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'We're Going To Get To The Bottom Of This And Find The WMD': Press Roundtable with US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, August 26

'The State Department Roundtable with Domestic Syndicates, Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, Washington, DC August 26, 2003.

Question: Are allies reluctant to join us [in Iraq] because also we have not found WMD because that seems to be undermining our credibility with the Iraqis?

Deputy Secretary Armitage: You're asking two different questions. I would say that 29 allies already, in this case, allied with us, deploying on the ground, is a pretty good figure, the three others who are in the process of deploying. So certainly, in their minds, there's not a question of credibility. On the question of WMD, I don't think we have any doubt that we'll come up with the right answer. David Kay testified about a month ago now on the Hill, and you would note that both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, came out of those hearings - I won't put words in their mouth, but what I was hearing was general satisfaction with the way Kay was going about his business and the progress thus far. When he's ready to present his case publicly, he will do so, and I think we'll all be satisfied. But I would say that 29 countries already in, three others in the process of deploying, show that our credibility is in pretty good shape.

Question: But, of course, the rationale for the war was WMD, weaponized WMD, WMD in artillery shells or other weaponized means, and those have not been found at all.

Armitage: That is a correct statement.

Question: Does that not undermine the credibility of the United States in an effort to bring in other partners who, you know, are looking from afar saying, "Where is it?"

Armitage: I'm saying no and I'm expressing confidence that we're going to get to the bottom of this and find the WMD. I would note that...we've found MIGs buried - MIGs, big airplanes, MIGs buried - and we recently came across those. One of the things we're doing, we're coping with a security situation while we're trying to exploit sites of WMD, and it takes a bit of time.

Question: One issue that's fairly clear is they didn't have it in a position to be used in the conflict, I mean, to be ready to be deployed in a conflict situation. That has to be obvious.

Armitage: Well, I don't think I would say that because I remember, and you would remember, that as we were rolling forward up from Kuwait we were uncovering brand new protective gear and brand new syrettes of anti-whichever. Was it atropine and all? Yeah, that were found that was just issued. So, to someone like me, that would indicate that somebody thought they were going to use it, and certainly the troops who ran away from our advancing army were issued these, I think, to protect themselves. And it wasn't us that was going to use it. We don't have it. I mean, that's well known.

Question: We've passed sort of a grim, tragic threshold today with the 139th fatality since May 1, so we now have one more troop dying in Iraq postwar than we did during the major combat operations. Senator McCain said last week it was a mistake to talk about major combat operations ending on May 1; it changed expectations, it might have even misled the public. Was it a mistake to declare that? And do you agree with the commander in the field that we're now facing a guerilla war?

Armitage: First of all, I think I feel, and Secretary Powell feels, especially, the loss of every soldier whether it's from non-hostile or hostile fire, the drowning, asphyxia, dehydration - every one of these. I think our whole focus is to make sure that their sacrifice is not in vain. Second of all, Senator McCain certainly is welcome to his view. The President indicated that that was the end of major combat operations. That satisfies me. He also indicated there was still work to be done, because the liberation of Iraq was the beginning, not the end of a process, and a process that ultimately will be completed when the people of Iraq govern themselves and have a stable, one hopes, prosperous future. And then we'll leave. So - and whether this is a guerilla war or an insurgency, of course it is. ...

Question: Korean talks about to start - very difficult and very important, and then there's the resignation announced today of - is it Jack -

Armitage: Pritchard.

[Note: Charles Pritchard, known as Jack, served as a senior national security official and envoy on North Korea under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His resignation was first made public by administration officials on August 25 - see 'US envoy to N. Korea out as talks near', The Washington Post, August 26.]

Question: Pritchard. You know, and of course, the interpretation in The Washington Post and others is that - mixed signals, the Administration hasn't decided what approach... [W]hat is our approach towards these North Korean talks, and, you know...

