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Interview - September 12th, 2005 - New York Time Publisher Group QUESTION: Well, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you. SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. QUESTION: This is, for those who care, this is going to be on the
record. At least one person reached for a pen. (Laughter.) And we're delighted
to have you. We haven't had much of a chance to rehearse, so maybe I'll just --
unless you'd like to start off with something, we can just run this open for -- SECRETARY RICE: No, no, there are plenty of people here who have
questions. Why don't we just start with that? QUESTION: Why don't we just start with that? Okay. Well, then let me
start, if I might, and then turn it over to my esteemed colleagues. You're here for the UN and recently your predecessor not only said one of his
toughest moment as Secretary of State was his participation in the UN. I'm
thinking about those two issues and I'm wondering where you sense we are -- the
United States is -- in the way it's being viewed right now by the United
Nations, whether that matters -- no small walk -- and if it does matter, what
your feelings are about making things a little better. And before you answer
that question, just so everybody knows, I guess we -- it's pretty loud in this
room, so my apologies. The bomb-sniffing dog threw up here. (Laughter.) And
we're going to try to keep the air from -- SECRETARY RICE: Keep the air circulating. QUESTION: So that's the reason we've got this running. SECRETARY RICE: Thank you for sharing that. (Laughter.) QUESTION: Anyway. SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, let me start by saying I fully
understand, you know, that Colin and I -- it’s really very difficult and
personally very difficult, and no one wants to be in a circumstance in which
you've used intelligence that turns out not to be right. That's why I think it's
important that we work really hard to reform the intelligence services and try
to get better intelligence on what is observably a difficult target, which is
these states that are opaque and that are trying to get weapons of mass
destruction. It's just very difficult. But I fully understood exactly what Colin
was saying. As to the UN, you know, how does the UN feel about the United States? Well,
the UN is its member-states and so if you're talking about some of the states
with which we have outstanding relations, I don't think there's a problem. If
you're talking about some states with which we don't, then clearly there are
difficulties. But the UN as a whole, I think we sometimes talk about the
institution but really it is its member-states. When you talk about the UN apparatus, I've never had a better relationship
with anyone than I've had with Kofi Annan. He is someone to whom I speak a lot,
all the time. We talk about Sudan. We talk about the Quartet, of which he is a
member. We are focused right now on trying to get a UN reform document that
makes sense. And now I think *can you* work with him very well and with the
members of the Secretariat as well and various members of the Administration
work very well with the Secretariat. If there's a concern right now with the UN is that we really do need a strong
reform agenda on the key issues: management reform, Secretariat reform. We need
a good human rights council that Sudan can't be elected to at the time that it's
being accused of genocide. We need reform for the UN institutions. And that's
what the discussion in this document is about. And from our point of view, this
is an opportunity for the UN to adopt a reform agenda, a reform agenda, by the
way, that Kofi Annan has said that he very much wants. And that's why we are,
with a number of other states, working so actively and so hard to try to get an
outcome document that enshrines those goals, those principles and a work plan.
We'll see where we come out but, you know, they negotiated all night long last
night. I suspect they'll continue to negotiate. But from our point of view,
getting a document that is strong on management and Secretariat reform is
absolutely essential. If you'll notice, the Mitchell-Gingrich report, which was for the Congress,
that was the number one issue for them. So this has bipartisan, broad-scale
support in the United States as well that in the light of Oil-for-Food and in
the light of some of the peacekeeping scandals, we've got to have reform in the
United Nations. And that's what we're working for. QUESTION: Not to disagree with anything you just said, but clip the
question a little bit. My question was less about how the U.S. perceives the UN
and more about how the UN perceives the U.S. and how the nations of the United
Nations perceive the U.S. SECRETARY RICE: Well, that depends on what nation you talk to as to
how they perceive the United States. That's why I said we have excellent
relationship with Kofi Annan. If you want to talk about the UN apparatus, I
think we have an excellent relationship, and so much so that, you know, the UN
has participated in the Katrina relief effort, which I thought was an
extraordinary offer and a wonderful thing that they did. But how does the UN perceive the United States? I hope they perceive it as a
founding member who is the strongest proponent of an effective United Nations
and funds more than 25 percent of the UN budget. If we were not strong believers
in the UN, we wouldn't do that. And so I think the UN sees us in that way. QUESTION: If I can jump off from what Arthur was asking you, the storm
response which left so many poor black people so virtually in need of help,
those images were beamed around the world. That can't have been good for
America's image abroad, especially at a time when you and Karen Hughes are
trying to work on the issue of spreading the word of American support for
democracy. Could you talk about the images and what they said to the world
overseas? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know what the images said to the world.
I know what the images said to, you know, to me and to Americans, which is that
this is a vestige of the Old South. This is the part of the country I'm from.
But it is a place where there are pockets -- by no means all of the Old South,
but pockets -- where race and poverty come together in a very ugly way. And it
is not a matter of whether the United States should want to do something about
that, but the United States should want to do something about that. And perhaps
in New Orleans there will be a chance to deal with a part of the South where
people, for whatever reasons, did not get the benefits of education, didn't get
the benefits of job training, and where, when it's rebuilt, it should be rebuilt
in a different way than it was at the time that this happened. My grandfather managed to get himself college educated two generations ago.
