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23 March 2001
Powell Remarks to National Newspaper Association
Secretary of State Colin Powell says the Bush administration's
decision to oust 50 Russian intelligence officers will not lead to a
deterioration in relations between the United States and Russia.
Speaking March 23 in Washington, D.C. at a meeting of the National
Newspaper Association, Powell pointed out areas of continuing
U.S.-Russia cooperation even as the dispute over expelled officers
plays out.
"Our relationship continues and we'll see what we can do to isolate
this one incident, but we are waiting to see about the totality of
Russia's response," said Powell.
The Secretary of State pointed out that "at the same time all this was
unfolding last night, and everybody was writing stories about what is
going on and how terrible it's going to be, our Space Command was
working with Russian authorities to make sure we all knew where the
Mir was going .... Cooperating as they do all the time on this kind of
activity."
Powell said in examining the case of Robert Hanssen, the former
Federal Bureau of Investigation agent accused of spying for Russia,
"and as we also examined a continuing problem that we have had with
Russia concerning the level of their intelligence presence here, we
decided that we had to respond.
"And we did respond. We responded in a way that was measured,
realistic, practical. And as far as we are concerned, that ended the
matter. It was not part of a great scheme; it was a stand-alone
problem we had to deal with. We didn't shrink from it, we didn't walk
away from it; we dealt with it in a realistic way."
"And we will get through this because the world needs a good
relationship between Russia and the United States," Powell said.
In his remarks to the Newspaper Association, the Secretary of State
also discussed China, North Korea, South Korea, the Middle East, Iraq,
Cuba, human rights and trafficking in women and children.
The State Department, said Powell, will remain vigilant, speak out and
take note when nations around the world do not measure up to universal
standards of freedom and liberty.
"Our foreign policy will be values-based in a way that reflects the
best of America's ideals, the best of America's values system, not as
a way of lecturing to others or telling others, 'Do it our way,'"
Powell said.
"As President Bush said, we want to do it with humility. But we
believe that if we can be that shining city on the hill that shows
people what you can accomplish if you move in this direction of
freedom, then we are the moral example that we all want this nation to
be, and we can have a powerful impact on the world."
Following is the State Department transcript, including Q&A, as
delivered:
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman
March 23, 2001
As Delivered
Remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
At the National Newspaper Association's 40th Annual Government Affairs Conference
Hyatt Regency Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Secretary Powell: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for that
warm welcome. It's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to address
you again. I think it has been almost ten years since last I had this
privilege, and I remember fondly that morning.
I am especially touched that General Reppert introduced me. I want to
thank him for his 33 years of service where he covered himself with
great distinction serving us in a number of capacities in
international affairs, being an expert in Russian matters --
(laughter) -- serving as our attach?in Moscow -- (laughter) -- and
also serving in a wonderful organization that I helped create, which
very few Americans know about, but it has done a remarkable job. It is
a little organization in the Pentagon known as OSIA. It is called the
On-Site Inspection Agency, and he led it for a while. This little
organization has for years gone around validating and making sure that
all the arms control agreements we entered into were, in fact, lived
up to by the other side -- those days of the Soviet Union and now
Russia.
And it is just an example of the kind of unsung heroic organizations
and people you have who serve us every day, in and out, in the Defense
Department, in the State Department, and so many agencies of
government who go unsung and do such wonderful work. The OSIA we
created to monitor a treaty that many people don't remember any more,
called the INF Treaty, Intermediate Nuclear Force Reductions, which we
signed in late 1987 with the Soviet Union.
It was the first time ever the United States and the Soviet Union came
together and declared a whole class of nuclear weapons gone -- off the
face of the earth: SS-20s on the part of the Soviet Union; on the part
of the United States, we got rid of our Pershing IIs and our ground
launch cruise missiles.
And this year, after some 14 years of work by OSIA and people like
John, that agreement is now executed and we will be removing some of
our presence at those Soviet, now Russian, facilities. And it is a
great agreement. And, John, I thank you and all the others that you
served with over the years for that.
