|
13 April 2001
Powell: Russian Arms Sales to Iran "Troubling"
Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed a wide variety of foreign
policy matters in a question-and-answer session April 13 with
reporters accompanying him on his aircraft, as he returned to the
United States from a three-day visit to France and the Balkans.
Powell had attended a meeting in Paris of the six-nation Contact Group
-- the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and
Russia -- on the situation in the Balkans, and also met with Russian
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. He then traveled to the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia, where he attended a meeting in Skopje of
regional foreign ministers, and then to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Secretary said it was important for him to go to the Balkans to
show that the Bush administration is "interested in the region,
committed to the region's development, a fostering of democratic
institutions, economic development" and "to get a better assessment of
what we're doing with our....political, diplomatic, and military
presence."
He added that "there are a number of situations that are troubling
which demand the presence not of military troops but of police
organizations and investigatory organizations, and so we have to
constantly be looking for the right balance of presence in the
region."
Asked whether he brought up Russia's arms sales to Iran during his
bilateral meeting with Ivanov, Powell said the issue has been raised
in all of their meetings and in numerous phone conversations.
The Russians respond "that they do have arms sales policies, just as
we do, and they give us assurances that they take our concerns into
consideration and it is their view that they are not selling or
delivering weapons or equipment that we should find troubling," Powell
said. "We do find some of it troubling and we'll continue to discuss
these matters."
On the Middle East, the Secretary said he is "very concerned about the
level of violence. We've made no progress in starting it going back
down....We were able to get the security discussions going again under
U.S. sponsorship, but I'm afraid we are where we were before.
"Until both sides find a way, hopefully through the security dialogue
that's now going on, to get the violence moving in the other
direction, it's going to be very hard to fix the economic problem and
very exceptionally difficult, let me say exceptionally difficult to
even think about negotiations of the kind that we knew last year and
previously. The violence has to come down before you can create
conditions for peace discussions."
Regarding China, Powell was asked about the upcoming talks between
China and the United States regarding the April 1 incident in which a
U.S. military reconnaissance plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter
over the South China Sea, forcing the U.S. plane to make an emergency
landing on China's Hainan Island. "We'll be interested in the return
of our plane," he said.
The crew has been returned to the United States, but the badly damaged
plane remains on the Chinese island.
Powell was also asked about the takeover of Russia's formerly
independent television network NTV by Gazprom, the state-controlled
natural gas monopoly; the debate over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan; and
the percentage of career versus non-career ambassadorial appointments.
Following is the State Department transcript:
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman
April 16, 2001
Remarks to the Press by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
Aboard Aircraft En Route to Shannon Airport
April 13, 2001
Secretary Powell: I don't have a statement.
Question: What did you accomplish in the Balkans?
Secretary Powell: I think it was important for me to go through the
region to show that the Bush administration was interested in the
region, committed to the region's development, a fostering of
democratic institutions, economic development, to get a better
assessment of what we're doing with our presence there, both
political, diplomatic, and military presence. I just had a chance to
talk to the KFOR commander earlier today and get his assessment; and I
was also anxious to visit because of the recent problems in Macedonia
and to see if the political reconciliation process was well underway
so that we didn't have grounds for a repeat of what happened about a
month ago.
I have been talking to President Trajkovski rather frequently, and I
was anxious to get over and see him and to let him know of President
Bush's support for his efforts at political reconciliation in
Macedonia, because it really is the one place that has been reasonably
calm and quiet in the Balkans in a multiethnic society. We want to
show support for that. So, of course, once you're here, it gave me the
opportunity to also -- I did not get into Kosovo, but visit with
Albanian leaders and other leaders, Serbian leaders from Kosovo, as
well as then going to Sarajevo and then meet with the Federation
leaders, the Republika Srpska leaders, and the state leaders.
Question: Back to China. Could you talk for a moment about some of the
difficulties the Chinese and the administration are having now about
where the Maritime Commission will meet and what will be on the
agenda?
