U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
Other State Department Archive SitesU.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
U.S. Department of State
Home Issues & Press Travel & Business Countries Youth & Education Careers About State Video

Roundtable with Traveling Press

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Kuwait City, Kuwait
January 16, 2007

Travels With Secretary Rice Middle East and Europe, January 12-19, 2007

SECRETARY RICE: Okay, we're about half way through the trip, a little bit more, and I'm very pleased with what we've accomplished so far and what we've been able to talk to people about here. Obviously, launching the informal talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis I think will be a very positive development and it's been received positively by the states here in the region and I think they are prepared to try and support the Israelis and the Palestinians as they try to accelerate progress on the roadmap.

I've also had pretty extensive discussions of both Lebanon and Iraq. Everyone is getting ready for the Paris conference and there's been a good deal of discussion of how to really support the Lebanese Government at the Paris conference.

And then of course I briefed the President's plan on Iraq at all the different stops and there's I think very good support for the American commitment there, very good support for the objectives the President wants to achieve. I think everyone says exactly the same thing which we are all saying too, that it requires now that everybody fulfill the obligations of the plan and that means particularly that the Iraqis have to carry through on their obligations. But it's been favorably received everywhere and we'll see tonight at the GCC+2 how these states intend to try to support the unity government in Iraq. But I think it's been a very positive reaction thus far.

So with that, I'll just take questions.

QUESTION: I wonder if I can ask you about the reaction to the three-way talks announcement yesterday. Prime Minister Olmert's spokeswoman said we're still in early stages of building confidence necessary to open peace negotiations. She said that the three-way talks are kind of an avenue to build momentum for the bilateral talks. And I think Abbas's spokespeople were also kind of cool about -- polite but cool about it.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, it was Abu Mazen's idea, so let me just make that very clear. He had some time ago said that he would like to see informal talks between him and the Prime Minister. I thought it was a very good idea. Prime Minister Olmert thought it was a good idea. And so it really came out of my conversation with Abu Mazen that this might be a useful path to take.

Of course it's going to be a step in confidence building. That's really the purpose here. And as I've been saying to you, when people have not talked about things like this for six years, I think it takes a little time to build some confidence. It's also the case that we do hope, or I do hope, that it will also reinforce and lend momentum to the bilateral negotiations or talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis that have to deal with very difficult and concrete issues.

And it's partly been Abu Mazen's view, which I think I agree with, that in order to keep making progress on these concrete issues which require things like movement, of checkpoints, and working on money transfers and the kind of day-to-day, that there would be momentum lent even to that by having talks about a broader horizon. So I do see that they work together, but I have no intention of interrupting what I think is a very useful channel, which is the bilateral channel.

Andrea.

QUESTION: The Saudi reaction was so lukewarm to your expectation of the results, not the objectives, but whether Maliki, as you've acknowledged, will live up to -- whether the Maliki government will live up to the task. And how does that (inaudible) if the -- if people in the region, including our most important ally, do not think the Iraqi Government can succeed?

SECRETARY RICE: Andrea, that's not what I heard him say. As a matter of fact, I heard him directly say to you that instead of the pessimism that you were expressing he was going to take the optimistic track and he was going to work for the optimistic side. So I just would characterize it very differently.

I do think that there is, as I said in the Congress, some skepticism about whether or not the Iraqi Government is going to do the things that it has said it's going to do.

QUESTION: What I'm saying is --

SECRETARY RICE: Well yeah, but --

QUESTION: The Saudi reaction was that they think the objectives are good, but that they are skeptical that the Maliki government will --

SECRETARY RICE: And as I said, Andrea, everyone is concerned as to the Iraqis' willingness now to really do all the things that it needs to do -- get the national reconciliation -- not because this isn't a group of people who want very desperately to get it done, not because they're not people who understand their responsibilities, but this is very hard. After years of living in tyranny, after years of dealing with your problems by repression or violence, after years of being in exile, after years of these grievances, it is really hard to do what they're trying to do.

