Transcript: Powell Says Open Societies Essential for Trade
(Secretary of State Powell's July 26 press briefing in Hanoi)

Open societies are a must for trade, says Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Powell, who is in Hanoi to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministerial meetings, told reporters at a July 26 press briefing that he delivered "a very strong message that trade will only take place in those societies that are open; those societies that rest on the rule of law; those societies where money can go and be safe and be invested safely; those societies that are willing to conform to 21st century standards of trade, 21st century standards of the rule of law, the rule of contract law."

"I think that message was well received," he added.

Powell said he reiterated the Bush Administration's commitment to ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific region.

The Secretary of State denied charges that the United States is acting unilaterally on a number of international issues. "I think over time people will see that we are not unilateralists, that we are deeply engaged," he said.

"The President's trip to Genoa, and the President's earlier trip to Europe, I think were important indications that we plan to be active members of the alliances and associations that we are a part of," Powell said.

"At the same time," he continued, "there are agreements that come along that we can be just active participants in, whether it be the expansion of the NATO alliance, or lots of other agreements that we are a party to: START I -- we may be trying to get START II going at some point, or some variation of our strategic offensive agreements, lots of agreements that we are part of. We participate in all of these negotiations."

Powell said that some agreements do not serve either U.S. interests or the purpose for which they were intended.

"That is the case with the protocol to the Biological Warfare Convention," he said. "When the BWC was originally signed a number of years ago, it was known at that time that it would probably never be verifiable, because it is too difficult to verify that kind of technology. Since then, it has become even more difficult to try to verify it, with the explosion of biotechnology and biotechnology facilities all across the world, and especially in the United States, the most developed nation with respect to biotechnology."

Powell said the United States has been "communicating to our colleagues for many, many months, years in fact, but especially in recent months, that we had serious problems with this particular protocol."

Over time, the Secretary said, "when we get this sort of series of issues of the kind that was just mentioned behind us -- the BWC, the International Criminal Court, and a few others (such as) CTBT -- I think when the heat is off on those, people will see that we do want to participate in the larger world community. We will be an active participant and a positive contributor."

Following is the State Department transcript of the briefing:

(begin transcript)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
July 26, 2001

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
Press Briefing
Hanoi, Vietnam
July 26, 2001

SECRETARY POWELL: I've just about finished a busy two days here in Vietnam, the ARF meetings, a number of bilateral meetings with attendees of the ARF conference and then a number of meetings with officials of the Vietnam government. I think the ARF meetings have been very, very useful. What impressed me was the focus on economic development and a clear understanding on the part of all of the attendees that economic development is best served when one has a stable security environment. So we had a great deal of discussion about having that stability, reducing potential for conflict, reducing tensions, opening up barriers to trade and to dialogue. And that's really what those two days were all about, dialog and creating conditions where trading can take place. And it allowed me to, I think, give a very strong message that trade will only take place in those societies that are open; those societies that rest on the rule of law; those societies where money can go and be safe and be invested safely; those societies that are willing to conform to 21st century standards of trade, 21st century standards of the rule of law, the rule of contract law. And I think that message was well received.

I was also very pleased that I was able to convey to all of my colleagues at these meetings that the Bush Administration is committed to ASEAN. It is committed to this region.

It will be a priority for us. It's been a priority since I became Secretary of State. I met early on with all of the ASEAN ambassadors in Washington, the first time that had ever been done, along with Secretary General of ASEAN. I also met with the ASEAN-U.S. Business Council, so I had a pretty good head start coming over here.

I also presented to my colleagues a list of all of the things that the United States Government is already doing with ASEAN. It is a very impressive book of accomplishments, and we may have one or two left over for those of you who would like to pour through twenty-nine pages worth of tables--picking out little nuggets that you might find interesting. And I hope I persuaded them that that priority is not just for the purpose of this conference, but it will be a continuing priority as we move into the future.

