27 August 2002
Boucher Says U.S. Not "Beating the War Drum" Against Iraq
(Says the goal is to get Iraq to disarm in compliance with U.N. resolutions) (2600) A State Department official said the Bush administration is not "beating the war drums" for an attack on Iraq. A particular course of action on how to deal with Iraq has not been decided, said State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher during the August 27 regular department briefing. "We have made clear, the White House has made clear, the president himself has made clear he has not decided on what options to pursue. And therefore, there are no war drums to beat," said Boucher. Boucher told reporters that everyone in the administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been clear in their public statements and private discussions with foreign leaders that Iraq's defiance of the United Nations inspections and its continuous pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is "a serious danger to us all," and that it must be dealt with "sooner rather than later." The goal of such discussions, according to Boucher, is for the international community to "face up" to the Iraqi threat and "deal with it sooner rather than later." Boucher stressed, however, that the issue is not allowing the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq; rather, the real issue is Iraqi disarmament. "The issue is Iraqi compliance with a series of U.N. resolutions that specify that they won't develop weapons of mass destruction, that they'll destroy what they had, and in a variety other ways that they're not going to threaten their own people and cause danger to the region again," he said. In discussing a future, post-Saddam Iraq, Boucher said that an important part of the discussion is to make clear that the United States supports the territorial integrity of Iraq. The idea, says Boucher, is for all the various groups that are interested in change in Iraq to understand that they "have a future together in Iraq and not somehow as separate entities looking for separate benefits or outcomes." Following is an excerpt from Boucher's August 27 briefing containing his comments about Iraq: (begin excerpt) QUESTION: Iraq and the Secretary's engagement or involvement. What's going on? Made any important phone calls, significant phone calls lately? I assume he's here this week, isn't he? I think last week was the unannounced vacation. Am I wrong? MR. BOUCHER: You must be wrong somehow. (Laughter.) QUESTION: Well, I (inaudible) one myself. Did I miss something? MR. BOUCHER: The Secretary is here this week. He doesn't always have a full public schedule every day this week, but he's got a lot of activities. I saw him this morning upstairs. On Iraq, I don't think there's anything particularly new to report from the administration. The Secretary has made clear I think in various conversations, phone calls and meetings with foreign ministers for some time now that Iraq was a serious problem that we had to deal with and that Iraq presented dangers to everybody in the whole region, as the President made clear in his State of the Union speech, and this was a problem that we in the international community had to face up to and have to deal with. And that's something that he's been consistently making clear to interlocutors and people across the board in every way. QUESTION: Well, let me go a little deeper into this. You know, there's a view, in fact, that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs advisor claims that there isn't a country in the world that supports an attack on Iraq right now. So is the Secretary -- whether, you know, absolutely true or not, there's a lot of sentiment against an attack. Is the Secretary's job -- does his job entail trying to persuade others to support a US use of force? And secondly, the rhetoric has been assigned apparently to people like the Vice President. I mean, the really blistering rhetoric, the angry rhetoric, the notion that they've acquired -- they're hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons and that, you know, someone's trying to build a case for preventive war. I don't know that the Secretary is part of this. I can't quite figure out if his role is just to say Iraq isn't good and something has to be done about it, or if he's beating the war drums with the others. MR. BOUCHER: Barry, yes, you are wrong, to go back to the original question you asked. The characterization of war drums I think is not accurate. We have made clear, the White House has made clear, the President himself has made clear, he has not decided on what options to pursue, and therefore there are no war drums to beat. Nonetheless, everybody in this administration, the Secretary included, has been absolutely frank and absolutely clear in their public statements and their private discussions with foreign leaders, and I think in every single one I've ever sat in on for the last several months with the Secretary when the subject of Iraq has come up, and he has made absolutely clear that there's no question of the threat that Iraq represents to the international community, there's no question that Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction is a serious danger to us all. The Secretary has been absolutely serious, absolutely clear on this, and making clear to the international community we need to face up to this fact and we need to deal with it sooner rather than later. And so that has been, I think, part of our diplomacy and part of our discussions with people. Now, you're right. There has been a certain amount of debate and discussion about how to deal with it. But as the White House has made clear, the President has not decided, so there's no option to enlist people's support for. There's no war drum to beat. There's no particular course of action that we're trying to sell right now. The goal I think we need to make clear though, the international community needs to face up to this challenge that's presented by Iraq's defiance of the United Nations and Iraq's failure to disarm and Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. ------ QUESTION: Back to the point that the Saudis and others have made. They say -- they also say they want Iraq to change its ways. They also say they want the inspection stations open. And I know your position is that weapons sites open, but I know your position is that isn't