And so I think people are saying this is very hard, they didn't succeed in doing it to now, but it isn't a sense that it can't be done or that it's not worth supporting them in trying to do it. And I thought that the Foreign Minister was very clear that they believe that the objectives are right, they believe that what the President is trying to do is right, and now it depends on the Iraqis performing and they are going to try to help in ways that they can to make that --

QUESTION: He doesn't doubt Maliki's sincerity? I mean, I think you just said a moment ago that -- you indicated that he endorsed Maliki's sincerity.

SECRETARY RICE: No, let me be very clear. There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an even-handed, nonsectarian path here. There's no doubt about that. And after -- again, after all the years of deep grievance in the region, within Iraq, it's not surprising that that's the case. But everybody wants to give this a chance. That's the position of people in the region. And there is, in fact, a burden on the Iraqi Government to perform. And I think having met with Prime Minister Maliki, having spent time with his team, that he knows the tremendous burden that they're carrying, he knows how much they have to do to get this done.

When you say that something is hard or that people are going to have to live up to obligations that are very tough to take, that's not unusual in circumstances like this. And so I think to sort of over-interpret what is a very clear concern about whether the Iraqi Government can get this -- can do this, that's my only point. Let's not over-interpret it.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Just to get back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, this morning I went back and looked at the letter that President Bush gave Ariel Sharon in 2004 and it -- it's a rather long letter, but one of the points it made was it talked about an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for the settling of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state. It also discussed, you know, as other plans have, that the large settlement blocs would go to Israel.

Do you think that having publicly made that position that that might make it difficult for you to be a, you know, even-handed broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians?

SECRETARY RICE: I think, Glenn, the other part that the President enunciated is that this needs to be all negotiated. And so that's the process is that it will be negotiated. I don't think that there is -- as you said, that there are many, many plans and many, many ideas and in fact they all converge around notions that are not unlike that. But I think that this is a matter for negotiation and we'll see what comes with the parties. But we'll try to assist the parties to get to solutions when we get to that point.

But one reason that it's important to have a period of time, if you want to call it confidence building or you want to call it informal talks, is to break the ice and to get them talking about these sensitive issues. I want to -- it's not all that they need to talk about either. They need to talk about security, security concepts. They need to talk about how to complete the first phase of the roadmap. I mean, neither side has fulfilled that either.

QUESTION: Well, a lot of that letter describes a lot of commitments that the Palestinians are supposed to do, but they --

SECRETARY RICE: Right. Well, and there are commitments that the Israelis need to fulfill, too. And so the advantage here though is that rather than talking about what we're going to do this month in terms of this checkpoint or that transfer of funds, they're going to be encouraged to talk more broadly about how they get to the future and establish the Palestinian state. And I think that for quite some time there has been a concern that if you only talked about the obligations under the first phase of the roadmap, as if the roadmap precluded talking about other things, that we would never make progress. And so I think this is a chance to break through that.

QUESTION: If I could just follow up --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: I also looked back at the -- Clinton's parameters that -- since you said they haven't talked about this in six years, and he talked also about the idea of the fact that most of the Palestinian refugees would go back to Palestine. But he also said all refugees should receive compensation from the international community for their losses and assistance in building new lives. Is that something that the United States believes and supports?

SECRETARY RICE: Glenn, I don't -- I'm not going to start making American proposals on particularly the most sensitive of issues just when we've launched a process to get the parties to talk.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, Glenn. I appreciate that very much. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: To accelerate --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, thank you very much for helping us to accelerate. But let's not hit the accelerator going -- (laughter).

QUESTION: By the way, these ideas --

SECRETARY RICE: We -- at an appropriate time, I'm sure that we will have ideas as well as others who will have ideas. But right now, both sides have the sense that it's not wise to start with a "international conference " that -- you know, that really raises expectations that something is imminent. It's not wise to just sit and keep talking about the obligations under the first phase of the roadmap. It's wise to have informal discussions that are broader than that.