Secretary Powell: I don't know yet where they will meet. I'm sure
that's a discussion that's taking place in Washington and in Beijing
and probably more now shifting to the Defense Department than the
State Department. I talked to Rich Armitage earlier and it hasn't been
decided yet, I don't know. What we'll meet about remains to be seen. I
think it's open, obviously, it will be about the incident, we'll be
interested in the return of our plane. They will have many other
things I'm sure they'll be interested in, and we'll see whether the
agenda shapes up, but I don't know what the agenda will be yet.
Question: The reason I asked about where it would meet is apparently
there are difficulties now that the Americans and the Chinese are now
having new renegotiation over that. Can you talk about those
difficulties in particular?
Secretary Powell: With respect to where they meet? No, I can't do
that, because I've been in the Balkans for the last 24 hours and I
just know that conversations are taking place. I don't know the nature
of the difficulties or if there are difficulties such as scheduling
problems, and I will have to yield. I think maybe you'd be better
asking people back in Washington to ask either at the Pentagon or
State.
Question: How important is the return of the plane? Isn't it a given
that the Chinese have been all over the thing now, so how important
for the US is it that they give the plane back?
Secretary Powell: I have to assume that they've been all over it, in
it. It's our plane, and we expect it would be returned.
Question: Can you shed any light at all on the movement in the text of
the agreement from saying the US was "sorry" to saying the US was "
very sorry?" Was there some fight over this, some delay?
Secretary Powell: As I think you've heard me say before, the game
plan, the road map, call it either way you wish, was worked out last
week toward the end of the week, roughly by Thursday we had it in
place. And then as you would expect in this kind of negotiation,
drafts went back and forth, and all the way to the end the Chinese
were trying to get us to accept responsibility and issue an apology. I
only say those two together because it's the acceptance of
responsibility that leads to an apology. We just refused to do that,
repeatedly, so we looked for other expressions that would be useful to
break this impasse and we linked those expressions to two things: one,
the loss of a human life, pilot Wang Wei, and the fact that we did
enter their airspace without their permission in a time of emergency.
We saw nothing wrong with expressing regret and sorrow, we're sorry,
we're very sorry, to make those points.
Now, the Chinese are characterizing that as an apology, but if it was
an apology, then why were they asking for an apology, which they did
not get? So, we should not be fooled by Chinese propaganda that says
they got an apology. If they think that was an apology, why were they
demanding an apology for four days?
I would give you a simple way to look at it. You're driving on a
highway in the Washington, DC area. Somebody crosses the center line
from the other side, plows into your car. The other person is killed.
You are pushed off the side of the road and you hit a car on the side
of the road. When it's all over, and you have escaped luckily with
your life because you were able to get to the side of the road, and
you learned of the death of the other person, you might reasonably say
to the family of the other person, I'm sorry. But your insurance
company would never let you say I accept responsibility and I
apologize. And then I assume you would go to the person whose car you
hit, and since you were forced into that car by the accident, I'm sure
you would also say, I am sorry, but you were forced into that
situation and thereby there was nothing for you to apologize for. Now
I can get crayons and paper and make it simpler, but I think that
captures it.
Question: There was a report in one American newspaper that the plane
was looking at a possible nuclear testing ground. Is there any truth
to that?
Secretary Powell: I never comment on intelligence matters, what they
might or might not have been looking at, but I'm also armed with the
knowledge that I don't know.
Question: What would you say to those, Secretary Powell, who look at
this trip, only your second trip since the administration began and
say,, far from disengaging from the Balkans, this administration is
more involved, in fact, than the previous two administrations were
prior to potential crises?
You got in early. (inaudible)
Secretary Powell: The administration isn't disengaging from anywhere
in the world. The Bush administration cannot disengage from anywhere
in the world. I could take you back to my confirmation hearing where I
said every country in the world is important, we're all part of one
world. So we will engage everywhere that it is appropriate for us to
engage. That is what a great power does. And the Balkans is a place
that we have an interest in. We have an interest in peace and
stability in the Balkans. We are deeply involved in the situation as
it exists there now. We do have troops there, the President said
consistently that he is anxious to reduce our troop levels there, and
we are continuing to review those levels. We were able to reduce them
recently, and we hope to reduce them more in the future, as do all
other nations that have troops there.
