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Disarmament DocumentationBack to Disarmament Documentation Colin Powell Speech on US-Russia Relations, October 3'Remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the US-Russia Business Council, Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, Washington, D.C., October 3, 2002'; US State Department, Office of the Spokesman. Russia has made fundamental choices for democratic government and for market economics and Russia continues to advance aggressively in both of these directions of democratic reform and markets economics. There have been setbacks, of course. We will all see such things in time and we try to overcome setbacks, but no one worries anymore, there is no concern anymore that we're going to go back to the old days, back to a closed economy, back to the kind of economy that existed for so many years. Beyond forward movement on issues of governance in the market, there was another development that is bound to have a positive effect on the business climate and that is the new Strategic Partnership that Presidents Bush and Putin have established and which they are determined to deepen in the years ahead. I will never forget President Putin's response to September 11th and how that marked the beginning of a new period of our relationship with Russia. He came out and he stood with us against a common enemy. He responded to President Bush's call for all of us to unite against terrorism. He showed what a friend he was to America, to the American people and to President Bush. We have gone from a relationship based on a balance of fear to one that is now based on mutuality of interest. For example, lo and behold, the world did not come to an end last December as many people thought it might with respect to relations with the United States and Russia when we agreed to disagree over a fundamental issue and that had to do with the ABM Treaty. We agreed to disagree and we announced our intention to withdraw. Russia said they disagreed and disapproved of that intention to withdraw, but there was no crisis in US-Russia relations, no new arms race began. I will never forget sitting with President Putin and Foreign Minister Ivanov in the Kremlin as I took them through the logic of our position and what President Bush intended to do. And President Putin looked at me and said, "We disagree with you. We think you're wrong. But it will not change the basic relationship between our two countries because we have important work to do. And there will be a new strategic framework that will develop as a result of this." And now that we have made a decision on this disagreement, it is behind us and we can move forward. And in fact, rather than an arms race breaking out, rather than a fracture in the relationship, six months later in a gilded hall in the Kremlin, President Bush and President Putin sat together and signed the Treaty of Moscow, an historic strategic arms reduction treaty. They also signed a political declaration that redefined the US-Russian agenda. Our emphasis, it said, would be cooperation and joint action to meet the challenges of the 21st century. And then in Rome a few days later, the President joined our allies and President Putin informing a NATO-Russia Council that will foster Russia's full integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. And I'm pleased that the work that has already been done by this new council, and they will report to the leaders of NATO later in the year. ... Foreign Minister Ivanov and I talk, and this is not an exaggeration, almost daily. He's waiting now for a 12:00 phone call, and I will give him a full report of this session. We talk every day about these issues because we want to be this close. We want to make sure that we are inside one another's pocket in the decision process. We share the strategic goal of Iraq disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction. And we are working together to achieve it. There's a great deal of debate taking place now. I'm very pleased at what the United States - or part of the United States Congress did yesterday with respect to giving the President a strong resolution of support, and I am confident the rest of the Congress will join in that effort. And we are hard at work in New York on what we believe is necessary to move that diplomatic process forward: a new resolution that, once again, points out Iraq's failings and that also puts forward a strengthened inspection regime that will be determined by the Security Council and not by Iraq, so that [UN chief weapons inspector] Dr. [Hans] Blix has all the authority to do the job that needs to be done. And it has to be a resolution that all people understand will have some consequences associated with it if the Iraqis do not perform. The discussions are intricate, but I am optimistic that we will find a way forward in the Security Council. We must find a way forward if the Security Council will retain its relevance. But there can be no doubt about the determination of the United States, and I believe of all nations of the world, to include Russia, to disarm Iraq. We can no longer turn away from this danger. We have to disarm Iraq, and the President is quite willing to do whatever is necessary to bring that about. ... Arms control remains a key part of the partnership although the thrust of our efforts has shifted from managing Cold War competition to addressing common threats. I already mentioned our agreement to slash strategic offensive weapons over the next ten years and we are looking at ways to cooperate in areas that used to be off limits, such as missile defense against rogue states who would threaten our homelands and our deployed forces. The new global partnership between our two nations adopted at the G-8 summit recently an initiative to strengthen our efforts to destroy Cold War inventories of dangerous weapons. More and more, our relationship is characterized by cooperation and partnership. This is not to say that we don't still have serious disagreements. These disagreements, however, should not cause us to lose sight of the dramatic changes that have occurred in our relationship on the security front. One such disagreement has to do with our very strong concern about Russian nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology that is still finding its way to Iran. The second concern is Chechnya. We fully support Russia's territorial integrity, as well as Georgia's, but we believe that the solution to the current problem is a political dialogue. ... Both of these issues - Iran and Chechnya and the spillover into Georgia - entail matters of principle for both countries. We cannot minimize or overlook matters of principle. We might disagree, but because we do have such a strong friendship, such a strong relationship, we can deal with these disagreements. We are not building a "pokazuka partnership," one that is just for show. We are building a real partnership. And ours must be a hard one, honest partnership worthy of two great nations with heavy, heavy responsibilities and much to contribute to a better 21st century world. ... © 2002 The Acronym Institute. |