Now, in the time between now and when I come back, I think there will be more discussions about how they'd like to structure that first meeting. I think there will be more discussions about what the agenda might be, what the parties want to put on the agenda. They both were very clear that they understand that the roadmap still needs to be fulfilled and so I wouldn't be surprised if there are also discussions about how to do that.

But I don't want to start proposing things, especially here, Glenn, just in -- you know, (inaudible). (Laughter.)

QUESTION: In talking to Iraq's neighbors, sort of despite the optimism that you sense, do you also get the sense that --

SECRETARY RICE: No, I didn't -- no.

QUESTION: Okay.

SECRETARY RICE: I said that in answer to Andrea's question, when Andrea said, you know, "What are you going to do if the pessimistic scenario comes out," and he said, "I'm going to basically -- I'm going to bet on the optimistic scenario." That's what he said.

QUESTION: Okay. All right. So well --

SECRETARY RICE: Let me not accuse anybody of being optimistic, all right? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Do you get the sense that they may be making plans to intervene unilaterally in Iraq if it got to the point where they lost confidence in the Maliki government? For example, Turkey going into --

SECRETARY RICE: Right. I think everybody understands that that would be -- that kind of unilateral intervention on behalf of various parties in Iraq would be disastrous. That's why you hear words that are -- that would preclude a territorial integrity of Iraq, unity of Iraq. That's really what people are talking about. Because the problem with that scenario, of course, is that it won't be one of Iraq's neighbors intervening; it'll be several of Iraq's neighbors intervening all with different interests and with -- with different interests. And so nobody wants to go that route.

I do think that they -- at present, what people have been doing is to try to use the contacts and ties that they do have in a positive way to reinforce the possibility of people being involved with the Iraqi political process. And I think that's helpful.

QUESTION: But Madame Secretary, the Iranians are already heavily involved --

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Not just militarily, but politically --

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: -- in Iraq and clearly, the Sunni government, the Arab governments -- you know, they may not be sending their own forces in at this point, but how do you remove the Iranian political influence which people in this part of the world seem to fear is creating, in effect, an extension of the Persian empire now in Iraq?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the first thing is you don't make a self-fulfilling prophesy because the way to moderate Iranian political influence so that it is kind of the normal influence of a neighbor, not influence that is outside or influence that is in some sense divisive is to reinforce the unity of Iraq, reinforce its territorial integrity, reinforce the fact that this is an Iraq for all Iraqis and reinforce the nonsectarian character of the Iraqi Government so that it is resistant to and Iraq is resistant to influences that would be of the kind that you talk about.

And so a strong Iraq where you have a leadership that represents Iraqis that is embedded in its Arab traditions, that is also, I think, resistant by its very nature to transferring the yoke of Saddam Hussein for the yoke of Iran. I don't think that that is really high on the list of preferables for any of Iraq's leaders. They all see themselves as patriots. You know, there was the statement not too long ago by some leaders that -- about, you know, the Iraqi leadership being Iranian-influenced and I've never seen the Iraq leadership come together more quickly than on that issue because they want to be seen as -- and they are -- Iraqi patriots who are not in the pockets of anyone.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: If I could, the White House put out some paper before the President's speech trying to help us understand what he would say. And one of the sentences leaped off the page for me. It said, "Power centers are devolving with events outside the international zone becoming more relevant to national trends." Hard for me to understand how, until December of 2006, for people to realize that things outside the green zone were important and were affecting political life in Iraq.

I understand the language of devolving power. You can staff the PRTs, you can get people to go there, but how do you work with the regional leaders specifically beyond Maliki and how do you get money to them specifically to rebuild given the corruption and lack of infrastructure.