We also said that we went in together, and we'll come out together,
and we're not going to cut and run. So we continue to review it, just
as he said we would, and we continue to try to find ways to shift the
burden away from military organizations to police and paramilitary and
other kinds of organizations as the situation evolves. What I saw over
the last two days showed that there are a number of situations that
are troubling which demand the presence not of military troops but of
police organizations and investigatory organizations, and so we have
to constantly be looking for the right balance of presence in the
region -- sometimes it's military, sometimes it's police and
paramilitary, and the US forces that are there in both places are for
the most part combat forces, as opposed to paramilitary or police. So
we're constantly reviewing the size of our forces in order to get them
down consistent with the missions they are performing.
Question: Thank you. But the fact of the matter is, this
administration got in before a potential, whatever, politically before
there was further violence. How do you explain why it is the Bush
administration, you made the decision to come over here now when
previous administrations would sit in Washington and echo the words
that you have but wouldn't act?
Secretary Powell: I can't explain and choose not to try to explain
what the previous administration might or might not have done. As I
looked at the demands on my time, staffing up the State Department --
I finally got my Deputy and my Under Secretary in, and I could start
to get a little freedom from Washington. I went to Mexico with the
President, I went to the Middle East with many of you -- you all
remember that four day trip -- and am going to Quebec with the
President next weekend, and I have a lot of other trips that are now
starting to fill in. So I had this window, and due to my concern and
the President's concern especially about the situation in Macedonia, I
thought it appropriate for me to meet with the Contact Group, go down
to meet with President Trajkovski and the other leaders of Macedonia.
And then while down here, it gave me a perfect opportunity to also
squeeze in the other things. Things tend to pile on when you're
starting one of these schedules, and I found the opportunity to meet
with President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin in Paris, and then I
was also looking for an early opportunity to meet with Igor Ivanov, so
it wasn't just the Balkans. We did a lot on this trip: the Balkans,
the Russians, the Contact Group, the regional foreign ministers -
which was a rather incredible meeting yesterday. I'm sorry you all
weren't there to hear all that.
Question: You've talked several times about the need to consider
alternative kinds of security forces other than combat troops. Will
you be going back to Washington with any concrete proposals for the
United States to change the way it polices the Balkans?
Secretary Powell: I'll go back with my impressions and share them with
the President and share them with Secretary Rumsfeld and Dr. Rice and
others. The judgment about what the balance of forces should be over
there really rests with Secretary Rumsfeld, I think. I and others as
well will be participating in those discussions, so I will share
impressions and then I'm sure that Secretary Rumsfeld is conducting
his review that we'll also discuss. I'll also discuss with the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with Secretary Rumsfeld my
impressions; that's why I have the Admiral, Admiral Doran, with me,
and he was with me for part of the visit in Sarajevo. But no, I won't
have specific recommendations, I'll take back my impressions and then
give those impressions to Secretary Rumsfeld so he can include them in
his review.
Question: Do you intend to be more diplomatically involved in the
Balkans from now on?
Secretary Powell: I will try to be diplomatically involved whenever I
should be, but it doesn't always require me personally to go somewhere
to be diplomatically involved. I met some outstanding ambassadors who
are doing a great job, and so we are diplomatically involved all the
time. I spend a lot of time talking to ambassadors on the telephone.
Will I be more diplomatically involved than what? Yes, I'll be
diplomatically involved, Robin, I'll be diplomatically involved
everywhere that I'm supposed to be diplomatically involved. But I'm
not going to say that I'm going to be more involved in the Balkans
compared to some other place that you might name in the next question.
I'm going to be as involved as I have to be. The way this business
works in my experience is that you try to follow everything, you try
to monitor everything, and then every now and again something becomes
an immediate problem or a crisis and that's where you go. When the
fire alarm goes off, that's the place you have to go.
Question: Are you surprised your second trip turned out to be to the
Balkans?
Secretary Powell: Nothing surprises me anymore, Robin.
Question: You mentioned just a minute ago that there were a couple of
troubling spots in the Balkans which might be more suited to police
investigative groups. Could you say which they were? And one more
thing -- this morning your impassioned talk with Thaci, etc. Did they
seem to take for granted that KFOR would be there forever?