That's why my family is where it is. He did it despite issues of race in the
early '20s. But not everybody managed to do so. For some people, there wasn't a
teacher that got them out or a grandfather that got them or a minister that got
them out. And so yes, there is a social issue and a social problem to be dealt
with there. But I also hope that around the world it's noted that on matters of race, the
United States is about 100 percent ahead of any place else in the world in
issues of race. And I say that absolutely fundamentally. You go to any other
meeting around the world and show me the kind of diversity that you see in
America's cabinet, in America's Foreign Service, in America's business
community, in America's journalistic community. Show me that kind of diversity
any place else in the world, and I'm prepared to be lectured about race. There are still places that race and poverty are a huge problem in the United
States and we've got to deal with that. But I think we will be making a mistake
if we let people jump to the conclusion that the United States has therefore not
dealt with issues of race, particularly if you look at how issues of race are
dealt with in most of the world. And so at the same time when I'm talking to my
colleagues, I say yeah, we have a problem when race and poverty comes together,
we really do. And it's a vestige of our history. It's a vestige of particularly
the Old South in this case. But don't misread that there has been no progress on
issues of race in America. QUESTION: On that, the glass is half empty part of your answer, where
race and poverty come together, what do you see as the federal responsibility to
correct that or to address it now? SECRETARY RICE: I don't have any really good answers to this and I'm
not particularly well positioned to talk about a federal response. You know,
with all due respect, I went to school in international relations. I hope there
are people who are really capable of looking at the complexities and the
relationship of open economies that are more demanding than ever in terms of
skills and job skills to give a 21st century answer to how people get prepared
for the economy that we face, which I really think is at the core of this. The one part of my experience that I can draw on and that I'm absolutely
certain of is this comes fundamentally to an issue of education, because there I
am an educator. And I do believe that finding ways for people to fully access
education -- and that means making sure, as the President has worked through No
Child Left Behind -- that kids aren't -- the kids really are capable of reading
at third grade level when they're in third grade, and that that's true whether
you're in California or Louisiana. But that's extremely important that the
ability of people to access good secondary education for their kids so that they
have a chance at higher education is really critical to where this all comes
out. And I'm not someone who has, frankly, spent as much time as others thinking
about the relationship of federal to state responsibilities for those things,
but if I were starting to look for a sourcing for how you change the dynamics,
I'd start with education. QUESTION: Well, not as an expert but as a member of the Administration
and as an American citizen, do you feel that the Administration has done enough
to address the issue of poverty in this country, or do you think that this
disaster should be viewed as a wake-up call, calling upon the Administration to
do more? SECRETARY RICE: Well, New Orleans didn't get built in the five years
that the President was President. The race and poverty issue in New Orleans did
not -- QUESTION: I'm not talking about -- SECRETARY RICE: No, no -- QUESTION: I'm not really talking about race and I'm not talking about
New Orleans. I'm just talking about poverty. SECRETARY RICE: Poverty. The kind of poverty that the people there
experienced didn't get built in the last five years. This has been a persistent
problem in the United States in certain pockets of the South. And I know that
repeated administrations have tried through various efforts, including through
job training and access to -- concerns about access to education, to try and
deal with persistent poverty. I really do hope that there will be maybe now on the heels of New Orleans an
effort by this country -- and not just the federal government but state and
local officials as well, as well as the private sector, and I mean
nongovernmental organizations and I mean the private business sector, to address
how we might deal with the problem of persistent poverty. Yeah, in that sense it
gives us an opportunity. When I did taping for the BET telethon, I said that, you know, I hoped New
Orleans would be rebuilt in terms of its spirit of, you know, great music and
great food and all those things, but that this time it would be rebuilt with
greater economic opportunity for people. Because when you have something like
this happen, you do have a chance to do it differently. And I really -- I think
you ought to try to do it differently this time. QUESTION: Why is it, do you think, that 77 percent of black people
(inaudible) Kanye West that George Bush doesn't care about black people? SECRETARY RICE: Probably because they've heard it from people who
weren't questioned about the assumptions there. Look, I find it very strange to
think that people would think the President of the United States would sit
deciding who ought to be helped on the basis of color, most especially this
President. It's just -- it's (a) not true and it's (b) poisonous that somebody
would say that. And I hope that people would be challenged on the assumption if
they're going to say it. Now, what evidence is there that this is the case? Why
would you say such a thing? What makes you think so? Because you have a
President who has cared about minority home ownership. You have a President who
has cared about community colleges. You have a President who has increased
funding for historically black colleges. You have a President who, under the No
Child Left Behind, has increased federal funding dramatically and insisted on
standards for children. And the kids who do, by the way, get warehoused and
where there’s a gulf between third grade reading and third grade -- being in
third grade and being able to read at third grade, a lot of those are minority
kids. So I don't believe it. I don't know why people say it. And I would hope that
people would seriously examine their assumptions. QUESTION: But only 11 percent of blacks voted for President Bush last
year and 9 percent in 2000, so clearly even before Katrina there was an issue of
President Bush getting his message out to the black community; don't you think? SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, the President said when he spoke to
the Urban League that there was an issue of the Republican Party and black
voters and that he thought some of that responsibility was actually borne by the
Republican Party. We could go through a lot of the history of, you know, the
post-'64 period and how that all played out. That is a story that I know very,
very well. And yes, I do think that it's sometimes difficult -- there is sometimes a
problem of getting the message out from a President who, if you look at how he
did among black voters in the state that he was governor, you have a very
different picture. And that says to me that, in that case, familiarity has given
you a very different picture of this President and his concerns about blacks.
