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Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

20 October 2002

Transcript: Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC's This Week

(Secretary discusses North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan and terrorism in Oct.
20 interview) (3400)
Following is a transcript of an interview of Secretary of State Colin
Powell October 20 on ABC's This Week, in which he discussed the North
Korea, Iraq, Pakistan and terrorism:
(begin transcript)
Interview on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
October 20, 2002
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY POWELL: Good morning, George.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Another shooting in the Washington area last
night. Have you seen any evidence that these killings are tied to
al-Qaida or international terrorism?
SECRETARY POWELL: No, I haven't, George, but I can't say that they are
not. But I have not seen any evidence and I'm not sure what the local
police officials have determined or what our FBI has determined, but I
have not seen any evidence.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: So what do you make of the series of killings?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know. I don't know if it's a madman or
whether it is a terrorist, but I think it shows us once again the
dangerous world that we are living in. And I hope that our very, very
competent law enforcement officials, both at the federal and local
levels, will solve this case as soon as possible.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: More signs of that dangerous world in North Korea
this week.
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: The New York Times reports this morning that the
administration has decided to scrap the 1994 agreement which gave
North Korea Western aid in return for freezing their nuclear program.
Is the deal dead?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, the North Koreans are ones who have said it
was nullified. And as you recall, the Agreed Framework of 1994 was a
political agreement, not a legal agreement but a political agreement,
between the United States and North Korea. And when we told North
Korea a couple of weeks ago that we knew that they were participating
in the enrichment of uranium, which was in violation of a number of
agreements, to include this one, they first denied it, then admitted
it and said therefore the agreement is nullified. When we have an
agreement between two parties and one says it's nullified, then it
looks like it's nullified.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's dead?
SECRETARY POWELL: Now, nullified is a -- let's just stick with that
word for the moment because what we have to do now is, in the presence
of this information, we need to discuss this with a lot of other
countries that have an interest in this. Because you remember the
light water reactors that are being made rest on this Agreed Framework
and other things that are happening that rested on that Agreed
Framework, so how do you unscrew it all.
And so we're in close consultations with the South Koreans, the
Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese and others to see how we should
move forward. This really is a subject for multilateral consideration
so we will be discussing with our friends and allies -- President Bush
will be seeing most of them in Mexico at a conference this week, and
we'll move forward as a group of nations that are concerned about this
issue.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you working with them to create an economic
embargo of North Korea?
SECRETARY POWELL: North Korea has pretty much embargoed itself
economically. I mean, it has not been a place that people want to
invest money in. We provide food aid to North Koreans because we don't
like to see any people starve. But we are not yet talking about
economic embargoes of a new nature, something that isn't a result of
the nature of the regime in the first place.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: The U.S. also provides about half a million
gallons of fuel oil each year to North Korea. Will that be suspended?
SECRETARY POWELL: We are looking at all of the things that rest on the
Agreed Framework to see what is in our interest to keep doing, what is
in our interest not to keep doing. We also have to remember that there
is a great deal of stored plutonium in a facility on Yongbyon that is
monitored by the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Administration
or Agency, as well as Department of Energy employees, and we don't
want to see that suddenly become unwatched. So we have to be very
careful and move with a certain deliberateness here and in
consultation with our friends and allies.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: That stored fuel could be turned into plutonium to
make about four or five nuclear bombs; is that correct?
SECRETARY POWELL: It has that potential, and that's why we have to
move with great care here.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: What will happen to North Korea if they remove
that plutonium or that fuel from international supervision?
SECRETARY POWELL: I think this would create an extremely grave
situation and I think everybody understands this -- the South Koreans,
the Japanese, the Russians and the Chinese. I don't think the
neighbors, even more so than the United States, more so than the
United States, would want to see this material suddenly unwatched. And
it would, I think, create a grave new situation.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: "Extremely grave." Is that code for military
action?
SECRETARY POWELL: I just said "a grave new situation." I'm not
suggesting military action at this point. And we're not undertaking
any serious contingency planning at this point. We think that this is
a new situation that has come before us, it's a very serious one, and
South Koreans have a delegation in Pyongyang now talking to the North
Koreans about the seriousness of what they've done. And I'm sure the
Chinese and the Russians and others and the Japanese will also be
speaking to them, and we'll move forward in a very deliberate manner
because of the seriousness of the situation.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: We just learned again this morning from the former
Secretary of Defense William Perry that in 1994 the United States did
contemplate military action against North Korea if they started up
their weapons program again, if they started up their nuclear
reprocessing. If they do that now, is it possible that they will face
a military strike from the United States?
SECRETARY POWELL: I really don't want to go down a speculative road. I
think I'll leave that unanswered because, you know, it's up to the
Pentagon to decide what might be appropriate in the way of any
contingency plans. But right now we are trying to find a peaceful
resolution of this new crisis, frankly, and I don't think it would be
useful to speculate about military action.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you believe North Korea has nuclear weapons
now?