SECRETARY RICE: Right. We should have paid more attention to the tenses because obviously the PRTs started almost 18 months ago, so this trend of devolution and decentralization began some time ago because we thought that you couldn't build success from just inside the green zone, that you really had to build it bottom-up as well as top-down. Once it was clear that Iraq was going to be federal after the constitution, it then became very, very important to build local leadership. And I think it's actually in many ways somewhat easier to work at the local level in the terms of the delivery of goods, services and governance structures.

If you look at what PRT leaders have done in Mosul or what they've done for that matter in Anbar, when I talked to the PRT leader in Anbar, for instance, he told me that three or four times a week he's with the leadership in Anbar talking about everything from, you know, how they're going to have neighborhood security to dealing with al-Qaida to the fact that aid has been slow from the central government to Anbar and he can then help be in a sense an intermediary to our people in Baghdad who can push the Iraqi central government to get aid into Anbar.

I think that in Mosul they've had -- I actually visited in Mosul on one of my first trips as Secretary and the Governor was there. What was very clear was that his daily concerns were things like, you know, is that sewage system getting built and why haven't we gotten the funds from the central government in order to do that, and then a PRT leader can work on that. They can also work on governance structures. They hold -- they meet with local councils to make them more effective at governance. They do democracy programs in the governance -- governing areas. They do women's empowerment programs in the governing areas. We expect that they're going to do more in the way of micro-loans in the local areas.

So it's really much more aimed at making local and provincial governments capable of dealing with the day-to-day problems of the people where the people live. We think it's actually a pretty effective way of going about it --

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, just getting back to the Israel-Palestine again, you -- what kind of sense did you get as you left Jerusalem about the Hamas-Fatah Abbas split? I mean, certainly Hamas looks like it's positioned to be a spoiler here in everything that you're doing. Now, what did Abbas -- what kind of sense did he give you about where that stood?

SECRETARY RICE: He continues to hold out the possibility and continues to work for a national unity government based on his program. And of course, his program is one that is acceptable to the international community because it recognizes the agreements of the past that would then in effect recognize the Quartet conditions. He believes that -- and I agree with him -- that the best outcome would be to have a unity government that does that. And so he's continuing to talk to people about it.

I think for Hamas to interfere though with the -- President Abbas's efforts to discuss these issues with Israel would actually run counter to what is enshrined -- I can't tell you whether it's law, statute or constitution -- but the PLO is the negotiating authority with Israel. Even Hamas recognizes that. And Abu Mazen is the head of the PLO. So in fact, he is well within the bounds of Palestinian law to take up negotiations or in this case pre-negotiations or in this case informal discussions with the Israelis. Pre, pre, pre, right.

QUESTION: Do you think he has constitutional authority to call an election (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm not a constitutional expert on the Palestinians. I'll let them sort that out.

QUESTION: It's not a matter of debate though whether he really could do that or not. Do you think it's a good idea?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I have a lot of confidence in Abu Mazen and his desires for the Palestinian people and I think if he decides to go that route then he will have his chance to make -- Fatah will have its chance to make its case to the Palestinian people. But I find him somebody who's looking for -- examining multiple ways to get out of the Palestinian political crisis, but I really think that's a matter for the Palestinians to decide.

QUESTION: On the roadmap, there are clearly three phases and phase two talks about, among other things, a provisional state with temporary borders. President Abbas the other day was very clear that that might be a problem for them. Is there any thought given to perhaps shortening the distance between phase two and phase three perhaps, if not speeding up at least not only talking about the end game but giving the Palestinians something more substantive on the horizon?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think it's worth examining. I don't think that the nature of a provisional state isn't proscriptive in -- isn't proscriptive in the roadmap. And at some point you would have to move anyway from the establishment of a state to actually being able to occupy the state, so to speak, because there's a lot of work to be done.

But my own view, and I frankly have been telling people this, that if we get to that point it seems to me that it may be more difficult to negotiate a provisional state than just to go to the end game. You know, we're not there yet and we'll see. But it -- I'm not -- I don't find myself in violent disagreement that the provisional state may or may not be useful.

QUESTION: On the first phase, you have said before that that's -- that the fact that everything in phase one is not done shouldn't be a reason not to talk about two and three.

