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Interview With Michael Duffy and Elaine Shannon of Time Magazine

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
January 12, 2007

QUESTION: One thing that I don't understand about the new way forward on Iraq, if you could just maybe explain to me, is what's -- can you talk a little bit more about the forcing mechanism that kind of compelled the Iraqis to the government, the army, to really turn to this time? I mean, because what's the compelling forcing mechanism that you see?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the compelling forcing mechanism is that this government is not going to survive its own people if it doesn't take control of the situation in Baghdad. That's effectively what they came and told us. And I think they obviously understand, too, as the President said, that, you know, the United States is not going to get involved in a plan in Baghdad that they're not living up to this obligations. And this unfolds over a period of time and so there's a quid pro quo here. We are prepared to do the augmentation and surge if they're prepared to really live up to their obligations. And so I think there's plenty of self-forcing mechanisms.

Sometimes people want us to say, "And if they don't…" Well, you look at the circumstances and you decide the reasons for what did or did not happen. But what we are clear on is this plan isn't going to work unless they actually are living up to particularly the obligations concerning no political interference and, you know, rules of engagement and that sort of thing. So I think there's plenty of forcing mechanism here. And at the time you look and you say, well, what is in our national interest, but you don't stay committed to a plan that's not going to work if they're not living up to their obligations.

QUESTION: And can you talk a little bit about what the timeframe might be for how long we're prepared to wait or prepared to give the government to make it work?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think this will unfold -- I think in the next few months you're going to know whether or not this is working. They bring their forces in starting February 1st. They bring in another set of forces February 15th. And I think from then on you'll have a good sense of how this is unfolding. So it's not as if there is a date, at six months we'll know and then we have to do something dramatic. This is going to happen over a period of time. So you've got time to adjust. You've got time to go to them and say you're not getting it done. It's not as if there's a cut-off point because that's not how it's going to unfold.

QUESTION: One more. And that is, if this government can't make it happen and doesn't come through that way, is there -- do you see other partners in Iraq with whom we could work with who might be able to make it happen?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, this is the elected government. I think you work with this government. I think Iraqis will have to decide whether their government is -- this government is functioning. But that's not, I think, for us to decide.

What I will say is that we are not just working at the level of Baghdad. One reason for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams is so that you can work local and provincial leadership as well and give the policies a chance to work at the local and provincial levels, not just at the national level, building the governance from the bottom up. So, for instance, the successes that I think we're starting to have in Anbar are largely because local leaders have taken control of the situation, local sheikhs. They don't want al-Qaida there. They're training their own young men. They sent 1,100 of them off to Jordan to train to come back. They call them the sons of Anbar. So you can increase the multiple points for success because you don't want a single point for success in any case.

QUESTION: And on that topic, you'll be seeing the leaders of the Gulf States -- the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians. Are you asking them to do more to help with these Sunni tribes out in the hinterlands to try to get them into a process, if not into the Green Zone Maliki process, into some --

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, and they are. They -- to be fair to them, they've been pretty involved in the kind of Sunni outreach for almost a year now. But we'd like to see them be more active on the diplomatic front, more missions there. They need to consider debt relief, the two big ones -- Saudi and Kuwait -- need to consider debt relief. They need to sign on to the international compact so that -- which is really the framework, because that actually has a set of quid pro quos. You know if the Iraqis will do these things, then the international community will provide this set of -- this much support.

QUESTION: This is an interesting moment to be Secretary of State.

SECRETARY RICE: No better moment.

QUESTION: Well, you're going obviously on a big trip now and it looks like you're working on Iraq, also that some of the focus of what you're heading into here is about Israel-Palestine. Can you talk a little bit about why now, why this is an opportunity? Because I guess it's hard for people to see --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, sure. Well, I will -- first of all, I will focus a lot on Iraq because the -- especially with the GCC+2, they need to focus on it. And so we'll spend a lot of time focusing on it.

But I think that there's a -- this alignment is changing in the Middle East and it's changing in large part because there is a recognition that things are really splitting extremists on one side and

I'll call them responsible because they're not all reformers on the other side. And that makes it pretty clear that the Palestinians have to choose and that for Mahmoud Abbas he's made his choice.