enough. But in any event, they say that the UN effort to get unfettered inspection of weapons sites will succeed and that's what all of us should be waiting for, that it is a positive diplomatic effort that's certain to succeed, and therefore the US will get its policy carried through without firing a single shot or losing a single soldier. Do you see the UN effort as on the brink of success? MR. BOUCHER: First of all, Iraq has come and gone, what, two, three times already this year in communications with the United Nations, and not indicated that Iraq is prepared to accept unfettered inspections. The President has made clear, we've made clear, that any inspections in Iraq need to be unfettered, need to be completely open. But the issue is not inspections. Inspections are not the goal in themselves. The issue is Iraqi disarmament. The issue is Iraqi compliance with a series of UN resolutions that specify that they won't development weapons of mass destruction, that they'll destroy what they had, and in a variety of other ways that they're not going to threaten their own people and cause danger to the region again. So the issue is securing Iraqi compliance with these resolutions, and consistently Iraq has failed to indicate any willingness to comply. QUESTION: Richard, how do you determine disarmament without inspections? MR. BOUCHER: First of all, we're not saying you do it without inspections. The President himself has said that inspections are -- unfettered inspections need to be done. There are means to doing that. But the goal, once again, is not just to get inspectors back; the goal is to get Iraq to disarm in compliance with UN resolutions. QUESTION: I thought the goal was regime change. MR. BOUCHER: That's a US goal. We were talking about the international goal. QUESTION: Richard, the Vice President said yesterday that we now know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and we haven't exactly heard that formulation before. Is there new information that leads you to that conclusion? MR. BOUCHER: I think you'd have to ask the White House exactly if they want to provide any new information. Certainly -- QUESTION: I'm not asking what it is. I'm asking if there is any. MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, I don't know specifically what that line in the speech was based on. Certainly whether it was new or old information, certainly we all know from history and from Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction in the form of poison gas that Iraq has these weapons. And from the previous inspections, we know that they have not destroyed everything they had. Mark. QUESTION: Richard, in your view and in the Secretary's view, did the Vice President in his speech yesterday lay out the case for preemptive action against Iraq? MR. BOUCHER: I think the Vice President's words speak for themselves. I don't think I need to go any farther than that. QUESTION: In one point of the speech, he said that such preemptive action and the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime would enhance the prospects of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Does this mean that efforts to get a renewed peace process going should be placed on hold until after Iraq is taken care of? MR. BOUCHER: That's not what the Vice President said, at least in my reading of the speech. He did not say that we should in any way delay the effort to achieve peace. Certainly we are actively pursuing the effort to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. We have welcomed the steps that they have started to take in terms of easing up on the situation. We have welcomed the cooperation that they have started to establish in terms of on-the-ground efforts, meetings of local security people. And we continue to welcome, we are pleased to see, that they continue to take steps in those directions to ease up there and to move down the road the President laid out in his speech on the Middle East. QUESTION: In these talks with opposition folks -- go ahead. QUESTION: I wanted to talk about the Palestinians. QUESTION: Oh. MR. BOUCHER: Mark, I'm not questioning the original quote. I'm just saying that the inference that you're trying to draw, the question that you asked about it, is not necessarily an inference that I would draw. QUESTION: Well, excuse me. He says, "Our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991." MR. BOUCHER: Yeah. But he did not say, "So we're going to wait until then before we do anything on the peace process." That's the only part that -- that was the question, and the answer is no. He said what he said and not -- I wouldn't draw any further inference from it. QUESTION: In the conversations with Iraqi opposition, some of whom are Kurds, has there been discussion of Kurdish aspirations for a state of their own? Has there been any statement by US officials that the US -- a phrase I haven't heard in a long time -- does support the territorial of Iraq? I ask because the Saudis are saying among the unforeseen consequences of an attack could be the declaration of statehood by the Kurds, by the Shi'ites, you know, the consequences are unforeseen. Is the US hearing hopes from the Kurds that maybe they'd like their own state from this? MR. BOUCHER: I think -- I don't know if there are any particular discussions that you are referring to. If you're talking about the people that are here for this discussion today, I haven't been in the room. I don't know if it came up. But in like meetings, everybody is quite aware of our support for the territorial integrity of Iraq. That remains an important part of our view of the situation in the region. It's something that when we discuss the issues of Iraq with regional players we always make clear. And it's something we always make clear in our discussions with Iraqi groups. And that's why one of our efforts is to bring together, through various seminars or activities that we have with the Iraqi opposition people, all the various groups that are interested in one way or the other in change in Iraq, so that they understand that their future, this whole project on the future of Iraq, is the idea that all these people have a future together in Iraq and not somehow as separate entities looking for separate benefits or outcomes. (end excerpt) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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