SECRETARY POWELL: We have to assume that they might have one or two.
We know that they reprocessed enough material in earlier years to have
made one or two weapons. Now, as my colleague Don Rumsfeld said the
other day, we can't tell you where they are, we can't go touch them.
But we have to assume they may have one or two, and that's what our
intelligence community has been saying to us for some time.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But can the United States, over time, tolerate a
nuclear armed-North Korea?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, there have been nuclear armed nations over the
last 50 years that we've been able to contain and tolerate. This
regime is especially troubling because it is such an erratic regime.
It's left over from another age, almost. It's the last of the old
Stalanist world. And that should give us some concern.
But it is also resting on a very weak foundation. This is a nation
whose society is starving. It's a nation whose economy doesn't
function. And there are opportunities in that, as well as dangers. If
they are collapsing, might they use this kind of technology? Or if
they are trying not to collapse, might they try to trade it for
economic assistance?
But the one thing they need to be aware of is that we are not going to
pay for this. We are not going to pay for them to suddenly start doing
things they are supposed to have done.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the United States can tolerate the nuclear
program, the nuclear weapons that North Korea may have now, but
they're ruling out new ones?
SECRETARY POWELL: It's not a matter of tolerating anything. It's a
mater of trying to manage the problem. We would like to see them get
rid of any weapon that they may have, and we're just assuming they
have a weapon. We can't see it or prove it and we don't know where it
is if we knew that they had it.
It's a matter of working this problem, managing this problem in a way
that deals with our concerns about a nuclear armed North Korea and
avoids a conflict over the issue. Frankly, we have levers that we can
apply to North Korea that don't exist with respect to other nations
such as Iraq -- economic levers, the concerns of the neighbors in the
region. I mean, it's hard for North Korea to deliver a nuclear weapon
against the United States; it's not that hard to deliver it against
its neighbors. So its neighbors, I think, will be bringing a lot of
pressure to bear, and the neighbors have a lot to offer North Korea
that won't be forthcoming if North Korea continues to move in this
direction and does not come clean and stop this effort.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: The New York Times reported this week that
Pakistan was a major supplier of technology and equipment to the North
Korean nuclear program. Have you talked to President Musharraf about
that?
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes, I've talked to President Musharraf, not about
that report, but I've talked to President Musharraf as recently as
last Thursday, I believe it was. It might have been Thursday or
Friday. And the conversation is one I've had with him on a number of
occasions previously: our concerns about North Korean proliferation
and North Korean development of these kinds of weapons and how it is
important that no nation, and Pakistan in particular, no nation be
involved in any relationship or any trading with North Korea of the
means to deliver such weapons or the means to develop such weapons.
And President Musharraf gave me his assurance in that conversation, as
he has previously, that Pakistan is not doing anything of that nature.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Is not, but what about did in the past?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't want to get into the past and sources and
methods because there obviously were nations who were helping North
Korea as they acquired the technology.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you take President Musharraf at his word
when he says those charges were baseless?
SECRETARY POWELL: I didn't talk to him about the charges that you just
-- what I said was we talked about the need not to assist North Korea
in any way and have any kind of relationship with North Korea now that
would give them the wherewithal to develop those kinds of weapons or
the means to deliver them. And he assured me that Pakistan was not
doing that now.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Why didn't you talk to him about the past?
SECRETARY POWELL: Because there are reasons that I would prefer not to
talk to him about the past. The past is the past and there isn't a
whole lot I can do about it. I'm more concerned about what is going on
now. We have a new relationship with Pakistan so that I can talk to
President Musharraf in these very direct, open terms and get
assurances from him. And I don't want to go back into the means by
which we learn of certain things.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: There was also some concern on Capitol Hill this
week about what they weren't told. A lot of Members of Congress were
concerned that the United States kept the information about North
Korea secret because they didn't want to complicate the Iraq vote. And
I want to show a quote from Represent Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania. He
said, "The beauty of the White House misleading people is that it's
difficult to change our policy now that he has the vote in hand." How
do you respond to that?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'm sorry, it's nonsense. We saw the intelligence in
early July. We challenged the intelligence community to get us as much
as they had so we made sure we had a solid case. We looked at the
information through July and August. I began consultations at a very
high level with some of our friends, and in early September we began
to brief Members of Congress about what we knew about North Korean
enriched uranium activity that was inconsistent with the Agreed
Framework. We briefed both sides, Democrats and Republicans. We
briefed both houses.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But a very small number, not the Senate Majority
Leader.
SECRETARY POWELL: We briefed enough people so that there was no secret
about it. And I can provide to anyone who would care to see it in the
Congress the list of the briefings that were offered and that were
conducted. Some Members were unable to take the briefings and we
briefed their staffers.