The day spent with my Vietnamese colleagues, the leaders of Vietnam, was also, I think, a very successful day. I was able to mention to the Prime Minister and to the General Secretary of the Party this afternoon that I believe the House Ways and Means Committee was taking up the Bilateral Trade Agreement this afternoon and that if it is successfully passed, the House Committee then would be ready for full House action in the very new future. The Senate has already acted at committee level, so this should move a little more rapidly now. And they were pleased to hear that.

Lots of conversations with them, I won't take you through all the bits and pieces. Just to say that the message that came across consistently is that they are pleased with the six years of progress that we have had since normalization. I heard it expressed in many different ways that the past is the past and let it be; the war is over. In one instance the General Secretary said to me, "we have many sad chapters in our history with the United States, but now we are in a new era with new chapters." And I was able to respond "in new chapters to be written," chapters that don't talk about war, but talk about peace, talk about economic cooperation, talk about helping people in Vietnam join a world that is moving forward, and to give the people of Vietnam the opportunity for a better life.

And so we will have a little bit of fun tonight at dinner and from there, on to Korea tomorrow with those hardy souls of you who are sticking with me for the rest of this. We're only halfway guys. Thank you.

QUESTION: A question about unilateralism. You have Kyoto and germ warfare this week. You have the ICC and the CTBT. Are there any risks to the United States in going it alone too much?

THE SECRETARY: I don't think so over time. I think over time people will see that we are not unilateralists, that we are deeply engaged. I mean, for the last two and a half days, I have been anything but a unilateralist here in ASEAN. In fact, most of you are not with me in all of those many, many meetings, sharing thoughts. Perhaps next year I can arrange for you to sit there with me for two days. And so that is not unilateralist action. I mean, this is a week of time to come here and do this. The President's trip to Genoa, and the President's earlier trip to Europe, I think were important indications that we plan to be active members of the alliances and associations that we are a part of. At the same time, however, there are agreements that come along that we can be just active participants in, whether it be the expansion of the NATO alliance, or lots of other agreements that we are a party to: START I - we may be trying to get START II going at some point, or some variation of our strategic offensive agreements, lots of agreements that we are part of. We participate in all of these negotiations. But from time to time, one comes along, or more come along, where we do not believe it serves our interest. But that is not it alone. We do not believe it serves the purpose for which it is intended. And that is the case with the protocol to the Biological Warfare Convention. When the BWC was originally signed a number of years ago, it was known at that time that it would probably never be verifiable, because it is too difficult to verify that kind of technology. Since then, it has become even more difficult to try to verify it, with the explosion of biotechnology and biotechnology facilities all across the world, and especially in the United States, the most developed nation with respect to biotechnology. And we examined it, and looked at it. We just couldn't see that this protocol would help with the BWC. And so we had to call it the way we saw it. It's not as if suddenly we jumped up and said "we're out of here". We have been communicating to our colleagues for many, many months, years in fact, but especially in recent months, that we had serious problems with this particular protocol. And so when we have serious problems with a protocol, or an agreement or a convention of some kind, I think we ought to be candid and honest and say that we do not think it serves the intended purpose, or it's contrary to what we can do as a nation, and just say so, and try to find a way to compromise and get consensus. And if that's not possible, then be honest about what we think is in our best interests and in the best interests of implementing that particular agreement. And so I think over time, when we get this sort of series of issues of the kind that was just mentioned behind us, the BWC, the International Criminal Court, and a few others - CTBT, I think when the heat is off on those, people will see that we do want to participate in the larger world community. We will be an active participant and a positive contributor.

QUESTION: To turn your attention to China. First of all, can you comment on the status of the three that have been released. Second of all, are there others that you're concerned about. And third, what are the other obstacles now in the way of bettering U.S.-Chinese relations?