And I was very interested. We had a meeting of the Security Council at the time of the UNGA on the Middle East, and we all dreaded this. We thought, oh, my goodness, can you imagine the speeches about 242 and so forth, speeches about occupation and so forth. It didn't happen. It was the Arabs I think recognizing that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in their interest, recognizing -- it probably comes from, frankly, the sense that extremism is growing and Iran is very much backing that extremism. And so it tends to isolate them from the Hamases and the Hezbollahs of the world much more thoroughly than they had been isolated before.

So the other thing is that you had Prime Minister Olmert reaching out to the Palestinians in the speech that he made. You've had Mahmoud Abbas clearly saying that a Palestinian government has to recognize Israel and be, as he calls it, internationally acceptable. They're circling each other and the question is, is this therefore a time to accelerate work on the roadmap, accelerate it in a way that doesn't just focus on today's issues -- movement and security -- movement and access -- as important as those are, but starts to understand what the political horizon might be for this Palestinian state and, you know, can you really start to move in a way that gives you a chance to establish a Palestinian state.

QUESTION: Well, both these leaders have -- are not in the strongest political positions in their own constituencies to get something done right now, so why do you think that they're -- how do you translate an abstract belief that both of them have an existential need to make peace to something tangible, and how do you get the moderate Arabs to also produce something tangible?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I think also a desire. I don't think it's just a need. I think there's actually a desire.

What I've got to do is I've got to go talk to people and see where they are on these issues. And when I've sort of been reading the -- looking back on efforts before, there's a -- if you're not careful and you kind of prematurely launch people face to face and say, all right, go try to get to a solution here, it has a very high risk of failure, I think. I think if you spend some time talking to people, seeing what their interests are, seeing how far they do think they can and want to go, how do they see the changed environment, how do they see the roadmap and the Arab initiative and how do they see the road ahead to the President's two-state solution, you really do need some true consultation time and that's what I'm going to try to do.

QUESTION: You said -- you also said a minute ago "accelerate the roadmap." Did you -- is there some more detail to what you mean by that or is --

SECRETARY RICE: It's just to really push ahead and push through, right.

QUESTION: All right, okay. I just wanted to make sure that was no (inaudible) to that.

SECRETARY RICE: Right. No, no.

QUESTION: Okay, good. So this -- you would say that this is actually, for better or worse, the time to go? This is -- tell me what's a -- maybe this should have been done earlier, but you think this is -- should it have been done before and --

SECRETARY RICE: I think this is certainly the time to see if the opening that I think may be there is indeed there.

QUESTION: Okay.

SECRETARY RICE: I know people think earlier, but it's not as if nothing has happened on the Israeli-Palestinian issue for the last six years. I mean, let's remember where we started. We started in -- we came into office after the -- just after the failure of Camp David, the second intifada had been launched and Ariel Sharon had been elected Prime Minister. I think nobody thought --

QUESTION: I know. I wasn't really --

SECRETARY RICE: Right. No, no, I'm just -- but there are a series of these things. So then the President nonetheless says there will be a Palestinian state and it will be called Palestine, which by the way solves one of the so-called final status issues by fiat. Just solves it.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY RICE: Then we went through a period of almost two years of kind of very tough violence with -- you remember the Dolfinarium and then the Passover massacre, when it was very clear that Yasser Arafat's leadership was going to do nothing, and then a kind of crucial decision by the Administration to say Arafat's done and the Palestinians need new leadership. That took some time to work through the system.

Then there's Iraq, which removes an eastern front problem for the Israelis. And then the beginnings of a process in which the President I think frankly through the confidence that he built with Prime Minister Sharon you began to get a shift in Israeli politics from the center being for a greater Israel to Likud under Ariel Sharon in the famous Herzliya speech saying we have to divide the land. That's a big shift because it's not Labor saying we have to divide the land; it's Likud saying we have to divide the land, the father of the settlement movement.

And then the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza which we worked very hard on. And I think if there's been a disappointment, it's that -- the withdrawal itself went very, very well. But there hasn't been a -- the Palestinians have not been able to control the territory.