And then after Assistant Secretary Kelly went to North Korea and came
back with the information that they admitted it, we began another
round of briefings, not only from the State Department, from the CIA,
to pass on this new information. Now, because this is a relatively
recent development, we didn't get around to every constituency within
the Congress, but it is simply not correct to say that the United
States was not making Congress aware of the fact that North Korea had
begun to enrich uranium.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But aren't the situations of North Korea and Iraq
similar enough that ever Member of Congress deserved to have this
information before they voted on Iraq?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't think it was relevant to the vote on Iraq.
It never entered our calculation that the manner in which we were
briefing Congress had anything to do with the vote on Iraq. I think,
in fact, it might even have reinforced the vote on Iraq. I mean, I
can't understand the logic that says we held this back because it
would have made it harder to get the votes we needed on Iraq. I think
it might have told everybody that this is dangerous and we need to
make sure we're firm with Iraq as a signal to North Korea.
But the suggestion that this is some kind of plot on the part of the
administration is just false. And there were so many Members of
Congress briefed that I cannot believe a Member can go around saying
that the administration was not forthcoming. And last night when this
issue came up, I challenged my staff to get me everything you had, and
I've got two and a half pages of briefings.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: On Iraq, do you expect to get a U.N. Security
Council resolution this week?
SECRETARY POWELL: I expect early this week to put down a full
resolution after we've had some very useful conversations with a
number of our permanent Security Council member colleagues. And I hope
that now the conversation will be joined not only with the permanent
members but with the elected members, all 15 members.
Whether they can get to a final solution this week or not, I don't
know. There are still some difficult issues. It isn't just going to be
here it is and that's it.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Has the United States dropped its requirement that
there be an explicit authorization of force in the first U.N.
resolution?
SECRETARY POWELL: The President has all the authorization he needs if
he believes it is necessary to use force to defend the American
people.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: That sounds like a yes.
SECRETARY POWELL: Any resolution that comes out of the United Nations,
I am sure will contain an indictment against Iraq, which we asked for,
will contain a new tough inspection regime and it will make clear that
Iraq will face consequences if they frustrate and violate this new
inspection regime.
Then the question becomes, and the debate we've been having, is at
that point if Iraq fails once again to comply, what are the
consequences. The United States believes that it and like-minded
nations might have all the authority, will have all the authority it
needs at that point, if it chooses to take action. If other members
wish to meet again to discuss it, that's up to other members, but the
President believes he now has the authority. And with a new resolution
with continued violation on the part of the Iraqis, the President has
authority, as do other like-minded nations, just as we did in Kosovo.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: So do you believe that U.N. inspectors will be in
Iraq before the end of the year?
SECRETARY POWELL: I can't predict that. It depends upon, one, getting
a strong resolution, but it depends even more on whether Iraq is
willing to cooperate this time. If Iraq is willing to cooperate, then
the inspectors can get their job done. If Iraq chooses to keep
frustrating, denying, deceiving, distracting, fooling around with the
inspectors, then the inspectors are not going to be able to get their
job and they're going to come home. They're not going to be jerked
around the way they were in 1997 and 1998. And that's clear. We've
made that clear to our Security Council colleagues. We cannot go down
that road again. Either Iraq cooperates and we get this disarmament
done through peaceful means or they do not cooperate and we will use
other means to get the job done.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: There are some new pictures out of Iraq this
morning. It looks like Saddam Hussein is trying to bolster his
popularity. He is opening up -- and we're showing them right now --
opening up the prisons, allowing all prisoners, he says, out of Iraqi
jails. What do you make of that?
SECRETARY POWELL: I make of it that they better watch out where the
next door is; it puts them right back in jail. I mean, this is typical
of this man's use of human beings for these political purposes of his.
Now, do you really think if these people are dangerous to the regime
that they're going to be allowed out and stay out? Or are they going
to be back in jail in about three days' time? This is the kind of
manipulation he uses to try to paint himself as something other than
what he is, a brutal dictator.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, sir, the issue of al-Qaida. CIA Director
George Tenet was up on Capitol Hill this week and he had some really
chilling testimony saying that al-Qaida is back, and I want to show
it:
"They have reconstituted. They're coming after us. They want to
execute attacks. You see it in Bali. You see it in Kuwait. They plan
in multiple theaters of operation. They intend to strike this homeland
again."
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: When you were last here in June, you said you
thought al-Qaida was getting weaker. What happened in the intervening
three months?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know what happened. What we did in
Afghanistan was we were able to break their hold on Afghanistan and
force them to disperse and force them to find other ways to do their
business. But there has never been any doubt in our mind that al-Qaida
was still a functioning organization.
I don't know if they are as strong as they were at the time last year
before we invaded Afghanistan, but it is not the case that they have
lost all effectiveness. George is right. They're still out there.
They're still trying. And that's why the President says this has to be
a long-term campaign until they are destroyed.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, George.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)



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