17 June 2001

Powell Says U.S. Will ・Keep Consulting・ on Missile Defense

Secretary of State Colin Powell says the United States will ・keep consulting・ with its friends and allies, but ・we are going to move forward with missile defense because we think it deals with the kind of new threat・ facing the world in the 21st century.

Interviewed June 17 on the ABC television program ・This Week,・ Powell said the United States is ・not looking for a way to break the (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty. We are looking for a way to develop missile defenses that are effective and that will work.

・If this treaty allowed us to do what we needed to do and have to do to provide a limited missile defense, it could stay in effect forever. But it doesn't. It is designed to keep us from moving in this direction. And that was the original purpose of it, but that purpose no longer exists. It is a different world. It is not 1972.・

U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C.
Interview On ABC'S "This Week"
Secretary Colin L. Powell Interview By Cokie Roberts
Washington, DC
June 17, 2001

Secretary Powell: Good morning, Cokie.

Ms. Roberts: And Happy Father's Day.

Secretary Powell: Thank you very much.

Ms. Roberts: The President said after his meeting with Vladimir Putin, "Mark me down as very pleased.'' Why? He didn't agree with him on anything.

Secretary Powell: Well, the purpose of the first meeting was not to get an agreement on anything in particular; it was to create a relationship between the presidents of two very important countries who had never met each other before. And they succeeded. They talked about issues where we have mutual interests and agreement, and they talk about issues where we disagree.

But it was a great first start. These two men have formed a relationship, they looked in each others' eyes. As I said to my Russian colleague, my foreign minister colleague, they took out tape measures and measured each other, and liked what they saw. And I think it's a good way to start this kind of relationship.

There are tough issues ahead but, more important than that, there are many areas of cooperation, and the two presidents pointed that out yesterday, whether it's getting business delegations to go to Russia and having the Secretary of Commerce lead that, and Secretary O'Neill do more, and Trade Representative Zoellick, and what I'm going to be doing with the Foreign Ministry and with Don Rumsfeld will be doing with the Defense Ministry.

So there are many areas of cooperation. We want Russia to keep looking to the West. We believe that Russia's future lies as part of an enlarged Europe. And that was also the point the President made in his Warsaw speech, and his comments also with respect to NATO enlargement. An enlarged NATO does not threaten Russia in any way. That is the point he tried to make. In fact, when you look at the three nations that came into NATO a couple of years ago, their relations with Russia are perhaps better than they have ever been. So NATO membership does not threaten or should not cause Russia any problems. We hope to persuade them of that.

Ms. Roberts: You talk about this relationship and building up some trust, but there have been many reports recently about Russia under Putin being a place that is cracking down. Scholars are being jailed. The United States Government has actually issued warnings to people doing business in Russia that their conversations could be monitored, their e-mails monitored.

Should you be trusting this man?

Secretary Powell: We are troubled by these kinds of issues, and the President spoke to Mr. Putin about our concerns with respect to media freedom, with respect to human rights, and that will be part of the dialogue, just as it has always been in the past with Moscow. We will talk about human rights, we will talk about openness, we will talk about the need for the rule of law.

And if you really want to be a solid democratic country that is part of this enlarging Europe, part of this enlarging world, then you have to meet certain standards. There are certain membership standards that you have to meet if you want to be accepted. And those include a free press, the rule of law, getting rid of corruption. And it is a message we give to all of the new emerging countries that we speak with.

Ms. Roberts: And does that include membership in the WTO, which the President said he thought would be useful?

Secretary Powell: I think it would be very useful for Russia to be a member of the WTO, because with membership in the WTO, you're signing on to rules, to standards, to conditions that you must meet to be a participating member of the WTO.

So as part of this process of moving forward, I think it will be very good for Russia to become a member of the WTO, just as we recently have found that China has met the conditions that will allow accession to the WTO.

This is good. It is part of an international framework of rules that are based on the rule of law, based on economic empowerment, removing trade barriers, items of this nature, that I think allows nations to create wealth, wealth that will benefit their people. Wealth comes from trade.

Ms. Roberts: But you're not saying that China has freedom of the press and human rights?

Secretary Powell: Not at all, and we point that out. I have been very aggressive with respect to criticizing China's human rights policy, as has President Bush and as has the Administration. We have done so in Geneva at the Human Rights Convention recently.

Ms. Roberts: Now, on the subject of the ABM treaty, there was not agreement, and there were stories here while you were there from scientists saying that the United States can test under the treaty. And here's a quotation from a scientist: "They're not seeking to find a way to do this within the treaty,'' said Jack Mendelsohn of the Arms Control Association. "They want to break the treaty.''

Why not do this testing within the framework of the treaty when you have all of Europe saying they want to keep the treaty?