Armitage: I think, first of all, both as an American and an Administration official, it would be correct to acknowledge that the diplomacy that President Bush and Secretary Powell engaged in to bring this about is pretty noteworthy, because, at the time, no one was thinking this could be done, policy political enemies of the Administration. But we now have six-party talks with North Korea to see if they can air their views in front of all those who have even higher equities than we do, and we can air our views in front of them. And you've seen from the backgrounder given by a Senior Administration Official the other day that we would hope to have another round of talks and that would - it would be, in itself, noteworthy. This is - when you talk about giving the North Koreans something, that would be at the end of a process. And I think giving is not a matter of money or aid. We're already continuing our humanitarian assistance because our President will not use food as a weapon. He's been very clear about that. We are willing to talk about our - well, the President's stated comments about we have no desire to invade, no desire to attack North Korea. We're not about regime change. We're about the complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of the nuclear weapons program in North Korea, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the lessening of tensions, to include the conventional threat. ... On the question of Jack Pritchard, Jack came to us - oh, I may not be right on the date - three months or more ago and said he thought that he had done as much as he could and that he wanted to leave. We asked him to stick around and help us with this diplomacy, to get the multilateral started, and we did, and his resignation becomes - is it today it becomes effective... Last Friday [August 22]. And he had very kind things to say about Secretary Powell, of the stewardship of the Department, and I'd refer you to him. You ought to call him up and get his views. I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but just don't hold me to three months ago when he initially resigned. It was pretty long ago. ...

Question: The President has said all along we're not going to reward bad behavior in North Korea. But, in the past, there have been incentives for good behavior, the 1994 agreement being one example that had some success. What incentives? You mentioned that this comes at the end of a process. What incentives are there for North Korea to change its behavior here?

Armitage: Well, but to be fair, we have to finish the first part of that. In 1994 there was a multilateral - Japan, South Korea, ourselves, the EU to some extent, all involved in the Framework Agreement, and the North Koreans continued bad behavior. I mean, I don't think there's much question of that, to include, when they had the most positively disposed President and Secretary of State in Mrs. Albright in Pyongyang they could possibly hope for, they were simultaneously not moving forward the agreement they'd reached with various parties. So I think, ultimately, the Secretary has said that at the end of a process that normalization could be something that would be considered - normalization of relations. But we're a long way from that. We're going to let it take its course.

Question: Is it your view that there are two reprocessing facilities, at least, in North Korea?

Armitage: It is our view, and what we've spoken publicly about is Yongbyon, which has a possibility of reprocessing the 8,000 rods of spent fuel - and we don't quite know the exact status of Yongbyon - and another highly enriched uranium facility.

Question: You think there is another one?

Armitage: And that's what we have talked to the North Koreans about.

Question: Right. Is it the Hagap facility?

Armitage: I don't even remember the name. I don't know. ... If I knew it I wouldn't tell you, but I...

Question: You...expressed that we have no interest in invading, no interest in regime change. Pyongyang keeps asking for a non-aggression treaty. There's a, kind of a gap, in between...-

Armitage: Well, no, they've said a lot of things. I think you need - one needs to, including me, look at everything that they've had to say. They've said a lot. They want expressions of non-aggression, they wanted a treaty at one time. I think right now, they're talking again about expressions of non-aggression. And so we're a long way away from that. From my point of view, it's not very helpful to speculate on it.

Question: You said before that you're not for regime change there, I mean, but that sort of defies logic. Wouldn't it be better if the regime were not there?

Armitage: I think the most - the least disruptive thing - the most - the thing that would most rapidly lead to a betterment of the situation on the Korean Peninsula is if the regime presently in Pyongyang made a fundamental decision to denuclearize and to open up their country and have a better commitment to human rights. That would be the least disruptive, least neuralgic thing, that can happen. All other scenarios have about it a certain amount of neuralgia. And if one can avoid that, one should.

Question: Are you concerned at all - are you hearing talk more - [former Central Intelligence Agency Director] Jim Woolsey wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about a military option.

Armitage: Jim Woolsey has been writing on a number of subjects. He ought to go back and review the record. I'm not interested a whit what Jim Woolsey's observations are.

Question: There seems to be, [Undersecretary of State John] Bolton and others, Woolsey, who is outside the government, [and] others who are...talking more and more about a military option.

Armitage: I didn't see John talk about a military option.

Question: No, no, I didn't - I didn't say John. I meant there's more - it's a hawkish, "more hawkish view," which I'm sure Bolton...

Armitage: None of them served a day in uniform.

Question: Okay. Bolton is more of "the hawkish crowd," then you have guys like Woolsey who are actually talking military option. My question is, are you a little concerned that we're edging toward a conflict, or potential conflict?

Armitage: No.

Question: Because we have more and more people talking about the unthinkable.