Secretary Powell: I was troubled by the events at the bank last
Friday, the events at the bank last Friday, where things got out of
control. And that was a police kind of action where you needed people
who are skilled in non-lethal riot control activities. The actions of
the HDZ and some of their military units pulling out of the
federation, the military forces, that's troubling to me. That's a
peace stabilizing action on their part. It doesn't mean that military
force has anything to do with it. It requires us to speak candidly to
the leaders of the HDZ about the inappropriateness of such action, and
also speak to the folks we spoke to earlier today about the need to
keep right on going, don't let these sorts of extreme actions on the
part of groups such as the HDZ knock you out of the game plan you have
to move forward with the new federated governments.
Everybody likes having KFOR there, but we're all in agreement that
this problem will not be solved until they see KFOR leave; and we're
all working to that day when there are no forces from outside the
country in the country protecting it and providing for the kinds of
needs that it can't take care of itself. So we should all hope for the
day when these countries are up and running, have their own
institutions and their own forces both military and police to protect
themselves with a solid judiciary grounded on the rule of law and
there won't be a need for outside military units there to help them.
We all should hope for that day and not hang on saying we don't ever
want to leave. That seems to me to be not the right approach and
frankly, we have been leaving since the high water mark of these units
over the last several years, when they were up to forty thousand or
so. I don't have the numbers in my mind right now, but they're down to
twenty. So there have been fifty percent reductions in the size, and
NATO reduces the size of these units on a regular basis and there will
be further reductions over time.
Question: Thank you, sir. You were talking about the value of the
ambassadors in the Balkan area, and you've seen the value of
Ambassador Prueher (U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher), who is a
very good ambassador, and served you very well in this situation. Have
there been discussions within the administration of the number of
professional ambassadors there will be as opposed to ambassadors who
earn their ambassadorships in other ways? Have you had these
discussions where you've seen what a good ambassador can do?
Secretary Powell: Yes, Ambassador Prueher is an excellent political
ambassador. We have had these discussions and I think that we should
have a healthy mix of career and non-career ambassadors. The
non-career ambassadors give you a flavor for the political philosophy
of the new president, the new administration. There are some countries
that would rather have that kind of presence than necessarily a career
ambassador, so I think a healthy mix of both is a good result. We have
made judgments already as to just about what that percentage will be,
and it will not be any higher than it has been in the past. I don't
want to give you a percentage off the top of my head, but it's
somewhere less than a third, so maybe 20, 25 to 33 percent. We will
send no one to a post, however, and the President has made this
commitment, we will send no one to a post who cannot do the job.
Question: I want to know more about your meeting with Mr. Ivanov. We
didn't get much background on that, particularly. I understand that
you spoke about the Iran concerns, both in private and in your public
meeting, and also I wanted to know what prompted you to decide to send
[Assistant Secretary] David Welch to Moscow to talk about the Iraqi
sanctions. Were the Russians very concerned about that, not on-board,
threatening not to support your revamping?
Secretary Powell: Oh no, they issued no threats at all. I think
they're very pleased that we have come up with some new ideas on the
sanctions. Frankly, I'm very pleased at how far we've come with this
policy review and change over the last two months that we've been
working on it. I think you all remember our conversations on the plane
throughout the Middle East, we got pretty solid support. But what the
Russians want to hear and see are the specifics of how we change the
lists, what we look at, what we no longer look at, and how we actually
operationalize this. That's why Ambassador Welch will be going to
Moscow.
Question: The arm sales, and Iran?
Secretary Powell: We are troubled by sales to Iran of various types,
both weapons and technology, and every time I have met with Foreign
Minister Ivanov, twice now, and in our phone conversations, a number
of phone conversations, I've had occasion to raise this either in a
general or kind of specific concerns that were on my mind at that
time. They respond back that they do have arms sales policies, just as
we do, and they give us assurances that they take our concerns into
consideration and it is their view that they are not selling or
delivering weapons or equipment that we should find troubling. We do
find some of it troubling and we'll continue to discuss these matters.
It's important for them to hear from us every time we have these
meetings so that our concerns are never far from their mind in the
decision-making process.