So anyway, you went through a series of things and then of course the elections. First Abbas is elected, then Hamas is elected, so there's a question of how to come to a government that will recognize Israel. So it's been a series of changes, fairly dramatic changes over the period, which now suggests to me that you're actually in a better strategic position certainly than you were in '01 but maybe than you've been in ever.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: And on Hamas, Syria has some leverage on Hamas.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Quite a bit. But who has leverage on Syria? Not just -- you've been asked this already -- why not talk to Syria about that? And if you say the U.S. can't or it would be futile, are you asking other states to try to use their leverage with Syria to solve this -- resolve this problem?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there are lots of states that have asked Syria and they essentially haven't responded. I think the best -- in some ways, the pressure on Hamas seems to be coming from inside the territories where the inability to govern because of the international embargo, which by the way when we started down this road people said oh, this will never work, you won't isolate Hamas. Well, in fact, we have isolated Hamas. The international community has isolated Hamas. And now I think the pressure because they can't govern is leading them to seek other possibilities, and we'll see whether or not the Syrian-based Hamas recognizes that.

QUESTION: I think most Americans, if they had a chance to ask you a question, Madame Secretary, would say, "Why don't we talk to Iran and Syria?" Particularly I think Syria. I think they probably draw a distinction. What would you say? Because I think it's hard sometimes for people to understand why we wouldn't talk to people. And they've heard that over the last couple of months and you seem to be saying, "I don't want to talk to those people."

SECRETARY RICE: No, it's not --

QUESTION: Is isolation something that we're sure is going to work or is it part of -- can you just explain a little bit what your thinking is there?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the question is: How do you expect this conversation to go? What's the nature of this talk? Because in diplomacy, you're never just talking -- that just is a notion that is rather naïve. You never just talk.

QUESTION: Well, you have that -- people have that -- that's all right.

SECRETARY RICE: You're talking toward some goal or you're talking to achieve some aim or you're talking to change your relationship, but you're never just talking. When I talk to any foreign leader, I'm not just talking.

So the question is: How does this conversation go? We were talking up until '05, February '05, and even though we weren't getting anywhere, you know, we kept trying to talk. But of course, then you had the Hariri assassination which changed the dynamic considerably as the isolation of Syria grew because of their people thought -- because of their potential role in that assassination.

So what is this conversation about now? Well, people say go and tell them to help stabilize Iraq. Either they have an interest in stabilizing Iraq, in which case they will because it is in their national interest, or they want us to ask them to stabilize Iraq so that they can -- we can pay a price for it. I don't see other outcomes. So how does this conversation go? Well, help us stabilize Iraq. Fine. Recognize our strategic interests in Lebanon. In fact, in that (inaudible) interview, they said well, they'd have to recognize their strategic interests. Well, what do people think their strategic interest are at this point? It's to re-establish Syrian authority and dominance in Lebanon, which they're not reconciled to having lost. And it is to shave the edges off this tribunal so that it can't ensnare anybody in the Syrian regime. And even the act then of talking has consequences for people in Lebanon who begin to wonder: Is there some kind of deal that's going to be made?

QUESTION: It's very helpful.

SECRETARY RICE: So the question is, you know, if you really thought you were going to get somewhere, maybe. But I don't think you're going to get anywhere and there's a cost.

QUESTION: That's it, so there's a cost. I appreciate it.

QUESTION: And similarly on Iran --

SECRETARY RICE: Talking is not - (inaudible) cost.

Pardon me?

QUESTION: Iran you would make this -- you've made a similar argument.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, Iran -- no, it's not as if we haven't tried to talk to them. Twenty seven years of policy. And we set this up very deliberately to give an opportunity to talk to the Iranians at a high level and about anything.

QUESTION: Right. Okay.

SECRETARY RICE: Open -- we didn't say, oh, and by the way, when you suspend and we come to the table, we'll just talk about your nuclear weapons programs. You bring up anything you want and we'll bring up anything we want. And we did that because you -- the consensus you can't break which is the consensus that's actually leading to the -- had led now to the Chapter 7 resolution is that Iran needs to suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities because while you're talking, they're improving their nuclear capability. This is not a good outcome.

And so again, what is the cost? The cost is that you give Iran a channel outside of the internationally agreed channel which is suspend and negotiate -- to negotiate. So I see that one -- I do see that one as different, but it -- again, it has costs and it's not as if we haven't given every opportunity. You know, I remember when someone in Iran said, well, maybe they would suspend for two months. And I was asked, well, that's not (inaudible). Two months, let them suspend for two months, we'll get started. We'll see what happens. So we've tried to be actually very flexible and for reasons that I don't fully understand, but it may have to do with internal dynamics in Iran, they haven't been able to engage.