SECRETARY RICE: But it will have to be done. And I think that the point that I would make is the sequence is still very important. The sequence is set up that way for a purpose, although in some ways the sequence has already been broken. They're out of Gaza. I mean, the Israelis are out of Gaza. That was not anticipated at the time of the roadmap. But they're obviously going to have to fulfill the obligations that are in the roadmap because you couldn't possibly get to a Palestinian state unless you have done that.

But there's been a bit of a sense that that somehow then precluded talking about where you would end up, even beginning to discuss seriously where you would end up. And I think that's what we broke through is that even though everybody stays -- believes in the roadmap, everybody believes even in the sequencing of the roadmap, that discussing the end game doesn't somehow violate the precepts of the roadmap and I think we've gotten into a little bit of a -- a little bit hung up on that point.

MR. MCCORMACK: We have time for one and a half more questions.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, I would like to go back to a question. And I know you didn't like --

SECRETARY RICE: (Laughter.) Why would you say that, Sylvie? (Laughter.) Yeah.

QUESTION: You met with Mr. Lieberman in Israel. And, when I asked you about that, you told me that he's not officially recognized member of the congress.

SECRETARY RICE: He's a minister, Minister for Strategic Affairs, as a matter of fact. These are fairly strategic affairs that we're talking about.

QUESTION: There are other internationally recognized officials and you don't want to meet with them. Does it mean, for an example, that an extremist from Israel is more palatable than an extremist from Syria?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I am not talking to anybody from Syria right now, Sylvie, so, you know, it doesn't matter. I don't associate myself with his views or with the views of everybody, anybody that I necessarily talk to. Some people I agree with, some people I don't. But he's a minister in the Israeli Government and he -- we had a very interesting discussion, for instance about Iran, which I think is an important discussion to have with someone who is doing strategic affairs for Israel.

And so to meet with somebody is not necessarily to endorse every view that they hold, but he is a minister in Israel and we are going to need to enlist everyone that we can to move forward because these are going to be difficult issues going forward and I hope that as broad a range of Israeli politicians will support this process as possible. And if it helps to get a broad range of Israeli politicians to have conversations with them, I think that's a useful thing to do.

Neil.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask a kind of ponderous, rainy day question. And that is, you talked -- you mentioned several times on this trip being a student of history and you often recite 1948 and Dean Acheson and the Cold War and 1989. So I'm just curious if there are any moments in Arab history, the history of region, that inform your thinking. A lot of people would cite the British occupation of Mesopotamia or the British experience in Egypt or France in its experience in Algiers -- or Algeria.

QUESTION: Qadisiyah.

QUESTION: Pardon me?

SECRETARY RICE: Back in the seventh century?

QUESTION: Well, there's a lot of things. I'm just curious. Thank you, Barbara.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, Barbara. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: But I'm curious as to what --

SECRETARY RICE: Would you like to enlighten us further on that point?

QUESTION: When the Arabs beat the Persians...

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, okay.

QUESTION: I'm just curious if there are moments that -- or if there are lessons that you draw with the U.S. experience at the moment from instances in Arab history as opposed to European history or --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, let me just say that I think there are obviously -- you know, I've read the British experience and I know a number of things that went right and I know things that went wrong. I also know that one of the challenges is the particular way this map was drawn and you just have to be aware of that. And you have to recognize that a country drawn on the fault lines of -- the religious fault lines of the Middle East is going to have a complicated way of moving forward to be able to overcome those fault lines. The way that they've been overcome in the past was either through repression or -- repression if they were the majority if they were in Iraq, or in some cases even worse, expulsion or whatever.

It's not easy to have those differences overcome through a political process. So yes, but you know, I also look to other moments in the history of this region. There have been people who have taken great chances and great risks -- you know, the names Rabin or Sadat or whatever -- and it reminds you that sometimes coming out of very bad crises there's an opportunity for leadership on the part of individuals in those positions to do something very major. So sure, I look at the history of this region all the time.