Question: Just a question about the Middle East. How concerned are you
by the latest developments in this region and are you considering to
take any new initiative to bring a resumption of the dialogue?
Secretary Powell: I'm very concerned about the level of violence.
We've made no progress in starting it going back down, the same
concern I had five or six weeks ago when we were all together out in
the Middle East. I spend a great deal of time on this matter, I talk
to the leaders on a regular basis with the same plea. We were able to
get the security discussions going again under US sponsorship, but I'm
afraid we are where we were before. Until both sides find a way,
hopefully through the security dialogue that's now going on, to get
the violence moving in the other direction, it's going to be very hard
to fix the economic problem and very exceptionally difficult, let me
say exceptionally difficult to even think about negotiations of the
kind that we knew last year and previously. The violence has to come
down before you can create conditions for peace discussions.
Question: Two part Question: One, what discussion did you have with
Mr. Ivanov about NTV and Gazprom? What did you say to him and what did
he respond to you? Second part of the question -- how has the recent
experience with the Chinese affected the debate over arms sales to
Taiwan. What factors are you considering that you might not have been
considering before?
Secretary Powell: On Foreign Minister Ivanov and NTV, we expressed our
desire to see media freedom in Russia, and we expressed our concerns
over the possibility that this channel of information for the Russian
people, which heretofore has been open and free, has had some risk of
being restrained in coverage of events in Russia, which is not good,
and we hope a solution can be found which would keep it in open,
unfettered hands. We also talked about the potential role that Mr. Ted
Turner might play in it. I might give Mr. Turner a call and discuss it
sometime in the near future.
Did I get both parts of yours? Oh, China, I'm sorry. Taiwan. We make
our judgment on what to sell to Taiwan on the basis of the [three]
Communiqu�� and the [Taiwan] Relations Act and the procedures and
policies that you know well, and that will continue to be the basis
upon which we make that judgment. We don't discuss it with the
People's Republic of China; that is between us and the Taiwanese.
Obviously, when the environment for such decisions becomes heated as
it is now, as a result of the Chinese response to this incident of the
airplane, then it creates political pressure that we'll have to take
into account; but the decision on what to sell is a decision we will
make in accordance with our obligations to Taiwan, and I'll just leave
it at that.
Secretary Powell: Robin, do you want to try me one more time? You give
up?
Question: I need a quote to explain this high-profile engagement in
the Balkans, which has surprised a lot of us, in light of all the
items on the agenda, that your second trip would be here.
Secretary Powell: Forget the news, give me a bite?
Question: Exactly.
Secretary Powell: I don't know that I have a sound bite for you, but
just to say that I got to know President Trajkovski over the
telephone. He is a Methodist minister who is suddenly the president of
a country, and he is faced with the conflict, and he's going to have
to order troops into battle to deal with this conflict. That was a
very difficult time for him. We had some moving conversations, and
when he got through the crisis on that weekend that you all reported
on so well, with the whole world saying that Macedonia is falling
apart, the Balkans are falling apart, and where is America? I remember
those news stories vividly: where is America?
It seemed to me that because of that fragility at that time, and
because of never having been in the Balkans before myself -- I've
never been there before -- it seemed to me that I better move this up
a little higher on my priority list and make sure I saw with my own
eyes, met the people personally, so I had a better frame of reference
with which to make policy choices, and decisions back in Washington.
Question: Just out of curiosity, since it was your first visit, was
there anything that you saw with your own eyes that surprised you?
Secretary Powell: No, I can't say that... beautiful country that
should have such potential, very, very warm people who have to find a
way to live in multiethnic harmony. Macedonia is the one place that
did not really have that kind of trouble and fall apart and have to be
put back together, and therefore we should do everything we can to
help Macedonia. What moved me was that the leaders I met in Macedonia
have serious differences between them, but they also realize that they
have got to channel these differences into negotiations and not into
conflict and war. To the extent that my visit can reassure them that
that's what we expected and we would help them do that, then I think
it was worthwhile. This was one of those worthwhile -- give me a
break, Robin, I'm tired. Thank you very much.
Return to the Washington File
|