QUESTION: In terms of Iran's arms trade into Iraq, the President makes a very forceful statement, says have you -- are we to read from this that the U.S. would engage in cross border hot pursuit of people bringing in arms or insurgent elements into Iraq?

SECRETARY RICE: Obviously. You know, I'm not going to speculate about what we would do, but I -- let me just quote what Pete Pace said yesterday in his press conference which is that he -- that their view is this can be done inside Iraq. These networks are operating inside Iraq. This is essentially an intelligence function followed up by action. We've done it a couple of times. We're going to keep doing it. So that's the plan.

The other point that the President was making is the United States has longstanding interests in the Persian Gulf. And you can go back and read statements all the way back to Truman or Carter about America's ability and willingness to defend its interest in the Persian Gulf and those of our allies. And so you know, some of the work that we're doing on helping our friends in the region improve their security capability, defensive security capability, is very important also to counter Iranian assertiveness.

QUESTION: Can you talk just a little bit about -- we raided an Iranian consulate or maybe it was an Interests Section in --

SECRETARY RICE: No, no. We -- it was not.

QUESTION: It was not. Okay, that was my question (inaudible) what it was.

SECRETARY RICE: It was not a consulate.

QUESTION: What would you call it?

SECRETARY RICE: All that I care is it wasn't a consulate. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: And it would matter.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: Well -- which suggested, and it's hard for us to see this, that this is -- that would be part of a network of Iranian infiltration into Iraq for the purposes of either stabilizing or weapons --

SECRETARY RICE: I think that's it.

QUESTION: Is that what we were after here when you talk about networks?

SECRETARY RICE: I think that's a fair assumption.

QUESTION: And this was in the north, I think, or maybe.

SECRETARY RICE: That was in the north.

QUESTION: So this suggested that it's not just in one part of the country.

SECRETARY RICE: I think it's not just in one part of the country.

QUESTION: And is that also increased in your understanding over the last -- since the -- in the last couple of months? Is this -- it's actually. It sounds like we're worried about --

SECRETARY RICE: I think it's been there and it's been increasing for a while, but we've just been more active.

QUESTION: You've just been more active.

SECRETARY RICE: I want to follow up with one thing on that line because I think another thing that people might not understand is whatever else Americans might think of Iran, they'd say well, this is just Iran. I mean, are we -- and they want to be a regional power in the area and they obviously have some tools to do that and they're getting more. But are we increasing their stature by making them into a boogeyman? I sometimes think their rhetoric suggests to people that, you know, well, they weren't that big a deal, but we sure are making them one? How do you balance that and is that a fair criticism do you think?

QUESTION: Yeah. We don't want them to become the kind of regional -- the kind of regional challenge that they could become. They're a pretty bad regional already. But over time, if they're -- you know, their arms and legs, Hezbollah, even now links into Hamas, the ability to have nefarious intellects in Iraq. They're going to have influence in on Iraq -- Iraq's neighbors. That's not a problem. But the kind of influence that destabilizing their and their ability to marry that with a nuclear weapon suggests to me that it's quite a big problem, but you can -- we still have time, I think to arrest these developments. It means rallying those states that are concerned about it. It means being very tough on the nuclear issue. Some of the financial measures that we are engaged in, which are collateral to the Chapter 7 resolution I think are having an affect. So you need to put that policy in place.

But a piece of this is not very often I think seen, as we're also reaching out to the Iranian people. This is a great culture. The tragedy is there should be good relations between the United States and Iran. It's a great culture, it's a great people. But the -- it's not possible with this regime clearly, but we have a group of wrestlers from the United States going to Iran in a couple days. We've had medical personnel from Iran here. They went to the CDC and, you know, and places like that. So we're trying to reach out to the Iranian people, too, and to keep open the hope of the Iranian people for a democratic future.