But I want to be clear. I'm not using history in an -- to make analogues between any historical period and now because I actually think that history doesn't repeat itself. I think that conditions change so fundamentally that you're rarely looking at the same circumstances and you're certainly not looking at the same circumstances when you look at Europe and you look at the Middle East or Asia.

But the point that I've repeatedly tried to make is that there is a tendency -- and it's not just the daily news cycle, which is what people always attribute it to. But there's a tendency to look at where you are now and say, oh, my goodness, there are all these problems, we'll never get out of them, this is so difficult, it must be failing, it must be failing, it must be failing.

And the reason that I cite some of these other times like Europe is that it is so clear in everybody's mind that the United States and its allies came out victorious at the end of the Cold War. It's very clear in everybody's mind. Soviet Union collapses, Eastern Europe is liberated, NATO expands, et cetera, et cetera. But if you actually go back and look at the events that ultimately led to that, you would have thought that this was failing every single day between 1945-1946 and probably 1987 or 1988.

The other point that I was making -- this one I was making to Barbara earlier -- is that there's a tendency to think about diplomacy as something that is done un-tethered to the conditions underlying it or the balance underlying it. And in fact, that's not the way that it works. You aren't going to be successful as a diplomat if you don't understand the strategic context in which you are actually negotiating. It is not deal-making. It's not. It is -- there are a set of underlying relationships, underlying balance of power, leverage on different sides, and you have to recognize when you are in a position to then on top of that find a solution given the underlying balance.

And again, not to analogize, but my favorite case of this is if you had tried to negotiate German unification for any period of time until 1990, you would have not been able to do it because the underlying circumstances were not there. And so we were all -- I was part of the team that worked on German unification. You know, I feel terrific that we were able to do it, but let's not overestimate that it was somehow just that we did the diplomacy well.

I'll give you another example, again from my own experience or from my academic experience. We tried to negotiate a cut in Soviet and American strategic forces, nuclear forces for the entire period from the start of the SALT process at the end of the 1960s all the way till the middle of the 1980s. And when did we finally do it? When the balance of power favored the United States so overwhelmingly and the Soviet Union was collapsing. So you have to understand the underlying circumstances.

That's why I think reading the Middle East right now, I tend to place a lot of emphasis on the fact that people see their interests differently now than they did five years ago or ten years ago. They see their interests less as continuing or having maximalist positions about this conflict and are more concerned about the kind of broad strategic picture. I think Lebanon was a major contributor to that shift in alignment; and with that shift in alignment, I think you now have a chance to perhaps make progress on this issue in ways that you didn't before.

QUESTION: Along those lines, there's a lot of talk --

MR. MCCORMACK: This has to be it.

QUESTION: -- that the Israelis' view and the Sunni Arab view and the Persian Gulf states' view is more in alignment partly because of Iran and there might be some opportunities for engagement with -- between Israel and Saudi Arabia and Israel and the Persian Gulf states. Do you see that as a possibility that that will align?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, actually, this is one that was contemplated of course in the Arab initiative and -- first the Crown Prince initiative and then the Arab initiative. And certainly as we go through this process, I would hope that you might be able to build on what was contemplated there again, contemplated but not followed up perhaps because circumstances underneath weren't quite right. Perhaps now there might be more room for that. And I would hope so because we all talk about Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, but Israeli-Arab reconciliation is also important.

Okay, thanks.

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

2007/T1-9



Released on January 16, 2007

  Back to top

U.S. Department of State
USA.govU.S. Department of StateUpdates  |   Frequent Questions  |   Contact Us  |   Email this Page  |   Subject Index  |   Search
The Office of Electronic Information, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.
About state.gov  |   Privacy Notice  |   FOIA  |   Copyright Information  |   Other U.S. Government Information

Published by the U.S. Department of State Website at http://www.state.gov maintained by the Bureau of Public Affairs.