But I know President Bush and he talks about issues of race because he --
because the kind of lack of opportunity that still afflicts -- that afflicts a
lot of poor people but still afflicts disproportionately blacks as -- and poor,
is something that he is concerned about. It's why he's put the money into
historically black colleges. It's why he's been concerned about community
colleges. It's why he's been concerned about No Child Left Behind. You know the phrase that actually attracted me to him more than anything else
didn't have anything to do with foreign policy. It was actually "the soft
bigotry of low expectations." I've seen it. Okay? I've seen what happens
when people don't think black kids can learn and they decide just therefore to
just shuffle them from classroom to classroom. I've seen it at Stanford where
you get black kids who are clearly completely and totally qualified and still
you get people assuming that they got there by other reasons and so, well,
they're not too really worried if they get Cs instead of Bs. So I know. I know
that I had a high school teacher who told me that maybe I was junior college
material. So I know about the soft bigotry of low expectations and it's not in
this President. It is however pretty deeply ingrained in our system and we're
going to have to do something. QUESTION: At the risk of turning a lunch with the Secretary of State
to foreign policy -- (laughter) -- first of all, thank you for your help that
you've given us with our stringer there. And I don't know where that stands, but
we appreciate all you've done. SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I hope we can -- I hope -- QUESTION: We're pushing it because, of course, the President's trip
had to be rescheduled. SECRETARY RICE: Yes, yes. But we're actually seeing him. We're seeing
President Hu and we'll mention it again. QUESTION: Thank you for that. Have you seen Judy Miller lately?
Perhaps President Bush can help with that one. But let's turn to Asia for a moment and just talk a little bit. Where are
things at the moment with talks with North Korea, our new favorite country, in
terms of the trilateral -- now I guess -- what's six? SECRETARY RICE: Six. QUESTION: Sextalateral. SECRETARY RICE: Sextalateral, right. Septalateral would be seven.
Right. QUESTION: The talks on nuclear weapon in North Korea. SECRETARY RICE: Right. Well, I thought Chris Hill put it pretty well.
The question is how did the North Koreans use the last month. Did they use the
last month to try to move forward or did they use the last month to try and
harden their position? And I think we're not going to know until we arrive
tomorrow. But we actually made a lot of progress and there is a lot on the table for
the North Koreans if they choose to take it. I think that they can expect to
have, if they are prepared to make the strategic choice to give up their nuclear
weapon, give up their nuclear programs, they expect to have a road toward
normalization of relations with the United States and possibly with Japan if
they can fix the abduction problem. The South Koreans have an energy grid ready
to help deal with their energy needs through conventional electricity
generation. If the North Koreans really do want an entry into the international
system, it's there if they're prepared to verifiably dismantle their nuclear
weapon programs. So we'll see whether or not they've made that strategic choice,
but I thought we narrowed the framework in the statement of principles in ways
that it will be pretty clear shortly into these new negotiations whether or not
we are there or not. QUESTION: Given what you now know, do you think we were any -- six
years ago, was it, when Clinton had made his words that-- retrospective -- that
we were closer to having something there than you might have thought at the
time? SECRETARY RICE: I think the problem was that the North Koreans were
cheating on the Agreed Framework by moving forward with a highly enriched
program. I do believe that they would cheat -- even if they might cheat, this
time they would not be doing that to the United States but rather to the entire
-- the neighbors. And that, I think, is the most important element of having a
six-party framework, not just a bilateral negotiation with them. And at least
the framework here contemplates that the North would actually be in the
dismantlement activities rather than kind of frontloading benefits to them and
then waiting for dismantlement to take place far down the road after a
light-water reactor had been built for them. I think that's just the better --
so the structure is better in that it's six party, the structure is better in
that the benefits that are not frontloaded and the performance backloaded. I
think those are the essential differences. QUESTION: When this round of talks began in July and August and people
were relatively optimistic it had gone less badly, a lot of people were saying
that was because Mr. Kim was addressed by Mr. Kim and not some of the other
(inaudible) he doesn’t favor. Since then we've had the -- Ambassador Lefkowitz
has taken up his post and it's really the intent of the job that he's going to
say things they don't like. As Secretary of State, how are you going to manage
those two things so they don't get in the way of each other? SECRETARY RICE: Well, we've never given the North Koreans or anybody
else -- the Chinese or anybody -- the sense that we would not talk about issues
that were concerning to us. And human rights concerns us. And particularly when
you have an agenda on broad-scale democratization, you can't say, well, except
for this little corner of the world where we're trying to negotiate a nuclear
deal. That would be a problem. And so I suspect that the North Koreans know that they're going to hear
things that they don't like. I've always assumed that the reason that they
reacted so strongly to some of the things back in February was really it was
kind of an excuse not to get back to the six-party talks. But now that they're
there, you know, we'll be respectful. We're in negotiation with them. When I said that they were sovereign, that seemed to make a big deal but it
seemed to me a statement of fact. I think they are sovereign. So I think we can
manage this but we're not going to stop talking about human rights. It's
important to us. And it's important that light be shone on that and ultimately
it backfires if you are not prepared to try to make a society more open; it
backfires even on your ability to try and verify arms control agreements, for
instance. QUESTION: Oh, sorry. Do you want to follow up? QUESTION: I was going to ask if you want to change to Iraq. Can you
make the case that international terror, global terror, is less of a threat now
than it was four years ago? SECRETARY RICE: I can make the case that international terrorism is
being confronted finally in ways it was not four years ago. And that because it
is finally being confronted, we have a chance at defeating this ideology of
extremism that produced the people who flew those planes into buildings four
years ago yesterday. QUESTION: If you take a snapshot right now, is the world more
dangerous than it was before? SECRETARY RICE: You know, I just don't think it's the right way to
think about it. I don't think that when you are in a struggle that began really
-- George Schultz dates it to '83, even if you want to date it to the rise of
sort of bin Laden in the early '90s -- a struggle that began that long ago and
that had become so entrenched, not just in places like Afghanistan but that,
frankly, had legs in places like Pakistan, certainly had huge legs in Saudi,
that was occupying territory in Afghanistan, that was occupying territory
unconfronted in the northwest frontiers of Pakistan, I can make an argument to
you that, yeah, we are a lot safer confronting it, although when you confronted
it, it will come out after you. It's not as if they're going to sit still and
just be defeated, which is why I think we see more activity on their part. But if I look at where we were in September of 2001, where Pakistan's
relationship to al-Qaida and the Taliban was actually pretty close, where the
Saudis denied that they had a problem and where terrorist financing was coming
out of Saudi in major ways, where Afghanistan was occupied by Usama bin Laden --
it was his country in effect, his state in effect -- where around the world
there was little cognize of the integrated, networked, global nature of this
threat. Yeah, it's going to take some time to break that up, but I'd much rather
be where we are now than where we were with some sort of false sense of security
on September 11th, which is why we were so surprised, because we were operating
under a false sense of security. QUESTION: If I could follow up on Iraq one moment. I've heard you in
the past say that we just have to look at the longer term of Iraq and if you
look at the short term it can seem discouraging, but the trends are positive.
