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'You Take Note Of Those Who Disagree With You': US Secretary of State Press Conference, Paris, May 22

'Press Conference, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at the French American Press Club, Hotel Clarion St. James et Albany, Paris, France, May 22, 2003'; US Department of State, Office of the Spokesman.

Secretary Powell: I am also especially pleased to be here today, when, in a few moments...the United Nations Security Council will act on a resolution [on Iraq]... I am quite confident that the resolution will pass. It is a resolution that will lift sanctions, after thirteen years, off the backs of the Iraqi people. It is a resolution that will bring back together the international community to help the liberated people of Iraq build a better society, a better country, to repair the infrastructure in the country that was devastated, not by the war, but by thirty years of dictatorial rule. It will show to the Iraqi people that the international community is there for them, notwithstanding the disagreements that have occurred in the past with respect to this conflict. We are now united to move forward. And, it is a resolution that will quickly allow Iraq to have a stream of revenue available to it. Initially, under the control of the provisional authority, as it must be, but with total oversight of an international board and with the participation of the World Bank and the IMF so everybody can see, that the provisional authority will be using these funds solely to benefit the Iraqi people and for no other purpose. It was important to get the resolution lifted as fast as possible, in order that oil could flow, not only to provide revenue for the Iraqi people, but also so that the system would keep operating so that gasoline and cooking gas and other consumer products would come out of refineries as the oil was flowing.

The resolution will also show that there is a vital role to be played by the United Nations. As President Bush and Prime Minister Blair said a few weeks ago, it was important that we recognize a vital role for the United Nations and I believe this resolution does that, by designating the Special Representative of the Secretary General to work in every way with the interim Iraqi administration, when it is formed, to work with the coalition provisional authority, and to help in the process of moving this through phases that will now be right in front of us. First, the administration that we are responsible for, the coalition, and then, setting up an interim Iraqi administration and slowly give them authority as they demonstrate capability and ultimately grow that into a government that will be a government of the people of Iraq, as determined by the people of Iraq, and not imposed upon them. A government that we are confident will live in peace with its neighbors, not develop weapons of mass destruction, and not use the wealth of the people of Iraq, in the form of its oil, to do things which threaten regional stability.

It will take time to get there, but as President Bush has said, and other coalition leaders have said, we are committed to the task. We will stay there for as long as it is necessary and not one day longer, but we will not leave until we have accomplished the mission, which is to put in place a representative form of government that respects the rights of all of the people of Iraq. We will work hard to be make sure that all the residual features of that dictatorial regime have been eliminated, so that there will be no continuing threat to the process of reconstruction and to the process of raising up a new government.

So, this is a wonderful day for the people of Iraq, who have been liberated, and now they see, I hope, with a very, very overwhelming vote, the United Nations as a group, through the Security Council, coming to assist them. And, I think they will see that more and more nations, in the coalition of the willing, now with additional support of a UN resolution, more and more nations who were not initially in the coalition of the willing, as well as those who are, to come to Iraq and help with stability and peacekeeping operations as well as reconstruction activities. ...

Question: ... Mr. Secretary, should the French give a "yes" vote, which is likely to happen according to what we can hear, would you consider it as a first step towards the beginning of Franco-US reconciliation after this big, huge bone of contention between the two countries.

Secretary Powell: Well, I am quite sure France will give a "yes" vote as my colleague Dominique de Villepin said yesterday, and I think it is a step in the right direction of moving forward together. When we were all in Brussels, all the ministers were together in Brussels, a few weeks back, I said this is the time for us to come back together, not fight the battles of the past, come back together because we now know what we are all doing together and there is no disagreement. We have to come together to help the Iraqi people and everybody voting for this resolution today will join in that effort, in that crusade really, to help the Iraqi people. Not a crusade for conflict, but a crusade for peace, a crusade to help people to a better life.

But does it mean that the disagreements of the past simply are totally forgotten? No, that was not a very pleasant time for any of us and we have to work our way through that. There are still some suggestions that the coalition was operating without legitimacy. We were operating with legitimacy, legitimacy provided by UN Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441. There is no question about that and we are not achieving new legitimacy with this resolution that somehow provides a legitimacy that didn't exist in the past. And so, I think that now that we are together in this resolution, we can move forward together and work out any remaining tensions or difficulties from the past disagreements.

Question: A few weeks ago, Mr. Secretary, you said that France would face "consequences" because of its actions before the war. Does it still face consequences and also, is this a new form of American foreign policy that countries that don't go along with the United States are liable to be punished?

Secretary Powell: Well, we haven't, I wouldn't say we have punished France. There has been a review of some of the activities that take place between the United States and France on a bilateral basis, some of our military activities, joint military activities are being looked at in light of the changed circumstances. But, you know I have to remind people, when you say to the United States, "Is this a new form of foreign policy that we are going to start punishing people who disagree with us?" No, but you take note of those who disagree with you, and you try to find out why and if it is appropriate to draw some conclusions and consequences follow those conclusions: that's the way it is. I might, I just have to point out that it was the French government, that when other European nations, the first group of seven and the V-10, came to the side of the coalition of the willing, it was the French government that took them to task for daring to speak their own minds and not simply support the position that had been taken by the French government and to imply that there might be consequences for such a decision with respect to EU accession and other such matters. I hope that we can get all of that in the past, work out any remaining sharp edges, any remaining difficulties that are still there as a result of this disagreement. We have been through these periods of tension before in our relationship and I am confident we will get through this one. But, we have to be sober-minded about it and we have to, take a hard look at where we are and where we're going as we move forward and I think today's actions, which are expected, action which is expected momentarily in the Security Council, is a step forward. ...

Question: Mr. Secretary...may I ask what are the latest news about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein?