QUESTION: One of the powers you're trying to rally is China. You've had recent conversations with the Chinese official visiting here on Chinese investment in Iranian oil fields. Obviously I guess it's in the U.S. -- what the U.S. wants to have China not pour a great amount of capital into that country so that they can upgrade their oilfields, which badly need upgrading.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, China will make its own choices about this, but I think you are seeing a decline in interest in investing or certainly guaranteeing investment in Iranian oil fields because what happens is that the market and private entities act both on risk and on reputation. And when you're under Chapter 7 you are a financial risk and you're a reputational risk. Now, China may decide to go outside of that, but it's hard to imagine that that is a relationships that is going to be sufficient to supplant the need for investment in capital from the rest of the world.

QUESTION: Did you receive assurances from China that they would think carefully before proceeding with these --

SECRETARY RICE: We are not asking people. We haven't asked people not to invest in Iran. We've made clear that -- the downsides of investing in Iran.

QUESTION: You watched from a different perch another regime that did not have support of the people that was -- had all kinds of hegemonistic and militaristic rhetoric and rhetoric certainly goals of 150, 20 years ago. When you look at Iran, do you see anything similar?

SECRETARY RICE: To the Soviet Union?

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY RICE: The Soviet Union was a global power.

QUESTION: Old. It was old.

SECRETARY RICE: Pardon me?

QUESTION: It was old, too. They're doing it for a while.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. Been doing it for a while. The one thing that I see that I do see and that it goes back to the question, people say why, well you talked to the Soviet Union, why don't you talk -- is that what we were able to establish with the Soviet Union was a strong position of leverage over time. Whether it was sanctions that not only were aimed at Soviet military power, but at Soviet hi-tech. I remember once saying to someone, (inaudible) a lot of phones. You go into an office in the Kremlin, there are 10 phones on the desk. Well, it's because we have denied them the switching technology that allows you to switch between lines.

We had the strongest military alliance in history. And we talked not just with the Soviet Union but to people like Solzhenitsyn and the dissidents and made it possible for people who wanted to challenge the system, to challenge it. I think Iran will be different. The formula for dealing with Iran, it will be different. But I do know that if Iraq emerges as a stable Shia-led, non-theocratic democracy, but that's a real problem for Iran. It's a real problem for its legitimacy, with Najaf being in Iraq and it's a real problem for its narrative about what it is because one thing that is common between the two is the Iranians have a narrative about Iran's role in Islam.

QUESTION: And is the possibility of a theocratic Shia regime part of the danger to the -- to our interests in Iraq?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, yeah, it would have been except I don't think that's likely to be (inaudible.)

QUESTION: You're not going to worry about that.

SECRETARY RICE: No. I think the more serious issue and it's why the President has been putting forward what he's put forward is that you get more -- that you get failure -- more chaos, which then allows Iran to essentially play inside of Iraq in a major way, but that's the more likely near-term danger.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: And one more question.

SECRETARY RICE: A couple more questions minutes.

QUESTION: Last question on North Korea. Do you see any daylight there, any possibility of a re-start up?

SECRETARY RICE: I think we're in reasonably good -- or let me say a better position on North Korea than we've been for a while because the North Koreans' decision to test actually succeeded in rallying everybody in a very dramatic fashion. We were -- I was on the telephone with the other five -- the other four within hours of the North Korea test and we were in the Security Council with a resolution by the end of the week. That's lightning speed. And the -- what it really showed was the benefit of having worked this coalition over a period of a number of years because it came together just like that. That now with the North Koreans under sanctions but ready now to come back to the six-party talks I think gives us -- and China -- very much concerned about what the North Koreans are doing and in fact a bit -- putting pressure on the North Koreans do to more. I think you've got the conditions in which we'll see. Maybe the North Koreans are going to ignore all of this. But it's certainly the best alignment of forces for a possible solution that I've seen in a while. We'll see whether or not the North Korea see it the same way.

QUESTION: So when will you know whether they will, in fact, walk back into the six-party talks?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think that -- well, first of all, they came back. And even though there is no outcome in those talks, there were actually some fairly beneficial discussions. And I think we've managed this pretty well. Chris Hill has been able in the context of six-party talks to engage his North Korean interlocutor without allowing it to become a U.S.-North Korean negotiation. But that engagement has clearly helped. It's helped moved things along. And so -- and China's activism has been really good.

QUESTION: Thank you.


2007/33



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