And I know that one of the pillars of the Administration's strategy is to try to
get a constitutional process going. I think dispassionately though, looking at
what happened in the interim constitutional process, you could make the case
that it really deepened the divisions in Iraqi society, that right now you have
different groups and different territories that are carving out different areas
of the economy and a key group not having bought in to the constitution as it's
been outlined right now. I know we're in the middle of the process, but that is
one the one hand. The political process seems to be potentially extraordinarily
divisive and accelerating, you know, the kind of forces that could tear a
country apart. And you have a insurgency that really seems to remain very
effective and very strategic. How can you look at Iraq and continue to feel that
the trend lines are moving in the direction that you want to see? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I agree with you that the insurgency is very
lethal, and in that sense effective. I don't know if I agree with you that it's
strategic in the sense that if -- because I think the question is: Is the
insurgency, aside from sort of intimidation of people, which is a problem, but
is the insurgency gaining a foothold politically as an alternative to the
political process that has been laid out? And I would say no, that it is, in
fact, not; and that that, in and of itself, is an important weakness for the
insurgency because then what it becomes is nihilist in its character. And you're
beginning to see even in some parts of the Sunni community tribes fighting them
because they don't really just want them blowing things up. You know,
insurgencies that we have known in history have generally had some kind of
political base. Well, the only political base that is observable there is either
bring back Saddam Hussein, which is not a very popular idea, or let's have the
caliphate in which Iraq will look like the 11th century, which I think is also
not terribly popular. In terms of the political process, I would put it a little bit differently,
which is that there are some very deep divisions in Iraq which, as they try to
work toward a political compact to replace coercion as the means of dealing with
those divisions are sometimes heightened. But is the answer then that they
simply do it by coercion? No, it's that they work through ways to deal with the
political divisions that are there. I don't think it's a question that they
simply -- that the process itself is the reason for the political divisions. What has happened is you've had political divisions that, you know, started
with the way the British drew the map and that now have to be overcome, and they
have to be overcome in a political process. It's not surprising that in the
political process people try to maximize their interests, but what's very
interesting is that in many, many, many cases they actually didn't end up
maximizing their interests. The Shia, for instance, when they said initially
they were just going to ram the thing through, a number of people who were not
on the Shia list but who were Shia, several well known Sunnis and others went to
the Shia and said, do that and we'll force a new election and you'll lose. And
so the Shia backed off that and they found a compromise, which means that
federalism will be decided by the next assembly, which is an assembly in which
Sunnis will be better represented. QUESTION: But Shia will probably still be the majority. SECRETARY RICE: Well, we'll see. The Shia were less than 50 percent of
the vote in the last election. It was kind of the peculiarities of the rule that
gave them majority in the government. And in fact, I think it's something like
200,000 votes and it would have swung the other way, and this was with maximum
Shia mobilization and a Sunni boycott. The interesting thing is that Sunnis are registering in droves to vote in
December. Now, what does that say? It says that even if they don't like the
constitution and some of them may try to defeat it, they've decided that what
they want to do is they want to try to have and have a voice in the government.
