13 November 2002
Powell Warns Iraq Against Use of Non-Conventional Weapons
(Speaks on ABC's "Nightline" November 12) (2780) Amid reports of Iraq obtaining atropine, an antidote to nerve gas, Secretary of State Colin Powell has warned Iraq not to use non-conventional weapons. "I think they understand that the use of these kinds of weapons will be dealt with in the most serious way in response," said Powell, speaking on ABC's "Nightline" with Ted Koppel November 12. Powell speculated that the Iraqi government could be trying to acquire atropine from neighboring Turkey to make syrettes "to either protect themselves or to make it appear to us that they're trying to protect themselves," but added that "they know we are not going to use nerve gas. They know that," he said. "Perhaps they are thinking of using it and have to protect their own population or they wish us to believe that. But we are taking under advisement these reports that they are trying to acquire atropine syrettes and looking at it very closely," said Powell. The secretary also refuted a press report in the United Kingdom daily "The Scotsman" which claimed he said the United States might launch an early military strike before the end of 2002 in order to pressure Iraqi compliance with the United Nations. "Obviously I never said any such thing," said Powell. "The Scotsman can't be right because I didn't speak to The Scotsman, so they can't be quoting me." He said the United States, along with the rest of the international community, would wait to see if Iraq allowed the weapons inspectors to do their jobs. "[Y]ou will just have to let the inspections proceed, if they're allowed to proceed in a cooperative environment, and see what the inspectors report to us," said Powell. "If we find them, of course, then they've been lying all these years and we've got them, we've got them dead to rights," he said. However, if the inspection team asked for more time to complete their work, "we will take that into advisement," said Powell. Following is a transcript of Secretary Powell on ABC's "Nightline": (begin transcript) Interview on ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel Secretary Colin L. Powell Washington, DC November 12, 2002 (Aired 11:15 p.m. EST) MR. KOPPEL: We are in the Marshall Room at the State Department. We are now joined by the Secretary of State. Mr. Secretary, let me read you a little item that came over just this afternoon from a newspaper called The Scotsman. I don't know why you don't talk to The New York Times or The Washington Post, but in The Scotsman it says: "Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States may launch an early military strike to pressure Baghdad into complying with the UN Security Council resolution, putting the US and Britain at war with Iraq by Christmas," The Scotsman reports. Why are you telling all that interesting stuff to The Scotsman and withholding it from the rest of us? SECRETARY POWELL: Well, obviously, I never said any such thing because that's not a policy that we have in place right now. What we're trying to do now is find a peaceful solution, which is why we worked so hard to get UN Resolution 1441 passed, that brings the entire international community together, once again, through the Security Council and says to the Iraqi regime you must disarm, let the inspectors in, you must cooperate with the inspectors, you must disarm. But that same resolution also puts the weight of the international community on Iraq in the sense that serious consequences will follow if they violate this resolution. MR. KOPPEL: Have you said anything that might lead our friends at The Scotsman to -- SECRETARY POWELL: No, I haven't. I haven't a clue, nor am I familiar with The Scotsman. MR. KOPPEL: All right. Only, what, yesterday or this morning, the Iraqi parliament voted to reject the resolution. I take it you're not terribly impressed by that. SECRETARY POWELL: No, I wouldn't have cared whether they voted for or against. It doesn't make any difference. The only power in Iraq is Saddam Hussein, so he will have to make a decision later this week as to whether he's going to cooperate or not. But it doesn't make any difference what he says, frankly, because the international community has spoken. The resolution had the force of law on Friday, international law. And this piece was put into this resolution, this element was put into the resolution, requiring an answer from him in seven days as a test of his seriousness as to whether he is willing to cooperate with the international community this time. MR. KOPPEL: You say it doesn't make any difference what he says. I assume if he echoed what the Iraqi parliament has said, that would make a difference, and The Scotsman might be right. SECRETARY POWELL: It would make a difference, but let's wait and see whether that is what he says. The Scotsman can't be right because I didn't speak to The Scotsman, so they can't be quoting me. MR. KOPPEL: All right. There is another story, interesting story in the paper today, saying that the Iraqis have been buying large quantities of atropine from our friends in Turkey. And that would be significant, I suppose, because it would mean that they are preparing to protect either their troops or their population from -- what would the atropine be good for, chemical? SECRETARY POWELL: Atropine is used as an antidote to nerve gas, and