Secretary Powell: There's a lot of testing that is being done now, there is a lot of development being done now. It is all treaty-compliant. So we are not looking for a way to break the treaty. We are looking for a way to develop missile defenses that are effective and that will work.

But we know that the treaty constrains how far you can go. There will come a point in time, with all of the technologies that Secretary Rumsfeld is looking at, where you run into a specific prohibition contained in the treaty. And at that point, we are going to have to find a way to remove that prohibition, remove that constraint, and it may involve removing the treaty as an obstacle to development.

But we're not looking for a way to break the treaty. If this treaty allowed us to do what we needed to do and have to do to provide a limited missile defense, it could stay in effect forever. But it doesn't. It is designed to keep us from moving in this direction. And that was the original purpose of it, but that purpose no longer exists. It is a different world. It is not 1972.

Ms. Roberts: But you didn't seem to convince the Europeans of that. Jacques Chirac says it's "a fantastic incentive to proliferate.''

Secretary Powell: It is not a fantastic incentive to proliferate. If there was no ABM Treaty tomorrow, there is no nation that's going to run out and start developing nuclear weapons just for the sake of it. I think that is a false characterization. And while some of our European friends continue to have concerns about this, other of our European friends were quite supportive, such as the Spanish and the Poles and others.

And so what we have to do is to keep consulting, as the President said he would do, but make it also clear, as the President did, we are going to move forward with missile defense because we think it deals with the kind of new threat that was unanticipated back in 1972, but we had better anticipate it now that we are approaching 2002.

Ms. Roberts: Now, but the missile defense, we don't have a Pentagon budget for 2002, and how is missile defense even going to fit into that? There's a lot of criticism on Capitol Hill now that Secretary Rumsfeld has not sent up a budget and that he's getting criticized by a lot of military people.

Secretary Powell: Well, there is work on an amendment to the 2002 submission, and I am sure that Secretary Rumsfeld is looking at all of the studies that have been done for him over the last four months. He has had a variety of task forces giving him ideas. And I am sure that in due course he will submit a program that deals with all of the President's priorities and the needs of the military in 2002, the budget amendment for 2002, as well as in 2003.

Ms. Roberts: But it's a little late for this.

Secretary Powell: I think you'll see the first major change -- and here I am a little out of my portfolio, but I don't think Don will mind, and I do have certain memories from my days in the Pentagon. I am sure that when you see the 2003 submission, which will be put to bed in the fall of this year and then be submitted with the President's budget early next year, you will see all of the pieces coming together.

And so right now, Don is continuing to do these very, very detailed studies to come up with a cohesive, comprehensive plan as to how the Pentagon should move forward with that.

Ms. Roberts: But those studies are -- the criticism is, they're going on in private. And you've been there, as you say. What would you recommend to him that he do to get away from this kind of criticism?

Secretary Powell: Well, Don is talking to the chiefs, he is talking to the CINCs, he is also talking to people who are not part of the system. And I think that's healthy. What he has done in recent weeks is to take the products that have come out of this study process and give it to what's called the QDR, the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is the inside process within the building.

So the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the other worried persons in the Pentagon are now receiving the results of Don's studies so that they can plug that into the formal process of coming up with a program and a budget submission. So I think this is the kind of tick-tock that will fade away in due course. Don knows that building; he has been the Secretary of Defense before and he knows how to get to the right answer.

Ms. Roberts: The other, of course, big issue in Europe was the question of global warming. And again, you don't seem to have convinced people that abandoning the Kyoto treaty is the way to go. The Swedish president says, "We intend to ratify it and convince the rest of the world to follow our example, not that of the United States.''

Secretary Powell: That is his point of view. We don't think the Kyoto Protocol was the way to go. But what the President did say is that he understands there is a problem called global warming that we have to do something about, although the science isn't yet clear as to how bad it is and at what point does it really become something that must be dealt with immediately, and we have to examine the cost. He also indicated that he's moving forward with technology studies, looking at new ways to address this problem.

Ms. Roberts: But why --

Secretary Powell: He supports the Kyoto process, but he does not like the product that that process produced, called the Kyoto Protocol.

Ms. Roberts: But why did this not convince anyone?

Secretary Powell: Well, we'll see how many people are convinced. You know, the European Union said, we're going to ratify this. Well, none of them have ratified it yet. They've had several years to do so. So we will see whether that ratification process takes place.

Ms. Roberts: Do you think it will?

Secretary Powell: I don't know. I think it's kind of a long shot right now, but we will see. When they start to see some of the costs associated with ratification -- it was a major cost for us, and undeveloped nations were left out of that process, which we thought was a flaw in the product.