So that doesn't sound to me like a political process that has broken down. It
sounds to me like a political process that has, in fact, intensified in its
activity, where people are trying -- yeah, they're going to try to maximize
their positions. But my guess is what you'll find is that there will be
cross-cutting alliances to come to an interim stable solution for Iraq that
probably will continue to roll some of the more difficult decisions down the
road. And that's what political systems do. You know, I remind people that there was one really big issue that we could
not deal with in our Constitution so we decided that slaves would be
three-fifths of a man. QUESTION: It didn't end well. SECRETARY RICE: It didn't end well for us. But it said that it is not
actually unusual that if you can't come to a solution to something, perhaps you
roll it forward. I think the Iraqis will do better than we did. I think they'll
roll it forward to a place where they can -- so I think the political process is
hard and up and down and back and forth, but in fact moving ahead. And that's
probably the most important thing that's going on. QUESTION: You mentioned the British and maps, and of course all those
decisions they made after World War I that led to so many problems around the
world and so many countries' conflicts. Where is it written that Iraq should be
one country? Have we given thought to the fact that maybe we ought to
acknowledge the divides and allow them to not be one? We've done that also. SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, but you know, there is a certain reality of the
region as well and a divided Iraq or a non-unitary Iraq will set off problems to
the north with Turkey and problems with Iran to the south. And it just -- you
know, it may not have been the smartest map to have drawn but it is what it is
and it's been in place now for 90 years and it is now better to try to work in
that context. And I actually think Iraqis understand that. Everybody understands
that the Kurds will have substantial autonomy. Everybody understands that this
possibility of other federal units will exist. We will see whether that ever has
to come into being. I thought that probably the smartest compromise that they made was actually
on resources, where current resources will be treated in a particular way by the
federal system but at some other point in time they'll write a law about how
future resources might be treated. So undoubtedly this will be, I think, a pretty loose structure but it doesn't
seem to me that you're getting much pressure for the breakup of Iraq. Everybody
talks about a unitary Iraq. It's probably going to be a fairly loose structure. QUESTION: Are you worried that the American political system lacks the
patience or lacks the stomach to stick with this war until the point where you
would see the country as pretty much ready to go it alone? SECRETARY RICE: Well, the one thing I'm seeing is that Americans are
concerned about Iraq in trouble but they are not ready to leave because they see
that as premature and they see that there is a job to be finished there, and
that's showing up in most of the polling that I see. And so my own sense is that
the -- QUESTION: The trend lines on that, on those polls, aren't exactly
favorable. SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, I think that the process in Iraq is
continuing. The elections will be a really very big landmark, then they'll have
a permanent government that is able to do things that even these interim
governments has been very difficult for them to do. I think the security forces
are coming along. I'm not going to tell you that they are capable on their own.
There are units that are capable on their own but not all of them. And in time, I think what we have to keep focused on is the point that I was
making, that, you know, you have to look at sort of strategically you're going
to have the insurgency capable of malevolence for a long time probably and
capable of violence. But the question is: Is that violence gaining a political
foothold of any kind? And I think I would argue that it hasn't yet and it would
likely do less so as the Sunnis begin to participate. I mean, to me, the most
heartening thing is that they are registering in the numbers that they are.
That's very -- and that their leadership is encouraging them to do so. Because
once you have significant Sunni participation, Shia, Kurd, now you have a
possibility for cross-cutting sectarian lines in ways that you actually did not
with the Sunnis sitting on the fence. So I think it's an argument we can make to
the American people. But the real question is: Why are we in Iraq and is it a key to American
security? And there I think we just have to -- we need to keep making the
argument. I've said many times that the question about the link between
September 11th and Iraq is not whether or not there was al-Qaida in Iraq. Let's
leave that aside. I can give you chapter and verse about what al-Qaida was doing
in Iraq. Let's leave that aside. The question is: If you believe that the cause
of September 11th was the hijackers who hit the tower, then you have a pretty
limited view of what needed to be done to deal with the threat and to make
certain that you couldn't have that happen again, or to work that that would not
happen again. And it might have involved Afghanistan and trying to get Usama bin
Laden. But if you believe that, in fact, what we encountered on that day was the
violent awakening -- you asked about a wake-up call in New Orleans -- a wake-up
call that what we faced was a global extremist ideology that had found its
footing and was networked worldwide and was going to do more of this time and
time again, then you had to ask whether or not what you wanted to deal with is
the root cause of that extremist ideology. And it goes right to the heart of the
Middle East. That extremist ideology of hatred comes out of a Middle East where
there is such a freedom deficit that the people have lost hope, that you have,
you know, in 2003 22 of the economies of the region with the combined GDP of
Spain, where authoritarian governments have choked off any legitimate channel
for opposition and so the only manifestation of political activity has become
extremism. And if you believe that you've got to change the nature of that
Middle East, then you've got to also change Iraq. And Iraq becomes a -- QUESTION: And Saudi Arabia and Oman and -- SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. You have to do this. QUESTION: I mean, it strikes me as Saudi Arabia who would be the more
likely target than Iraq under that theory. SECRETARY RICE: Well, you absolutely have to get change in Saudi
Arabia, too. But in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt and in Kuwait and in all of --
that's why we actually have a broader Middle East reform agenda where you're
going to do those -- where you're going to insist on and press for exactly those
kind of reforms. In fact, I think it has three pillars. It has one pillar that says where you