THE SECRETARY: To the best of my knowledge, and I've noticed that in the last twenty-four hours you guys have been a little ahead of me on this, because I've been in meetings, but the two that, the two of the three that were released have returned to the United States, and they chose to go back. And the third one who has been released has chosen to remain here in China. There are other cases, and we actively examine these cases to see whether or not there is a basis for us to raise concerns with the Chinese government; we'll continue to do that. As I have said before, it is not so much individual cases that should be our principal focus and concern, but the system, the system that occasionally might go after people who perhaps should not be gone after, or who are not being given the full protection of law; and their universal human rights might be trampled upon. And when we see circumstances and situations like that, we're going to talk about it. It makes no difference what country of the world it is, we believe these rights are universal and we are going to talk about those rights. So, we will continue to monitor these individual cases in China and discuss them with our Chinese colleagues.

Other barriers? I don't know that I would call any of the other issues we're talking with the Chinese about "barriers" at this point. We'll talk about proliferation and our concerns on proliferation activities, but I don't know if that in and of itself is a barrier to discussing other things in our relationship. So, I'm a great believer in looking at the whole agenda; from human rights to proliferation, to economics to regional security issues, look at the whole range of issues before us and any other country and (Inaudible) openness, candor, and realism -- don't go floating off terra firma -- (Inaudible) realism, and find ways to move the agenda forward in a way that benefits both sides.

QUESTION: I'd like to ask you a question about a "sad chapter" as you put it in the history of your country's relationship with Vietnam. And partly because some of my colleagues have been writing about it since you've taken your new post, and I'm not aware that you've had a chance to comment on it. I wondered if looking back, you sometimes feel that the letter that Tom Glenn in your division wrote, talking about murders and atrocities carried out by Americans, whether you sometimes wish that it might have been better to investigate it more at the time, and if you had, the massacre might have become known earlier.

SECRETARY POWELL: Let me put the question in perspective. When I was a young major in Vietnam in 1968 and '69, I was the Operations Officer of the Americal Division. It was the largest division in Vietnam and my job was to draw up the plans every day for the next days' war. And this was months after My Lai took place. My Lai was not known to any of us. We just didn't know that any thing like that had happened. A letter came up from Saigon one day, written by a young soldier who had gone home, saying that he thought the relations between one of our units and the Vietnamese civilians in the area were not good, and that things might have happened. He did not give us any specific data with respect to what might have happened where, who might have done it, and what might have been the results. It was just a general statement. It did not come up through investigative or inspector general channels; it came up through the operational channel. So it ended up on my desk. I sent the letter out to the unit concerned, and asked the commander, "do you see anything that would relate to this; is there any substance to this?" The answer came back saying, "we have pretty good relations." This is months after, now. And I'm not even sure he was talking about My Lai. He wasn't talking about My Lai. I heard from him in recent years, frankly, he put the letter in perspective. He wasn't talking about My Lai. The answer came back saying that the unit was not aware of anything that had happened. I then forwarded that answer back to my commander in the Americal Division and it went back to Saigon.

It was months later that another investigator -- this time from the Inspector General's Office in Saigon -- came up and said, "let me show you something else." And he gave me some information about a certain day and a certain time and a certain place. And we went through the journals of the division and we could find an incident with a large casualty report that matched that date. That's the first time that I ever had some inkling that something had happened. And that turned out to be My Lai. And that was another year before I discovered that's what was he was looking at. That first letter has been used over the years to suggest that I was responsible in some way for covering up this incident. It's come up several times as a result of investigative reporters and authors. I've tried to answer it every time, "I was not there, I came in months later." And the letter I received and I acted on made no reference to any particular place or any time or any date or any particular unit, and that is the way I handled it. Sent it back through operational channels, and when it came up through investigative channels, IG channels with specific data, then we were able to find information that kind of matched what had been reported.

Sorry to take so long with it, but it comes up every now and again.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, could you give us your comment on the North Korean leader (Inaudible) to Moscow, and do you think its going to bring a positive development or a negative development in terms of your policy towards North Korea?