And so I think that our approach is a good one. Let's continue to study. We're going to come up with ideas, we're going to be in a leadership role, and we'll see who wins this argument at the end of the day.

But the United States is not walking away from the problem of global warming. We just think that there are other ways to look at this problem, and we are going to seek those other ways and be coming forward with ideas, ideas that will be technologically based and ideas that may well be market-based, to put incentive into our markets to move in the direction of reducing these dangerous emissions.

Ms. Roberts: One more matter on the European trip, and then I want to turn to a couple of other things, which was troops in Macedonia. You said no troops in Macedonia. What was the response?

Secretary Powell: We have not said no troops in Macedonia because no one has asked us to send troops to Macedonia, notwithstanding one press report and some people who are commenting on this issue. The issue that NATO is looking at this weekend is whether or not, as part of a cease-fire which we are trying to arrange now both on the Macedonian side and on the insurgent side, as part of that cease-fire, would there be opportunities to perhaps turn in weapons that NATO might be able to help with. But the United States is not in receipt of a request to send troops to Macedonia to engage in combat or peacekeeping operations.

Ms. Roberts: Middle East. George Tenet has gone to the Middle East. This involves the United States more than you had originally seemed to be wanting to get involved. Is there reason to believe that, after all this time, that he can get anywhere?

Secretary Powell: Well, it is not just George. George did a great job in putting down a work plan for the two sides to follow in implementation of the Mitchell report.

We have been involved in the Middle East from the very first day of the Administration. It occupies more of my time than any other subject and any other issue. So we have been involved. And I think the most important part of our involvement in recent months was to fully put the weight of the United States government behind the Mitchell Committee Report, and then work with the rest of the international community to do the same thing.

So what we are now saying to the Israelis and to the Palestinians and to all others, it is the Mitchell Committee Report that the whole international community falls behind, and the way to get started on that Mitchell Committee road map is to get the violence down, hopefully to zero. We would like to see no violence. That is a difficult objective, but it is certainly one we would like to achieve.

In the last few weeks, as a result of George's work and other things we have been doing, the violence has come down somewhat, not enough yet. And there has been some opening of access, increased access for Palestinians to get to workplaces and get across out of Gaza and out of the West Bank. So we have seen a little bit of progress, but we need quite a bit more progress in order to start the Mitchell Committee road map moving.

But I am hopeful that we can move quickly so that we can get to confidence-building measures after a cooling-off period, and then ultimately get to a negotiating track. At the end of the day, these two people will live in peace only if they can come to final status negotiated settlements of all of the outstanding issues.

But we can't get there if bombs are going off, if people are resorting to the street, if counterstrikes come in response to those actions, and you have a cycle of violence that produces nothing except death and destruction.

Ms. Roberts: Do you see sending in higher-level officials?

Secretary Powell: Higher-level officials have been involved. I am involved every single day, with phone calls, with creating delegations to go there, forming delegations. And it's not just a matter of showing up for a few hours; it's a matter of being deeply involved every day. I am, the President is, the whole national security team is. And at an appropriate time, I will make another trip to the region when I can see the kind of progress that would warrant a trip to the region.

Ms. Roberts: We're just about out of time here, but this week the President decided to stop, eventually stop, the testing of bombs on Vieques Island, and the Congress seems very upset. We have a letter from Congressman Stump and others: '"Until a suitable alternative can be identified and established which can meet all the training requirements currently met at Vieques in a comparable manner, we would strongly oppose any plan that would stop training on Vieques.''

Secretary Powell: I think the Secretary of the Navy has come up with a pretty good solution; that is to say, we will use Vieques for another two years or so, and during that two-year period, we will come up with alternatives. Not another Vieques. It's unlikely you'll find another Vieques where you can do everything the way we have done it for the past 50 or 60 years, whatever the time has been.

But using technology, using simulators, and also finding a place to conduct live fire. This isn't for testing; this is for readiness. Vieques has been used to get our troops ready to go in harm's way, going into combat. And so that's what has made it so valuable, but it also has been a source of enormous irritation to the people of Puerto Rico and Vieques.

And so I think the Navy has decided -- and the President, of course, supports that decision -- that let's find alternative ways of making sure that our troops are ready.

Ms. Roberts: But the Congress doesn't seem to support it, and a lot of people in the military don't.

Secretary Powell: There is mixed -- well, at this moment, you can get every point of view out of the Congress on this subject: those who say do it right away, stop firing right away; those who say no, don't do it until you have a solution. And so I am hopeful the Secretary of the Navy will have an exciting time this week as he tries to bridge these differences.

Ms. Roberts: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Thanks for coming in after your long trip. We appreciate it.

Secretary Powell: Thank you.