so they might be trying to acquire atropine syrettes to either protect themselves or to make it appear to us that they're trying to protect themselves. I'm not sure how many of these they actually acquired and we're taking a look at it now, if any. MR. KOPPEL: My colleague, John McWethy, had a story yesterday from the folks over at the Pentagon saying that the Iraqis are also engaging in intelligence operations against a number of US installations, including -- the one I remember is the US Embassy in the Philippines. What do you make of that? What are they about? SECRETARY POWELL: It doesn't surprise me that the Iraqis would be conducting intelligence activities. They have a far-flung intelligence network and we have always known that they are pursuing opportunities to conduct terrorist attacks. That's one of the charges against Iraq. It's one of the resolutions that's in place that says Iraq should stop this kind of activity. Now, I can't speak specifically to the Philippines. I do know that we are constantly taking a look at all of the threat information that comes to us and we're doing everything we can to protect not only our embassies but all of our facilities around the world, and also to protect Americans around the world from this kind of dangerous situation, these kinds of terrorists who will kill innocent people for warped causes. MR. KOPPEL: When you talk about the terrorists now, I was asking you about the Iraqis, are you convinced that there is, indeed, a connection between the Iraqis -- well, let's take terrorists in general at first. Is that something that -- SECRETARY POWELL: They are on our list of state sponsors of terrorism and we know that they have sponsored terrorist activities in the past and conducted them, in fact. They tried to assassinate former President Bush several years ago. MR. KOPPEL: Right. But there has been no connection that I'm aware of, and obviously you may have access to other information, that they have a connection with al-Qaida. SECRETARY POWELL: We know that al-Qaida has had contacts with Iraq over the years, and I don't know why we wouldn't at least suspect that they are continuing those contacts. But if the heart of your question is whether or not we see any complicity between Iraq and the events of September 11th through al-Qaida, we do not have that connection. MR. KOPPEL: Okay. Let me come back to the atropine, again, for a moment. You said maybe either they're preparing for war or they want to make us think they're preparing for war. Why would they do that? Why don't they make us -- at this particular point, why don't they want to make us think that they're doing anything but? SECRETARY POWELL: Well, they know we are not going to use nerve gas. They know that. Perhaps they are thinking of using it and have to protect their own population or they wish us to believe that. But we are taking under advisement these reports that they are trying to acquire atropine syrettes and looking at it very closely. MR. KOPPEL: The last time we went to war -- when you were in a somewhat different capacity -- when we went to war against the Iraqis, it was made abundantly clear to the Iraqis beforehand what the consequences would be if, indeed, they used chemical or biological weapons. Has a similar message been conveyed to them? And the implicit nature of that message was the United States might indeed use any of the weapons in our arsenal, which I think they were left to infer could include tactical nuclear weapons. SECRETARY POWELL: They can infer whatever they wish to. I think the message of some years ago, 12 years ago, to be precise, if memory serves me correctly, or close to 12 years ago, is still a pretty good message, and I think they understand that the use of these kinds of weapons will be dealt with in the most serious way in response. MR. KOPPEL: Mr. Secretary, we're going to take a short break. Back with Secretary Powell in just a moment. (Commercial break.) MR. KOPPEL: And we are back once again in the Marshall Room at the State Department, named, I guess, after -- SECRETARY POWELL: George C. MR. KOPPEL: George C., another general who became Secretary of State. SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. MR. KOPPEL: I know you don't like to deal in hypotheticals, but it looks as though that's all we're going to have to deal with over the next few weeks and months. How do you ever prove -- let's say that the Iraqis are quite forthcoming -- how do you ever prove that they don't have nuclear weapons or chemical weapons or biological weapons? Easy enough to prove it if they do -- if we find them, they got them. If they deliver them up, they've got them. SECRETARY POWELL: If we find them, of course, then they've been lying all these years and we've got them, we've got them dead to rights. I've been down this road a number of times in the past with various arms control arrangements where you can never say you've looked in every building, every cave, every hole in the ground, and ascertain that they were empty, there was nothing there. And so you will just have to let the inspections proceed, if they're allowed to proceed in a cooperative environment, and see what the inspectors report to us. And then the international community will make a judgment and the United States will make its own judgment as to whether or not we believe that we have sufficient confidence