can -- and look, we didn't go into Iraq because we thought it was just a great
place to start. We have a history. We had a history with Saddam Hussein of 12
years. But when you have an opportunity to build a different kind of state in
the core of the Middle East, take it and make your goals for an Iraq actually
goals that are consistent with a different kind of Middle East. A Palestinian-Israeli peace is a part of that. It's the second pillar. And a
third pillar is broad reform in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia,
where the combination of activity in Saudi against terrorists finally and
pressures I think are increasing in Saudi Arabia for reform. QUESTION: When you say that you have an opportunity, I think if I were
to look back I would say this was a rather difficult one. I mean, I can imagine
a few other countries where it might have started with greater ease. SECRETARY RICE: No, but look, we were still in a state of war with
Saddam Hussein. QUESTION: You mean in that sense the sort of venal structure permitted
-- SECRETARY RICE: No, what we needed to do was to deal with the threat
that was there with Saddam Hussein. In that sense, you didn't go -- you didn't
defeat Nazi Germany because you wanted to build a democratic Germany. You
defeated Nazi Germany because it was a threat to the region. You defeated Saddam
Hussein because he was a threat to the region. But having defeated Nazi Germany, it was only the United States that insisted
on a democratic Germany. Having defeated Saddam Hussein, it is the United States
that is insisting on a democratic Iraq. That's the point. QUESTION: We're the only ones determining that it was a threat to the
region. SECRETARY RICE: No. QUESTION: The rest of the world was a little less convinced. SECRETARY RICE: No. We actually did have, you know, a number of
coalition partners. QUESTION: Two. SECRETARY RICE: No, quite a few coalition partners. And the rest of
the world actually thought he was a threat or he wouldn't have been under the
kind of sanctions that -- QUESTION: There are levels of threat and levels of response. SECRETARY RICE: Well, the United States thought that it was time to
deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein. When you're talking about 12 years, he's
shooting at our airplanes, he is believed to have weapons of mass destruction
programs that are advanced, you know, I just want to repeat, if the world didn't
believe Saddam Hussein was a threat, we did a horrible thing to the Iraqi people
to put them under sanctions that increased malnutrition to the levels that it
did. So you can't have it both ways. You can't say, well, we really didn't think
Saddam Hussein was a threat but we were prepared to keep the Iraqi people -- QUESTION: That's true. But you also don't have to describe it in black
and white terms; that is to say, you can say that there was a kind of threat
that required a kind of response, which isn't the same thing as declaring war. SECRETARY RICE: So the kind of response was to keep the Iraqi people
under crippling sanctions that, by the way, we now know through Oil-for-Food
were doing nothing to the Saddam Hussein regime but were, in fact, brutal to the
Iraqi people. So that was the answer? We can't decide that it's time to deal
with Saddam Hussein and the fact that he's shooting at people's airplane that
are supposed to be, by the way, under UN resolution keeping his forces from
attacking his neighbors? We can't deal with the fact that he is continuing to
build weapons of mass destruction programs and won't really open those up? We
can't deal with the fact that he continues to say that Kuwait is a province of
Iraq? So we'll just keep the Iraqi people in a state of despair and, by the way,
with sanctions that have no effect, it turns out, on the regime itself. I think
-- QUESTION: Well, rather than reliving it -- SECRETARY RICE: Right. QUESTION: Is there -- you know, I realize you can't sit here and write
the constitution. SECRETARY RICE: Right. QUESTION: Actually -- SECRETARY RICE: Actually, I could but I'm not sure it would do any
good. QUESTION: Is there something in the history of the region or the world
that should make us optimistic that a country that is founded on the principle
that one particular religion, and particularly this one, is the fundamental
foundation for all law is going to be democratic? We haven't seen it anywhere
else. SECRETARY RICE: Well, no, but you know, it's either going to happen or
we're going to have one heck of a problem in the Middle East. Right? Because
there are a lot of states that are founded on the principle that Islam -- QUESTION: I was going to say, are you talking about Israeli or are you
talking about -- QUESTION: That's an interesting question. SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, it is an interesting question because actually,
by the way, you know, when people were talking about those courts, Israel has
the same system. QUESTION: Well, that's true, but our people are more liked.
(Laughter.) Just to Israel. Maybe it's not really democracy. I don't know. SECRETARY RICE: No, it is a democracy. QUESTION: I mean, that is not -- do you think at the end of the day
that people will be satisfied with creating an Iraq that's basically a religious
state? SECRETARY RICE: I cannot -- well, first of all, I don't think this is
an Iraq that is basically a religious state. I think that's a misstatement. I
think that when you look around the world there are very few countries that
actually have separation of church and state. The United States is one. France
is another. You might notice that Great Britain did not have separation of
church and state. QUESTION: No, but their constitution is not being -- SECRETARY RICE: They don't have a constitution. QUESTION: But it's a country that is not based on the idea that
religious law takes precedence over all over law. SECRETARY RICE: No, that is not -- wait a minute. That's not what the
Iraqi constitution says. The Iraqi constitution says that Islam will be a main
source along with the democratic principles and civil law for the governance of
life in Iraq. That's what it says. QUESTION: That no law may contradict Islam. SECRETARY RICE: No law may contradict Islam, no law may contradict
democratic principles and no law may contradict the civil law. So, in fact, what
they did is that they came to, again, a compromise which allows Islam to
continue to play an important role because in that part of the world Islam --
the Islamic identity of those states remains important, but which mitigates the
chance that it will be Islamic law by the insertion of other sources of law as
the state evolves. And you know, the fact is that if you look at the Middle East, these are
constitutions that are not going to look identical to the Constitution of the
United States, which did enshrine separation of church and state because we had
a particular history in that way. This is a test. You're right. Can Islam coexist with democratic principles?