Armitage: There are plenty of people, there are cottage industries here, who think about the unthinkable, and it generally gets them some print. Other people, some of us from time to time, others of my colleagues here who do it for a full-time living, try to make sure the unthinkable never happens, and they would preserve our security and our principles simultaneously. When John Bolton gave his speech [strongly denouncing the Kim Jong-il regime] several weeks ago [in Seoul on July 31], that was completely cleared in this building. There was not one complaint from anybody. He was speaking in his official capacity and he wasn't talking about a military option. We never remove the options from the table, and I won't today. But the President has said, and I echo, he believes that a diplomatic and peaceful solution is possible, and he has given us instructions to pursue it. This is his policy. ...

Question: If I could...return to Iraq... [Former Secretary of State] Madeline Albright had a piece that came out a couple of days ago in Foreign Affairs. And I think she actually touched on what a lot of the debate about this has been, this premise that this was a war of choice, that this was not an essential war in Iraq. Was this an optional war?

Armitage: I don't think the President felt that. The President felt very strong, feels very strongly today that had it - if we were going to protect our security and, as he has said, the security of other friends in the Middle East, we had to do this. And you would note, and Mrs. Albright should note - I didn't read her article - that the statements during her time in office by the President and others were very, very hawkish, both about the possession of nuclear weapons, the direction of the WMD program, of Mr. Clinton, and, occasionally, their actions, to include some bombings and Tomahawkings [cruise missile attacks] of the Hussein administration. So they seem to be heading in one direction. I think after 9/11, we no longer felt we had the luxury of sitting back and waiting for others to take their best shot at us. So...

Question: Not an optional war.

Armitage: I don't feel so, and the President doesn't feel it was. The option was in the hands of Saddam Hussein. Open up to inspectors, let them in. And had - what a different dynamic it would have been if Hans Blix had come back the first time when he spoke to the Council after 40-some days and said we are getting full cooperation, we are this and we are that. But he did not say that. And it gets back to the question you asked about why weren't they used when we were invading. I don't know, and I also don't - if they didn't have them, why didn't they throw it open to inspectors. And...

Question: But doesn't it trouble you, though, that in all the debriefings thus far that they've done, they, the Pentagon and Kay's group [the Iraq Survey Team, headed by former UN weapons inspector David Kay] have done, senior Iraqi leaders, apparently, to a man, they've been saying that there were no programs...

Armitage: No, there are many - I haven't seen all the debriefs, but many that I've seen, of the debriefs I've seen, seem to have a consistency of a general cover story... At a lower level, we've had a sort of a colonel, roughly speaking, lieutenant colonel level. We've gotten other informations and the CENTCOM [US Central Command in Iraq] guys and David Kay's folks who are out looking for these programs daily get information from citizens and others - such and such happened here, such and such happened - then we have to go out and dig through the soil and do all of that stuff, trying to find it. So, I think it's - the debriefs are a little more complicated than your question.

Question: Did - are we going to have a day when a warehouse is opened and this massive inventory is unveiled?

Armitage: I don't - I don't know. I don't know.

Question: What gives you confidence that the weapons will be found?

Armitage: The massive amount - I'll tell you what gives me confidence. This like - I'm not an expert in Iraq, but this regime, like other totalitarian regimes, seemed to have just a thing about recordkeeping. And they keep records on who they executed, who they buried, what mass graves. We're doing all the exploitation and we're finding more mass graves. How many bullets were used, who did it, all of these things. They've got the same - we've got reams of, as you've seen, warehouses full of material that has to be exploited, and so I have no doubt that we'll get to the bottom of a program.

Question: Is Saddam Hussein still at large?

Armitage: Yes, he is.

Question: Is it possible to imagine American troops ever leaving Iraq with Saddam Hussein still at large?

Armitage: Well, he's at large, but he certainly doesn't seem to be, himself, a force, running from hidey hole to hidey hole, as he apparently is doing. And those around him, one after the other is being scoffed up. I can't imagine that he - the noose eventually won't tighten around his neck and strangle him. But I don't think that he, himself, is the total answer. If you had asked the question in a different way, if you were to ask, "If Saddam Hussein is capture or killed, will that end the violence?" The answer to that would be, "In my view, no." And I think it would be important, and it certainly would be a good thing to help eliminate the vestiges of fear in the hearts of Iraqis, but it would not be the only thing that's going on in Iraq today.

Source: Armitage Says Possible Wider UN Role in Iraq Being Explored, US Department of State (Washington File), http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/products/washfile.html, August 28.

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