that they do not have any remaining weapons of mass destruction capability. And that's a judgment that will have to be made in the future and I couldn't speculate now as to what we might say in the future until we've actually gotten the evidence and information back not only from the inspectors, but we've also examined our own intelligence at that time and what we believe at that time. MR. KOPPEL: Can you just sort of walk us through the schedule for a moment? Because I know there's been some confusion over whether the schedule is contiguous, consecutive, simultaneous -- how many days before the balloon theoretically could go up? SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, it can be a very technical discussion. But just for openers, 30 days after the resolution went into effect, on past Friday, they owe a declaration to the international community of their holdings and what they've done over the years. MR. KOPPEL: That's December 8th? SECRETARY POWELL: That's December 8th. Now, this coming Friday, December (sic) 15th, they can let us know whether or not they accept the resolution. And whether they accept it or not, the resolution is in effect. Then there are questions as to when the actual clock begins going on out into the early part of the next year. I'll let Dr. Blix get into the technicalities of that one. But my interest is not so much how long that inspection regime goes on for. My interest, frankly, will be: Are they cooperating? If they are not cooperating, we're going to know that right away. We don't have to wait 60, 80, 45, 90, 120 days. We will know right away. MR. KOPPEL: It would seem to me to be a far more complex situation if Dr. Blix comes back and says, "You know, we really do feel that they're cooperating. And we don't have everything that we wanted and there's still some stuff to be done and it may take us another month or three or six." Then what do you do? SECRETARY POWELL: We will take that into advisement. You're posturing this -- and the way your questions are coming -- is that we're looking for a war. We're looking for disarmament of Iraq. And we will have to make a judgment. We will have to make a judgment based on, first, if the inspectors get in, what they find or don't find. We will have to make a judgment at some point in the future at -- when the inspectors report as to whether or not we believe we are getting to the truth or not. It's a judgment that we'll have to make and the Security Council will have to make. MR. KOPPEL: Well, let's talk about some of these stories which inevitably are sourced stories rarely directly addressed by the parties involved. There has been a sense all along that it's been you and the State Department on one side, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon and parts of the White House on the other side. Characterize relations within the government at the moment. SECRETARY POWELL: Relations are good. We are a group of gentlemen and a lady, in this case, Dr. Rice, who have worked together in many different relations and capacities before, and the relations between us are fine. Do we sometimes have different points of view? Sure we do. Of course we do. But we all work for the President and we know what he wants, and we all are trying to make sure we give him the best information we can so that he can make informed decisions. I don't want to get into all the tick-tock about personalities because it's overplayed, it's overdone. It's a fun story, but it isn't all that relevant. What we're doing is serving the President. He's the one who decides what the foreign policy of the United States is, and he does this in response to the mandate he's been provided by the American people. And all the rest of this is interesting Washington chatter, but not of terrible relevance to much. MR. KOPPEL: Since they didn't leak it to me, I feel free to talk about them by name, but I'm told that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were the sources for those stories in the Times and the Post over the weekend talking about the 200-250,000-man force and that's what was going in. Is that, indeed, where we are? SECRETARY POWELL: I have no idea who the sources of those stories were. MR. KOPPEL: Forget the sources. What about the story? SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I never talk about military plans. I've learned over the years that it's best that you not talk about military plans and then accuse others of leaking military plans. MR. KOPPEL: As time goes on though, and I think it was as a former general you may even concede this point, it's not all that easy to keep large numbers of troops, to keep large carrier groups, several of them, in the Gulf area over an extended period of time. Doesn't that work against -- six months, eight months? SECRETARY POWELL: Only if you have conducted a buildup where they are all there and they are sitting around waiting for something to happen. But if you phase it so that you can increase your tempo, you can suddenly concentrate and then shift your concentration, you can maintain it for some considerable period of time. MR. KOPPEL: Mr. Secretary, I thank you. I know your time is limited. It's always good to be with you. SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Ted. (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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