And I think that it can. I don't think that there's anything in Islam that says
that it cannot. But we're going to have to -- or they're going to have to find
models which both accommodate Islam and accommodate Islamic principles. Now, it
worked in reverse but we do have one example where it seems to be working, which
is Turkey, where you now have an Islamic party in power by democratic means
which is, I think, developing a path where Islam and democracy are working hand
in hand. But I can't tell you that this is a preordained outcome. No. But I can
tell you that unless you're going to tell the entire Arab world and the entire
Muslim world that they have to adopt our notion of separation of church and
state, that unless -- tell them you have to adopt our notion of church and state
or you can't be democratic, then this is the option that they have. QUESTION: Madame Secretary -- QUESTION: (Inaudible) what Americans will see as a result? SECRETARY RICE: I think if people actually read the constitution -- QUESTION: You're not talking the American Constitution. SECRETARY RICE: Well, maybe not. But if they -- let's say if they read
a summary of what's in the Iraqi constitution, I think you'll find it remarkably
liberal for that region of the world, far more liberal than the Afghan
constitution, for instance. QUESTION: Madame Secretary, you had some difficulty in persuading Arab
neighbors of Iraq not to worry about Iranian influence in the Shia-dominated
situation in Baghdad. When you talk to the Jordanians, the Saudis especially,
they are terrible worried about this. What is going on there? Are they being
paranoid or is there a cause for concern? SECRETARY RICE: What we're confronting is a Middle East that is going
through enormous and pretty rapid chance and where, not surprisingly, people are
extremely nervous about where it's going. When we talked about the swath that
the British cut through, what did they do? That's the fault line for Shia and
Sunni Islam. That's essentially what that is. Right? Iraq is the fault line. And what you have is a number of Sunni-dominant regimes, many of them
authoritarian, which are concerned that in a Shia-majority Iraq you will
exacerbate the fault lines between Sunni and Shia Islam and you will have
greater instability. That's really what's underlying this. Now, of course, Iran is a part of that story. And so what we have been trying
to convince the neighbors of, and actually what the Iraqis have been trying to
convince the neighbors of, is if Iraq can find a national compact by which Shia-majority
population does not mean the absence of Sunni political voice and power, and
where you can cut across sectarian lines, then Iraq does not become a
destabilizing factor in this fault line between Sunni and Shia but rather a
stabilizing factor as you move toward democratic processes across the region.
Because there are a number of these states that have a Shia problem that they
have to deal with and they also can either deal with it through coercion and
oppression or they can deal with it by having political structures that can
accommodate the Shias as well as the Sunnis. So that's really what's going on, I think, here. I think they feel somewhat
better now that there is an active Sunni participation in the political process,
just in talking to some of the Arab neighbors, and the more that that becomes
the case, I think the less -- now, as to Iranian influence because that is an
important issue. You know, one very good thing going for you in this regard
which is that the Iranians are not Shia but they are not Arab Shia and there are
historic and cultural tensions between Kulm on the one hand and Najaf on the
other that I think limit the capacity for Iranian -- too much Iranian influence. The other thing is that as the Shia have been active in this political
process, there has been no evidence that any Iraqis actually want to trade
Saddam Hussein's yoke for Iran's yoke. And so the Iranians will have influence.
They're a neighbor and they will have influence and I don't worry about that. I
do worry if it is influence that is not neighborly and transparent influence. I
think that's what we have to be concerned about. QUESTION: I have a question about the scope of your job. It can't be
-- it must make it so much more difficult to work out stuff in the Middle East
because of our enormous dependence on oil that we get from Saudi Arabia in
particular. And there are obviously a lot of things we could do in this country
if we chose to do them that would reduce our dependence which we don't do. Is it within the purview of what you do to make your feelings felt about
that, if you have any? SECRETARY RICE: Well, energy independence has been an issue and is on
the agenda and I think we all have various reasons that we'd like us to be
independent of foreign sources of oil. It's not something that's going to happen
quickly. QUESTION: Do you get to say, hey, why can't we get a gas tax? SECRETARY RICE: No, I don't -- I haven't actually gotten into that
level. But I have made clear and I think -- I don't need to make clear.
Everybody understands that oil is a warping factor in international politics.
And you know, that's understood by everybody. It gives certain power and
leverage to certain countries and not to others. You know, we are experiencing
it -- it's not just in the Middle East. We're experiencing it with Venezuela,
for instance, where the oil profits are being put to use across the region to,
you know, push forward Chavez' particular view of the world. So this is not -- it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. I think that's why
the President has an energy bill that's trying to deal with this issue. I know
it's not a popular bill with the editorial board of the New York Times
but that's what part of its purpose is, to increase energy independence. The problem is that it's not going to happen in short order and it's not
likely to happen in the time that I'm Secretary of State. And I don't care how
much you do in terms of trying to increase energy independence; it's not going
to happen in the time that I'm Secretary of State. And so what I try to do is to
have that in context. But I actually don't feel it as a constraint on what we
can demand of Middle Eastern states. That isn't, to me, how I tend to think
about it. I do tend to think about it as a factor in how states sustain
themselves in terms of their options for domestic reform. I think it's more that
way than a constraint on what we can do. QUESTION: There was another purported al-Qaida tape over the weekend
threatening Los Angeles. Do you feel that the Iraq war aside, are we safer in
America in terms of spotting threats, intercepting them and so forth? SECRETARY RICE: Well, we clearly are more capable of spotting -- you
know, gathering information, spotting things. We have a kind of worldwide
umbrella net now that just didn't exist before. I mean, intelligence cooperation
that I think is dramatic and with almost every country in the world, even
countries with which we don't have particularly good relations we tend to be
able to share intelligence because everybody feels the terrorism threat. We obviously get better cooperation between our intelligence agencies and I
think that will get better with the DNI, but even before the ability to finally
break the domestic-foreign logjam, you know, where you really did have
stovepipes -- I mean, I can't even describe to you how much these were
stovepipes before September 11th. And the fact that we're able to do that makes
a very big difference. I do think that the focus of the FBI on counterterrorism has improved our
capability to know what's going on in the country. And I think we're better with
putting the pictures together. The hard reality is that we still only have --
they still only have to be right once and we have to be right 100 percent of the
time, so it's an unfair fight, which is why you see so much focus in what we
talk about on the offensive side of this war on terrorism, not just on the
defensive side, because ultimately, you know, they've got the upper hand
because, as London showed, I don't think there's anybody who's been better at
intelligence sharing and cooperation than the British have, but they -- it goes
back to the question that Bill asked. This has been brewing inside of London for
some time. These that carried out the London bombings. It's going to take some
time to get it done. MR. MCCORMACK: Madame Secretary, I'm afraid -- SECRETARY RICE: Okay, Phil gets one question because he's from
Stanford. QUESTION: I wanted to ask you about Pakistan. Because of what? I'm
sorry. SECRETARY RICE: Because you're from Stanford. (Laughter.) QUESTION: How worried are you about Musharraf and his ability to
survive politically, even personally? What happens if he is, you know,
assassinated or somehow pushed out of power? Would that not be among the most
alarming of developments this country could face? SECRETARY RICE: Look, as is always the case in times of big historic
change, there are a number of people, human beings, on whom a lot is riding.