John is illustrative of the people who serve the nation, as I said.
But what I have also discovered in recent months, now that I no longer
wear a green suit, but a blue suit all the time, and I am faced with
that most difficult of choices every morning to find a tie that is not
black. (Laughter.) But now that I am in this new job as Secretary of
State, I find that much of what I tried to do as Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, much of the same kind of thing that I did when I was
just a young lieutenant, applies to the State Department.
Taking the wonderful men and women who work in the State Department,
whether they are Foreign Service officers, or whether they are Civil
Service employees, or whether they are Foreign Service nationals, and
doing everything I can to put them in the best position to serve the
American people, to give them the resources they need, to let them
know we appreciate what they do, to let them know they are part of a
broader team, that they work alongside their colleagues in the
Pentagon in uniform, that they are the representatives of the
President, and as representatives of the President and representatives
of the Secretary of State, they are your representatives.
One of my major missions as Secretary of State is going to be the
fight for the resources they need to do a better job, to make sure
they are working in secure embassies and they have the latest
information technology, that they are being compensated properly. So
as I have been saying to all of my congressional interlocutors and all
of my dear, dear friends in the Office of Management and Budget, I
plan to do everything I can to make sure that when we send our
diplomats in harm's way, they go in harm's way with all the tools, the
experience, the training and the recognition that they need and
deserve to do their job well.
I hope as you do your work back home, you will from time to time say a
good word about these men and women. I hope that you will recognize
them because, as was noted in the introduction, I believe it is
important for us to take the message of what we do in the State
Department not just to foreign capitals, but to every hamlet, every
town, every city in America, so that we can get the kind of support we
need for a foreign policy that has us engaged, that has us pursuing
realistic objectives, that shows that we are not afraid of any nation
on the face of the earth. We want to be friends with every nation on
the face of the earth, but we will represent our interests well, we
will fight for our interests, we will defend our interests, we will
reach out and touch every nation that wants to be a friend of ours,
and show them how through democracy and the free enterprise system,
with their adaptation of democracy and the free enterprise system to
their culture and to their history, will help them join a world that
is changing so rapidly and radically, a world that is no longer
separated into blocks of the red and the blue sides of the map, but a
world that is increasingly joined by the power of technology, by the
power of information and media, the kinds of changes that are
affecting the work that you do every day.
But no matter what you hear and see about the websites of this world
and Internet information -- and I use all of it -- I wake up in the
morning and go to the website to see what has been said about me,
throw myself right into search. AOL knows we well now; just put in
Powell and all kinds of nasty stuff comes out. (Laughter.)
But then I go outside to my front door, and I think I have said this
to you before, I pick up six newspapers to bring them inside. I have
got a manageable bunch of data there, and random access is much faster
than on my website as I turn pages.
(Applause.)
So you will always have an important role to play no matter how this
world changes, and I need to use you to take our message with respect
to foreign policy across the world. You are the voice not only of the
free press in America, but the voice of so much of the nation itself.
Millions of Americans get from your newspapers the kind of in-depth
exposure to foreign news and events that no newscast can provide.
America's hometown papers, whether large or small, chronicle the daily
life of our nation, of our people. You tell the American story, what
is happening in the State House, or City Hall, how the local team is
doing, what's new in the classifieds, the obit pages, and of course
whose name is on the police blotter that morning. (Laughter.)
And on that latter point, you know better than I do that your job is
pointing out what's wrong in society, that part of your beat that
describes what is bad. But so too part of your beat is pointing out
what's good, reporting on what President Bush likes to call the
"nobility of normal lives." And no one tells the story as well as you
do, that simple day-to-day goodness of life here in America. Put it
all together, and community newspapers do not just tell the story of
American freedom; you are that story.
Someone has said that the greatest safeguard of First Amendment rights
is their courageous and responsible use, and I believe that to the
depth of my heart. And on this 40th meeting of owners, publishers and
editors representing more than 1,000 newspapers, 150 million readers
each week, let me salute you for your faithfulness to the American
story and to the best traditions of the First Amendment.