Secretary Powell: The mobile vans that you may have been reading about, it is becoming clear that these vans can have no other purpose than the production of biological weapons. Our intelligence community has been very thorough in its examination and has ruled out any other option. I think that's a clear indication that Saddam Hussein had the programs of the kind we were talking about. The vans look exactly like the pictures, the cartoons that I used during my presentation on the 5th of February. And, I'm sure that as we send more investigative teams in and a very, very expert group of individuals - a couple thousand of them are on their way now - and as they go through all the documents and as they take a look at all the potential places where weapons of mass destruction might have been stored, might have been developed, there will be more information forthcoming. There is no question that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and every nation that voted for UN resolution 1441 last November 8th acknowledged that, because the very basis of the resolution was that Saddam Hussein and that regime was in material breach of its obligations. By not accounting for its weapons of mass destruction, and by denying things that were known to be true from previous inspections and by submitting a false declaration they made themselves even more in breach of their obligations and I am confident that the evidence will prove that that finding of guilt in 1441 was accurate and was a solid basis for subsequent actions that were taken. ...

Question: ... [With regard to] the situation in North Korea, is it time for the Russians and the Chinese to play more of an integral role...

Secretary Powell: There...can only be a multilateral solution. North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons, which they say they have, is unacceptable to South Korea, to Japan, to China, to Russia, to the United States, to the world. And so.... Excuse me a moment. 14-0 [vote to lift sanctions at the Security Council]. ... Somebody [Syria] wasn't there. ... And so it [the situation in North Korea] is unacceptable. The only way it can be dealt with is with all the nations who have an equity in this involved. It is not just the US-North Korea bilateral issue, however much North Korea says it is, or how many times they say it. It has to be dealt with multilaterally. The Chinese understand that. That's why they were willing to not only host the three-party meeting we had in Beijing, but to participate fully in that. I think that the other nations who have an interest in this, South Korea and Japan, want to be part of that multilateral grouping if there are future meetings and in my conversations with my Russian colleagues last week in Moscow, it is clear that Russia is also committed to a de-nuclearized North Korean Peninsula, and is willing to play a political role in helping to bring that about. North Korea has to understand that it's going to be multilateral, and that their repeated threats, their repeated claims, their suggestions of that which they might do or might not do is not going force us into a bilateral discussion with them. It is not going to force us into giving a concession that just leads to further demands for further concessions. We want to help North Korea. The President has made this clear from the beginning. It is a country with a starving population, and plutonium cannot be eaten. It is time for them to realize that they have to give up these programs and some of the other things they are doing in order for their neighbors to assist them through this terrible period that they are going through. ...

Question: ... As far as France is concerned, it has made it very clear that it wants to have a multipolar world to, for example, increase the European Union's role in terms of defense and common foreign policy. Given that, how confident are you that the eruptions over Iraq are [not the beginning of ] a [trend]... [H]ow concerned are you that perhaps the direction France is going now may serve to replicate these eruptions all over again?

Secretary Powell: ... Let's take a look at what happened with Iraq. The United States did not go off last September by itself and jump into a war because we had nothing else to do that September. We took it to the UN. We took it to the international community. The President of the United States stood before the UN General Assembly and laid out the problem, laid out the charge. And why did we bring it to the UN, why did we stand before UNGA? Because it was a UN problem. It was a regime that for twelve years had said, "We will not comply." Then we spent seven weeks in the most intense diplomatic effort I have ever been involved in working with members of the Security Council to put in place a resolution that was passed unanimously 15-0, that said serious consequences would flow. So, we worked as a team. Where it came apart was that when we saw the inspectors' work for several months, it became clear to us that Saddam Hussein was playing the same old game of deceiving, of denying. He gave a false declaration. And we felt very strongly that if he wasn't called to account now and faced the serious consequences intended in 1441, he would escape again. And that is where the disagreement came and that is why the second resolution did not succeed in terms of passing in the UN. It did succeed as political action in that it emboldened the United Kingdom, and Spain, and Italy, and Australia, even in the absence of that second resolution, to get parliamentary approval for what they did. The coalition went in. It took care of the regime. The regime is gone. And now, the United States, it is working once again with this resolution today with the international community, to try to bring us all together for the purpose of helping the Iraqi people.

And so we will have many discussions about whither Euro, whither Europe, whither the United States, is the transatlantic community broken up. Is it back together? These are always with us. I have been through many of them over the years on every imaginable issue from the posting of ground-launch cruise missiles, Pershings, in the mid-eighties, all the way up to when the end of the cold war came when I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and everyone was saying, "Well, we don't need NATO anymore." The only trouble was everybody kept trying to join this alliance that nobody needed anymore. And my Russian general friends would say, "We got rid of the Warsaw pact, why don't you get rid of NATO?" I said, "I'd love to, but people keep asking for membership applications. It's a little hard to close down a club that has a waiting line."

And so, I have been through this so many times, and I am telling you what the future is going to hold. The future is going to hold a world that will still have a strong transatlantic community. It will be a world that in the next couple of months, within a year, will have 26 members of NATO and 25 members of the European Union. With those added numbers comes more opportunities for debate and discussion, but that is what democracy is all about - debate and discussion. There will be disagreements, there will be fights, but there will be more areas in which we agree, more areas in which we can come together as a transatlantic community to deal with some of the transatlantic and now increasingly international problems we face. ... But more importantly, as the wealthiest part of the world, [there must be] a commitment on the part of all of us to help the people around the world to a better life. As long as we keep our eyes on those values, the transatlantic community is going to be fine, and I'll let others decide whether uni-polar, multi-polar, bi-polar, whatever, you know. I don't use those terms very often because I am not sure what they mean. ...

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