Now, I can go through the list for you but there are a lot of them. Musharraf is
an extraordinary leader for Pakistan and -- but he has demonstrated that he is
also extraordinarily good politically within his own context at moving this all
along. I think what we have to do -- you know, we can't sit around speculating or
having, you know, doing kind of hypotheticals on what happens if something
happens. I think all that we can do is to help continue to create the conditions
in which the efforts he's trying to pursue will succeed. And I think there are basically three baskets. The first is that we are very
-- we've got very active, obviously, military and defense cooperation and
intelligence cooperation on dealing with al-Qaida. It's quite clear who's after
him anyway and so the -- you know, the defeat of al-Qaida is very high on
everybody's priority list. We've got very good cooperation with him and we've
got to work that agenda very hard. Secondly, he is giving Pakistan some diplomatic space that we need to be very
supportive of, whether it is the rapprochement with India, which I think
broadens the base for moderation in Pakistan, to what the remarkable thing that
he just did with Israel. So helping when he wants to broaden Pakistan's
diplomatic space, I think we need to be responsive to that. The third is that he has begun inside of Pakistan efforts to diminish
extremism through education reform and economic reform. You know, the Pakistani
economy is actually doing very well. It's made some very tough economic reforms.
And we have a significant package of economic support for Pakistan on a number
of these and I think we have got to keep those levels up so that there's a
chance that things get better. There are parts of Pakistan that are extremely
poor where you get breeding grounds for this kind of extremism and he's trying
very hard to deal with those pockets. We need to help him deal with those
pockets. I have found him -- given where Pakistan was on September 11th, I have found
it remarkable how far Pakistan has come. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't
talk, as we have, about the need for elections to take place in 2007 that are --
that meet a certain standard. And we will continue to talk about that, and they
need to. So it's not as if we're saying, well, no, don't worry about that
democracy thing because, in fact, we think that the efforts at democratization
may, in fact, strengthen the efforts at rooting out extremism if he's also
making progress on a better life for people. So that's how I think we support
him but, you know, he's pretty important to the region. QUESTION: Well, we're going to have one more question while you -- SECRETARY RICE: While I sign the guest book. QUESTION: -- sign the guest book, and signing and names would be
great. SECRETARY RICE: All right. QUESTION: Just something easy, maybe Israel and Palestine. (Laughter.)
Any thoughts there as to Gaza? QUESTION: It was supposed to be a short question. QUESTION: The question was incredibly short. I didn't say a thing
about the answer. (Laughter.) SECRETARY RICE: I really do think we've just been through something
quite remarkable, which is the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. And I called Prime
Minister Sharon this morning and President Abbas this morning. The way the
Israeli Defense Forces conducted themselves in this is just extraordinary. I
mean, it's exactly how you'd like to think a military would act given democracy
and civilian control. I mean, it was quite remarkable. I think they've done it
with dignity. I think for the most part the Palestinians have managed to give
the Israelis space to get it done and I think the Gaza withdrawal has been
pretty successful. There are a couple of remaining issues that we need to resolve, like passages
through the international passage at Rafah. We're working on that. But the
question is really twofold: Can the Palestinians now demonstrate that they are
able to exercise control in the Gaza and therefore as an almost demonstration of
the fact that they can exercise control of territory of territory and govern it
in a way that gives confidence to the Israelis and others. I have a lot of respect for Mahmoud Abbas with what exactly what he's trying
to do. We're trying to help him. Jim Wolfensohn is trying to help him. If we can
get this big economic package for, you know, the day after in Gaza where you get
lots of economic activity, I think we'll make progress there. The elections are
enormously important. People worry a lot about Hamas. Of course it's an issue,
but the best thing the Palestinian Authority can do to disable Hamas is to show
that it is not corrupt, it is governing, it is delivering for its people. And
we're trying to help them do that. On the Israeli side, the key now is to use what I would call forces of
momentum, like the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings that are between the
Palestinians and the Israelis, to keep things moving, getting back onto the
roadmap where both sides have obligations. But I think we would be pressing them
to meet. And if you can sustain that kind of momentum, then I think you will be
in a situation where the Gaza withdrawal, which I think has gone very, very
well, will end up having been a spur to greater cooperation and trust between
Palestinians and Israelis. You're not going to read it in the newspapers because for a variety of
political reasons on both sides, it is better to be critical of the other side
than to be complimentary of the other side. But I will tell you that at all
levels of the Israeli and Palestinian -- Palestinian Authority and Israeli
Government, you do hear the cooperation has gone well, the coordination has gone
well. I thought it was a remarkably brave thing for Abbas to do to call Sharon
and say that the Gaza withdrawal had (inaudible) and to congratulate him on it.
I mean, something is happening here. They want to work together. And I think our
goal has to be to give them a reason to continue to work together. Thank you.
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