THE SECRETARY: I have no idea, I did not know he was planning a trip. And I have no comment on his trip. I hope he has good meetings in Moscow with the Russians. We discussed North Korea in the course of our meetings here in Hanoi. I made it clear to my colleagues and to the North Korean representative who was at the meeting that the United States was anxious to move forward with a dialogue; that we had completed our review, and that there should be no preconditions to that dialogue. Put all the issues on the table that you wish to and we'll talk about anything. So no preconditions and we're prepared to meet any time and any place; we're ready to go now. We are waiting for an official response from them to our overture to them. And I hope that dialogue will get back on track in the not too distant future.

QUESTION: If I could follow up a little bit on that. I understand that you said "hello" Ho Jong, the North Korean Ambassador. Can you tell us whether you shook his hand or had any kind of substantive chat with him or was it just a kind of courtesy thing?

SECRETARY POWELL: It was the first night, I guess, when we all arrived. The first night when we all arrived, we were taken into a room where the Foreign Ministers were gathering. As I went around the room shaking the hands of all of the Foreign Ministers who were present, I came to Ambassador Ho, I shook his hand and said hello. We exchanged a word or two of pleasantries and then I moved on and shook the hand of the next ambassador -- minister.

QUESTION: So is that when you delivered this message to him?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I delivered the message that I just described to you in the big plenary session.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, on a similar note, there was a lot of consternation in Seoul in the early days of the Administration about whether the Administration's policy towards North Korea might jeopardize what was going on there, the "Sunshine Policy." I'm just curious what your message is going to be when you arrive there, and what attitude you expect to find from the South Koreans.

SECRETARY POWELL: A positive attitude. The South Korean Foreign Minister, of course, was sitting at the large plenary session yesterday right next to the Ambassador from North Korea. So we all heard each other. I was able to use that occasion yesterday as well to indicate our support -- U.S. support -- for the Sunshine Policy and for the initiatives of President Kim Dae-Jung. So I'm sure I'll get at chance to repeat that again tomorrow, and I'm sure it will be well received, so I'm looking forward to a good meeting. I think this is knitted up and we are moving together. I made the point that as we did move forward, it would be in close consultation with our South Korean friends as it has always been, and in close consultation with our Japanese friends. And the Chinese have more than a passing interest in what is going on as well.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, on Sunday, you travel to Australia. I was wanting to know -- to celebrate a defense agreement...

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.

QUESTION: I was wanting to know, what part Australia plays in the Missile Defense System.

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know that I can answer that with respect to what part they might play in the hardware aspects of the Missile Defense System for the simple reason that Don Rumsfeld is the one who's working that. I used to do that but I don't do that anymore and they won't let me do that any more. (laughter) So I suspect that is something that Don Rumsfeld might be discussing with them, if appropriate. I don't know if there is a particular role to play because of the location.

But as you know that as we move forward with Missile Defense, there will be a lot of technological investment opportunities and R&D opportunities. So there might be something there. But I think I'll let Mr. Rumsfeld handle that.

QUESTION: Do you want to give us a preview of your skit? (laughter)

SECRETARY POWELL: Skit?

QUESTION: Well, whatever, sing, dance.

SECRETARY POWELL: Nobody broke the code, nobody figured it out?

SECRETARY POWELL: Jane was almost close to it the other day, she almost got it.

QUESTION: A poem?

SECRETARY POWELL: Poem? It will be a song.

QUESTION: A song.

SECRETARY POWELL: And a small skit.

QUESTION: Sing us a couple of bars.

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I'm not going to sig a couple of bars. (laughter)

QUESTION: Hum.

SECRETARY POWELL: There's a camera in the room, I'm not singing a couple bars.

QUESTION: We'll switch off the camera.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, if you ... this will teach you. (laughter) If you get my book. (laughter)

QUESTION: We have your book.

QUESTION: What page?

SECRETARY POWELL: If you get my book, and if you look at my Vietnam experience, the first tour, and you read it very carefully, there is a song in there. Thank you very much.

(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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