As I do my work as Secretary of State, I will do exactly what that
website quotation said: communicate to the American people directly,
and then also the media, so you can examine, analyze, critique, take
apart and put back together, criticize, attack, defend when you feel
like, but above all, allow me to communicate to the American people. I
will try to do it to the best of my ability on the record and in a way
that when you hear from the Secretary of State it is not an anonymous
official but somebody speaking for the foreign policy of the United
States of America, for President Bush's foreign policy.
This right that we have of free speech and freedom of expression is
brought home to me whenever I see what's happening in other parts of
the world. In the Human Rights Report that we issued not too long ago,
we took note of the pattern of what is happening in other parts of the
world, took note of places like Cuba, Iraq, Libya and Turkmenistan,
where there is no such thing as free press of any kind; took note of
severe restrictions on freedom that existed in places like Sudan,
Uzbekistan and China. In Iran, dozens of newspapers offices were
closed in the past year, and a number of Iran's most prominent
journalists and editors were harassed or arrested -- things that we
don't think of here. In Russia, Kremlin efforts to gain control over a
major independent television network posed a threat for the hard-won
press freedoms that the Russian people are now enjoying. And so you
can expect your State Department to remain vigilant, to speak out and
to take note when nations around the world do not measure up -- not to
our standards of freedom and individual liberty, but to what we
believe are universal standards of freedom and liberty that God has
given to every man, woman and child on the face of the earth.
Our foreign policy will be values-based, values-based in a way that
reflects the best of America's ideals, the best of America's value
system -- not as a way of lecturing to others or telling others do it
our way. As President Bush said, we want to do it with humility. But
we believe that if we can be that shining city on the hill that shows
people what you can accomplish if you move in this direction of
freedom, then we are the moral example that we all want this nation to
be, and we can have a powerful impact on the world.
This world is so complex, so changing. It has changed so much just in
the seven years that I was out in private life and working with
America's Promise - the Alliance for Youth. And in my old life as a
soldier, things were relatively simple. I would just wake up every
morning and look at the maps and make sure that great big Soviet Union
was still there. (Laughter.) It's gone, broken up. And instead, when I
just look at what I have done this week and how I have had to deal
with different issues around the world in the course of the week,
helping President Bush as he has dealt with those same issues, you get
a pretty good idea how complex the world has become.
In these first two months of the Bush Administration, we have tried to
start out on a pattern that will be clear for all. First, meetings
with the great hemispheric leaders here in the Western part of the
world, meetings with Prime Minister Chretien of Canada and President
Fox of Mexico, to let everybody know that we are concerned about our
own hemisphere.
And then the President began to reach out, meeting with European
leaders, meeting with the Secretary General of NATO, to let them know
that we believe in that great alliance that we have been a part of for
the last 50 years. He has been reaching out now to others in South
America, and we are starting to now reach out across Asia.
Just in the past few weeks, you've seen the President meet with the
leaders of South Korea; you've seen the President meet this week alone
with Japan, our great ally in the Pacific, and with Prime Minister
Mori to make sure he understood the value we placed on our political
and military relationship with Japan.
Beyond that, though, we have economic issues we had to discuss, and
they discussed those issues in a realistic, practical, way, from the
standpoint of two friends speaking to one another. And friends do not
hide from the truth; friends speak clearly and candidly, point out
where there is agreement, point out how we can move forward together,
point out all the success we have enjoyed, but also talk candidly
about difficulties and challenges that lay ahead. And we did that. The
President did that.
And then we had the Vice Premier of China here as well, an excellent
series of meetings over the last 48 hours with this distinguished
gentleman who has been a leader in Sino-US relations for the last 20
years. Vice Premier Qian was open. He wanted to hear from the new
Administration. He wanted to convey very strong feelings about what is
happening in their economy. He wanted to make sure we understood their
concern with respect to Taiwan, and we made sure he understood our
concern.
