere else, or is he coming back?

MR. RUBIN: He's in Paris for bilateral consultations and London; he'll arrive tonight. I don't think it's a trip all over the world on this subject, if that's what you're implying or asking.

QUESTION: But Paris was part of this trip?

QUESTION: On other subjects?

MR. RUBIN: Paris was part of general, bilateral consultations on Iraq and other matters.

QUESTION: Some of these exiles in London are saying that Indyk is going to announce a US decision to re-launch the INC as the main opposition group. I don't know quite what that means, but is there anything --

MR. RUBIN: Somehow I suspect that might have come from INC sources.

(Laughter.)

But let me say that I don't know that; I'm just guessing. There was a preference spelled out in the congressional legislation for the INC to be deemed that. We think the best way to go right now is to get the executive committee of the INC to meet with us, and to talk about their goals, their needs, and to try to ascertain what assistance we can be. But we want to work with a broad-based group, and we regard the congressional preference as not mandatory but a preference.

QUESTION: So who are the Iraqi opposition that officials will be meeting with?

MR. RUBIN: A broad-based group; the many different groups.

QUESTION: The INC is really 15 groups, and there are only 16 meeting in London; is that right or - is there only one other group and you want to bring this into the INC? Is that the idea?

MR. RUBIN: What I'm doing is not agreeing to somebody else's characterization of our policy. Our policy is to try to develop an effective, viable alternative to the Iraqi regime. In so doing we're contacting a lot of groups - more than just those that are part of the INC - many different groups: being in touch with them and trying to develop the most effective coordinated grouping that we can.

Until we've made that decision, some particular desire for a particular moniker is not going to change our desire to have the best possible alternative and to have the best possible coordination between the groups. If and when we've made a decision that we would want to characterize one as the main opposition group, we will tell you.

QUESTION: How would the Clinton Administration feel about Iranian involvement in this effort to topple Saddam?

MR. RUBIN: It' s funny you should ask that. Let me say that Iran obviously has a long

brief against Saddam Hussein that is understandable to anybody, including the use of chemical weapons, the invasion and attack that occurred during the Iran-Iraq War, and the brutality of the regime against the Shia in the south.

So it's certainly understandable that Iran would be in contact with assisting various groups in Iraq or others who are opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein. We don't intend to stand in the way of that, and we don't have a problem with that. But to the extent that we are working with countries in the region on a program to try to create the most effective and viable alternative, we are not -- in any way, shape or form -- working with Iran in that context.

QUESTION: Do you have any sense yet how this project, call it that, is sitting with the Arab countries?

MR. RUBIN: I would leave it to them to characterize their own views. Simply to say that we recognize that countries in the region have special concerns, and we are going to be consulting with them to address those concerns as we go forward.

QUESTION: You talked about an effort to get evidence for an international criminal tribunal, should it ever become appropriate for Saddam Hussein's war crimes. Is this a new effort? Is this an additional push to an old effort; and do you have any specifics in terms of a dollar amount? You said you'd spend a lot of money on it.

MR. RUBIN: Well, there's two pots of money that people need to get clear. One is $97 million, which is draw-down authority; that's not money, that's authority to use existing equipment or other supplies. The second pot of money is $8 million that was authorized and appropriated, to use in developing this effective opposition, and in developing and working with INDICT and other groups to try to create an evidentiary base for what we believe to have been war crimes committed by the Iraqi regime.

At various times, depending on how that money has come along and depending on circumstances, we try to give that a greater push. I think it's fair to say we're giving a greater push to the idea of developing the strongest possible evidentiary base, again, in the case of war crimes, that the Iraqi regime committed.

QUESTION: Can you tell me how much you've spent so far?

MR. RUBIN: Well, I don't have a dollar figure on that. I know that another congressional preference was specified of, I believe, $2 million for the INDICT; but again, that's a congressional preference and we don't regard it as mandatory.

QUESTION: Is Indyk also traveling to the region after his meetings in Europe?

MR. RUBIN: I'm not aware of that.

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(The briefing concluded at 1:45 P.M.)

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