3 February 2002

Rice Says "It's Time to Get Serious" about North Korea, Iran, Iraq

Washington -- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice defended the strongly worded warning about North Korea, Iran and Iraq made January 29 by President Bush in his State of the Union address, saying these countries pose a serious threat and "it's time to get serious about it."

Interviewed February 3 on the Fox News Sunday TV program, Rice said "you don't get anywhere by pulling punches about the nature of regimes like the Iraqi regime, or the North Korean regime. It's not as if anybody really believes that these are good regimes that are just engaging in a little bad policy.

"We've seen, in this war on terrorism," she said, "that speaking plainly is the way to rally people, not the other way around."

Rice noted that the president said in his address that the United States wants to work with its allies on this issue. "I would say to everyone, Let's step back here, and instead of worrying so much about what the president said on Tuesday night, let's put equal energy into working to make sure that these regimes don't get these weapons of mass destruction."

These countries, she said, "are a clear and present threat to us and to all of the responsible and civilized world. Because the Iranians, who spread and support terror around the world, the North Koreans, who proliferate these weapons, the Iraqis, who make a region of great importance to us unstable, clearly are a clear and present threat to America, America's interests and America's allies."

The focus on these three countries is not a change in U.S. policy -- "they've been on notice for some time," Rice said. But Bush's words were "a call to the international community, to our friends and our allies, to do what all of us must do in terms of non-proliferation, in terms of cutting off the vehicles for these regimes to get these weapons."

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rice called on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to deal with Palestinian terrorists. "He knows what he needs to do," she said. "He knows that there are Hamas and Hezbollah elements around him. He knows that the Karine A affair, the shipment of arms apparently purchased from Iran and shipped through Hezbollah, is a violation of the Oslo Accords.

"We are asking nothing more of Chairman Arafat than we have asked of every other leader in the world. If he's going to be the leader of the Palestinian people, and if he wants to achieve the vision that he's laying out here, he knows how to do it. And it begins with dealing with the terrorists in his midst."

Rice said "We've never said that there has to be a 100 percent result before we get back to pursuing a peace arrangement" in the Middle East. "But he [Arafat] has not done enough. And it is very clear that he can do more to disable the terrorist networks."