We were not looking for a single word to describe this complex
relationship, but to acknowledge that it is a complex relationship. We
are trading partners. We will be regional competitors. But there is so
much we can work on together, and must work on together, to try to
bring China more into the international global community, to get
accession to the World Trade Organization. And together, we can leave
the past behind and move forward in more positive ways, more positive
directions, while protecting our respective interests.
We also saw that the world can be very untidy. We saw difficulties in
Macedonia, a continuing Balkan problem. We have made it clear to all
the leaders in the region, and those who are not leaders but those who
are trying to disrupt progress, those who act as radicals and try to
disturb the practice of democracy in places like Macedonia -- we have
made it clear that we will stand with the Macedonian Government. We
have made it clear that we will support the territorial integrity of
Macedonia. We have made it clear that we will work closely with that
government that is a coalition government so that it is not shattered
by this kind of gangster activity within Macedonia, spilling over from
Kosovo.
American troops, alongside their NATO colleagues, will do everything
they can to patrol the Kosovo side of that border, to stop the
infiltrators from coming in and putting this nation at risk. We will
engage diplomatically in every way possible to make sure that
Macedonia can stand free and democratic, free to choose its own future
without being disturbed or upset by these kinds of armed radical
elements.
We also saw that in the Middle East there are great challenges ahead.
Prime Minister Sharon, the new Prime Minister of Israel, was here, and
we had very, very open talks, candid talks between two friends. And we
made sure that Israel understood our complete commitment to their
security, just as it has been our commitment for lo these past 50
years.
And at the same time, we talked about what we should try to do,
working with our Arab friends in the region, working with Chairman
Arafat to get the violence going in the other direction, to get the
violence under control, both sides showing all the restraint possible
to get things to a lower level so that economic activity can pick up
again, and people can once again feel safe and secure in their
neighborhoods. Let's get security cooperation and coordination going
again between the two sides. And then, when we have a more stable
situation, we can take action to begin discussions toward peace once
more, something that both sides want, something that both peoples need
in order for them to share this blessed land together.
We have continuing challenges in places like Iraq, and we are working
on that to make sure that we orient all our efforts to keeping Iraq
from getting weapons of mass destruction, not to hurt the Iraqi
people, not to keep away from them what they need to live good lives,
but to make it clear that the regime in Baghdad is a regime that
continues to pursue weapons of mass destruction, and the international
community must not let them because they are threatening the children
of the region, the people of the region.
And so, your Government, your State Department, your President, is
working hard, doing everything we can to make sure the sanctions
remain targeted against those efforts to develop weapons of mass
destruction.
We are also reaching out to a great country called Russia, a nation
that is finding its own way, that is trying to firm up its democracy,
to improve its economy. We want to be good friends with Russia. We are
not standing back from Russia, we are not looking for ways to offend
Russia, but we have made it clear to our Russian counterparts that it
is a mature relationship, and we have to speak candidly to one
another.
I have already met with my Russian colleague, Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov. I met him in Cairo a few weeks ago. We had an excellent set of
discussions covering all the issues of interest between our two
countries. I have spoken to him several times on the phone. Dr. Condi
Rice, our distinguished National Security Advisor, has had the same
kind of relationship with her counterpart, Sergei Ivanov. President
Bush has spoken to President Putin, and we are looking forward to
having broad dialogue with the Russian Federation across all the areas
of agreement and disagreement.
It will take a little time before we can begin. We are still in the
process of reviewing our policies, establishing our strategies. We are
still in the process of bringing a new team on board. I don't wish to
comment on the confirmation process except to say that, as of this
Friday, I am beginning my third month as Secretary of State, and I am
still the only confirmed official in the Department of State in the
new Administration. So it takes a little bit of time, but those
officials are now getting confirmed and pretty soon our team will fill
out and we will be in a better position to engage with Russia.
There was a problem this week, a problem that had to be dealt with, a
problem that was not found out about because we were around one night
saying, you know, let's find out some way to poke the Russians in the
eye. Quite the contrary. We found a problem having to do with a spy by
the name of Mr. Hanssen, an American spy. And as we examined that case
and as we also examined a continuing problem that we have had with
Russia concerning the level of their intelligence presence here, we
decided that we had to respond. And we did respond. We responded in a
way that was measured, realistic, practical. And as far as we are
concerned, that ended the matter. It was not part of a great scheme;
it was a stand-alone problem we had to deal with. We didn't shrink
from it, we didn't walk away from it; we dealt with it in a realistic
way.
And I had a long talk with Minister Ivanov last night about it, and he
of course expressed his view on it in very, very strong terms, and
they said more about it in the last few hours. And we will get through
this because the world needs a good relationship between Russia and
the United States. The world needs us to explore all of these issues
together, and we will be exploring all of these issues of concern --
bilateral relations, trade relations, regional problems, weapons,
missile defense -- all of those will be discussed.
And so it is a very complex world we are living in, and I have gotten
it by the tail. I am being dragged around. And I'm telling you what,
it is exciting and it is fun. And sometimes I get a little tired at
the end of the week. This day, this Friday, I'm feeling pretty good.
You guys have turned me on. I'm okay. (Laughter.)
But so far this week, in addition to the folks I have mentioned to you
already, I met with the Foreign Minister of Armenia, the Foreign
Minister of Georgia, the Foreign Minister of Australia, the Prime
Minister of Serbia, a senior minister from the United Kingdom. And as
soon as I leave here, I'm going back to the office to receive the new
Ambassador from Angola and the new Ambassador from India, and then
late this afternoon I will be receiving and then taking over to see
the President the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.
Then I'm going home. (Laughter.)
But it's an exciting time. It's an exciting time to watch the world
unfold. Most of the things I talk to you this morning about can be
seen as problems. But also see them as opportunities. See this new
world where there is no threat of the kind of nuclear exchange we
worried about with the Soviet Union for 40 years. See this as a new
world of opportunity, a new world of promise. And see the new
Administration -- see President Bush -- as someone who is determined
to seize these opportunities, but to do it from a position of
strength, with an attitude of realism, and, as he has often said, with
an attitude of humility. And I predict that it will be a foreign
policy that Americans will rally behind, and you will all be proud of.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
Moderator: The Secretary said he will take questions now. He has a few
minutes for questions.
Question: Mr. Secretary, how long are we going to keep Cuba in
isolation?
Secretary Powell: As long as Castro continues to be the kind of person
he has for the last 40-odd years. (Applause.)
We believe we are always on the lookout for programs where we can help
the Cuban people, give them access to their families here in the
United States, or in other ways that might help them better their lot
in life. But we will not do it in ways that have to go through that
regime, where the regime will take advantage of our openness. And we
will not do it as long as that regime continues to flout the most
basic elements of human rights: the denial of free speech, persecution
of its people, seizing two Czech citizens recently and keeping them
against their will for no particular purpose. As long as it is that
kind of a regime, you will find that this Administration will stand
strong against it, and the sanctions will remain in place.
Q: Do you foresee a change in the policy or into the situation that
seems to continue to evolve over and over again with Iraq?
Secretary Powell: Well, one can hope. But let's take a look at the
situation as it has evolved over and over and over again, as you
describe it.
At the end of the Gulf War, we had taken that huge army and cut it
down to about 30 percent of its original size, 30-35 percent of its
original size. It is still that size, and perhaps even a little
smaller. It is not the kind of threat to its neighbors that it used to
be. It has been on short rations for ten years, and it shows it.
Secondly, at the end of the Gulf War, Iraq entered into agreements
that had to do with our ability to monitor whether or not they were
making weapons of mass destruction. For ten years, we have been
watching that. For most of those ten years, we were able to do quite a
bit of inspection. We haven't been able to do on-site inspection for
several years now, and that is worrisome.
But the reality seems to be that, even though they are working on it,
even though I don't trust them at all, and even though I'm sure they
have got hidden programs that we can't find -- and I know that they
are reaching out to other nations, trying to get the materials to
develop these weapons -- I am reasonably confident that they do not
yet have the kind of capability that would threaten the whole region
the way they used to.
And so to a large extent, I think we can say our policies have worked
for the last ten years. We have a weak regime that is strong only in
the sense that they can keep this one rather horrible person in power,
with all of his buddies and family members, and they dare not go
anywhere; they are inside their security umbrella, or underneath their
security umbrella. And my commitment right now, and the President's
commitment, is to keep it that way and to see what else we might be
able to do to cause a regime change.
So we are looking at this in several different ways: one, make sure
the sanctions that are important stay in place against weapons of mass
destruction; two, take a look at the no-fly zone that we have had in
place for some years; and three, examine whether or not there are
organizations and people out there who are committed to a free Iraq,
who might want to participate in activities that would lead to a
change of regime.
So he is an annoyance, a terrible annoyance. He is a potential threat
to the region. But at the same time, the world is leaving him behind.
He can show up once a year with a hat on the head and shoot rifle
rounds in the air, but for the most part, he has been contained while
other nations in the world have moved forward and leaving him behind.
Q: I wanted to ask you about Korea. The shooting stopped over there in
July of 1953. We still have troops there. What will be your policy
towards North Korea? Any advances being made there? And will our
troops ever come home from South Korea?
Secretary Powell: Our troops have been there for all that time. As you
know, we have about 37,000 troops there. And as a result of the
presence of American troops standing alongside their South Korean
colleagues, we have seen stability and an incredible amount of growth
and the building of a democratic country in South Korea. So that has
been a remarkably successful investment for us, and continues to be
such an investment.
But it is not only what those troops do for South Korea. They also
show our commitment to the Pacific and to East Asia. Alongside their
buddies in Japan and on Okinawa, part of Japan, and our fleet in the
region, we serve as a balancing wheel, so to speak, for that region.
With the People's Republic of China coming out, with issues associated
with Taiwan, with Japan having a defense strategy that has essentially
said they will remain defensive, the United States plays an important
role in the region. And even if North and South Korea were to suddenly
unify itself, there is a high likelihood that our troops would remain
in the region because they are such a stabilizing presence for the
region.
Until that day happens when we see something fundamentally change
between North and South Korea, we will be supporting the efforts of
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, with his openness policy toward
the North, but we will do it from the standpoint of being very
cautious and careful. There is no other regime on the face of the
earth like North Korea. All power, all authority, all decisions, all
ideas, rest in the mind and person of a single man: Kim Jong Il. He
has a huge army poised on the border between North and South Korea. He
has been selling missiles. He has been developing weapons of mass
destruction. He has also showed a certain level of openness over the
last year or year and a half that we had never seen before from any
North Korean leader.
So we are going to examine what he is doing. We are going to make sure
he understands our skepticism and our caution. We are going to make
sure that he understands that some of the things he has put on the
table are not ready to be picked up because we have to work on how one
would monitor and verify the kinds of things he is talking about.
So we will work with our friends in the region, the South Koreans and
with the Japanese. And in due course, after we have completed our
policy reviews and made sure we understand the nature of his actions
and made sure that we have a solid policy position to engage the North
Koreans, we will engage in due course, at a time of our choosing. And
we are not in any particular hurry. But we will be engaged. We are not
afraid. We just want to make sure that we understand the nature of the
regime, what they are trying to do, and that we have our policies
clearly defined within the Administration.
Q: If you're going to be a value-based foreign policy, what about the
torture and the abuse going on about women around the world, from
India to northern parts of Africa? Does America actually plan on
putting a stop to this or plan on doing any kind of action to go
towards that?
Secretary Powell: I'm sorry. I couldn't hear the first part of your
question.
Q: The abuse and torture of the women around the world, especially in
India and parts of Africa. Does America plan on holding to that policy
of that human rights declaration? I mean, do they plan on doing any
more action to those countries? I know with China there is the human
rights portion to that. Do they plan on doing that to other countries
also?
Secretary Powell: We will be very aggressive in our human rights
activities at every level, whether it is pursuing human rights
resolutions in Geneva directed against Cuba and the People's Republic
of China, whether it is speaking out against slavery, whether it is
speaking out against trafficking in women in some parts of Africa,
especially the Sudan. We will speak out and we will speak out firmly,
and it is going to be a hallmark of our foreign policy -- trafficking
in women, as well as trafficking in children.
We will also be very, very aggressive with respect to programs to do
something about one of the greatest crises on the face of the earth
right now, and that is the HIV-AIDS crisis, especially as it affects
sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a higher percentage of women who
are affected by it than men, as we see in other parts of the world,
and these infected women give birth to children who are infected. So
it is a major crisis and it will be getting our attention. I have
already spent a great deal of time on that.
So to answer to your question is yes.
Q: I just wanted to ask if we are going to continue to stand behind
Taiwan as the years go on.
Secretary Powell: Yes. (Laughter and Applause.)
We have obligations to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act and the
three communiqu�� that came after the Taiwan Relations Act. And these
are obligations we have met over the intervening years to make sure
that Taiwan's thriving democracy remains strong and secure. And we had
very candid discussions with the Chinese Vice Premier earlier this
week, and he understands our commitment and obligation to Taiwan quite
clearly.
Q: Thank you very much, Secretary Powell. Elise Labott from CNN, if
you'll afford a question from your loyal State Department press that
covers you every day. You spoke about Russia and some events this
week. The Russians made a tit-for-tat today, expelling some of our
diplomats. Do you think that this is going to continue, this
tit-for-tat, and how is this going to affect US-Russian relations?
And if I might also ask you about something else you said in your
speech about China, and that you spoke about a lot of difficult
issues. It comes to light that a high-level colonel in the Chinese
Army defected in December. Did this come up during your meeting with
the Chinese Vice Premier? The Chinese are looking for access to this
colonel. And what is happening here?
Secretary Powell: It didn't come up -- on the second point -- it
didn't come up in my meetings with the Vice Premier, and I don't think
it came up in his meetings with the President.
The situation is that the Chinese asked us last December to locate an
individual who was missing. We located that individual, made sure that
the person is in good health, made the Chinese aware of his presence.
And that is as far as I would like to go. This is a matter that
belongs in other Cabinet departments, so I think I'll stick to my
knitting in the State Department.
With respect to the Russian action, I have received instructions from
-- or I received information from our Embassy in Moscow that the
Russians have indicated they will be taking action. We don't really
know the specifics of that yet. They haven't identified anyone or any
names yet, so we will have to wait and see how that plays out. As far
as we are concerned, the action we took the other day was all we are
planning in this matter. We will see what the Russians are going to do
and what the nature of their action is.
I don't think this really throws us into some new deep thaw. Let me
illustrate how broad the relationship is by saying at the same time
all this was unfolding last night, and everybody was writing stories
about what is going on and how terrible it's going to be, our Space
Command was working with Russian authorities to make sure we all knew
where the Mir was going. And as it flashed across the southern sky
last night, it was the United States Space Command, working with
Russian technicians in Russia, in the Republics of Russia and their
various installations in Russia, cooperating as they do all the time
on this kind of activity.
This morning, when I got word that the Russians were about to take
action, I thought it might be appropriate to call our Ambassador in
Moscow, who is a very old and dear friend of mine and one of the very
best members of the Foreign Service, Ambassador Jim Collins, to just
sort of talk him through it, knowing that this could cause a lot of
consternation within our Embassy.
But I couldn't find Jim. I got the Deputy Chief of Mission and had a
good conversation with him. Ambassador Collins was in Irkutsk about to
get on the trans-Siberian express to take a train ride through Siberia
because he had a long-planned trip of going along the trans-Siberian
and stopping at cities and towns along the way to talk to Russian
citizens about America.
So our relationship continues, and we will see what we can do about
isolating this one incident, but we will wait to see the totality of
Russian response.
Thank you very much.
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