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Disarmament DocumentationBack to Disarmament Documentation US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on relations with Iran and Russia, October 13, 2007Roundtable With Traveling Press, Secretary Condoleezza Rice Moscow, Russia October 13, 2007. SECRETARY RICE: Okay. Why don't we just go directly to questions. QUESTION: Can we follow up on your human rights meeting with the activists this morning? SECRETARY RICE: Sure. QUESTION: Can you give us a sense of to what extent you talked about human rights in Russia generally when you met yesterday with President Putin, and then whether it featured at all -- I suspect it didn't -- in the 2+2 meeting, which is, you know, different turf. SECRETARY RICE: Well, the meeting with President Putin was also 2+2, which means that there was a certain subject matter and character to that meeting. I think you know I've spent lots of time with President Putin on internal developments, on human rights issues, on the evolution of the political system. Yesterday was not the opportunity for that because with both Secretary Gates and myself and their Defense Minister and their Foreign Minister, we really did focus on the 2+2 agenda even with President Putin. I spent a good deal of time on internal developments with both Prime Minister Zubkov and with Dmitriy Medvedev as well as with Sergey Ivanov last night. So -- and Sergey Lavrov and I will talk tonight about a number of issues. So that was the kind of division of how we're doing this. QUESTION: Just one follow-up. Can you give us some sense of -- and I know you don't speak for the Russians, I'm not asking you to do that -- but this is a conversation that has been going on between the United States and Russia for many years now, sometimes very publicly like with Secretary Powell's Izvestia piece, sometimes more sort of quietly. Do you -- can you give us any sense of how they respond and whether over time you think that they have gotten any more sympathetic to your concerns or whether over time they perhaps, you know, have gotten less sympathetic and have had less of an ear for what they might regard as American interference? SECRETARY RICE: You know, it never takes that tone or character. I think we're beyond the time when we're told to mind our own business. I, frankly, haven't encountered that tone in any of these conversations. They do talk about their own history. They talk about their own evolution. They talk about the fact that this is 15 years in the making, that it's not a very old system, trying to find its way toward democracy. But I've continued to make what I think are the essential points. There are issues of human rights and we've been concerned and I've talked a good deal about the problems of individuals, journalists and others, who have had difficulty. But there are also institutional issues, issues about the -- in a presidential system not having strong institutions, countervailing institutions, to the presidency. And I've been very open about the concerns that that raises in any country, not just in Russia but in any country. If you don't have countervailing institutions, then the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development. And so I don't -- it hasn't -- if you're asking have they gotten more aggressive in rejecting those arguments, no. Do I think that they are -- that they've made much progress in terms of the development of countervailing institutions? No, I don't think that either. But I did spend a lot of time today with the human rights groups activists, was talking about how we might start to design some of our programs so that they better connect to politics. And I mean to politics in the country, the politics of people. So that's the kind of thing that institutionally I think we can help. QUESTION: They gave a very long list of all the problems they're facing -- NGO restrictions, anti-terrorism measures that are used against political opposition. I mean, did you come away with that given a sense -- with a sense that the U.S. can do anything to reverse it or are you left with this at the end of the your tenure? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I thought that one interesting comment was that, if you remember, we worked very hard on the NGO law, and the comment was that it -- the law itself, like many laws, are not so bad, that the question is really implementation and concerns really that for larger human rights groups who can deal with some of the bureaucratic issues, they can get through them, but concerns about very small human rights groups. And so that's a place to work and to see if we can prevail upon the Russian Government to be more forward leaning and less bureaucratic for smaller groups. We didn't -- I didn't get the sense, frankly, that on the issues of the NGOs -- there wasn't much of an argument that the law itself was problematic. The implementation can sometimes be a problem. But even then, some examples were given of things that have not yet happened but that are feared might happen. So that's the nature of the conversation. It was at that level of detail. QUESTION: Can I ask just one question just on your philosophy in terms of how you approach human rights issues? Are there areas where you try to focus on that you think you can be constructive and are there areas in which you just say I'm not going to go there because what I have to say, say about, you know, President Putin's, you know, political future, it's just not constructive or -- in your mind, can you just kind of explain your -- how you approach that issue? SECRETARY RICE: I try to -- well, obviously, I raise all of them. But I think this country is in the process of developing its institutions and developing the relationship of those institutions to each other and the relationship of the government to the citizens, and the ability of citizens themselves to engage in meaningful political activities. And so I'm always very concerned that there be space for citizens, Russian citizens, to organize themselves in order to be able to petition their government. That's why I spent a lot of time with the NGO community. In fact, I've seen several of these people two, three, four times. We have worked for -- and let me just give you an example. Disability rights. You can consider it a human rights issue. You can consider it an issue of political organization. You can consider it an issue of cultural tendencies to ignore the concerns of the disabled. It's all of those things. And some of the work we've done with -- it's called Perspectiva -- QUESTION: Perspectiva. SECRETARY RICE: Perspectiva -- tries to address all of those elements. And I think you have in that organization now an organization while it is very focused and specialized in what it's advocating for actually is making a difference in the way the political system responds to that particular need. I think a lot of Russia's political development is going to come in that way, because if you think of the way political systems develop, they develop when citizens decide that their individual concerns, rights, needs are either being met by government or not being met by government. And so you need to help develop political space for people to be able to petition their government. And I spend a lot of time on that. And I think maybe it's in part because I'm a Russianist. I think that's one thing that has been missing; every time there has been political liberalization in Russia; that has been a gap. And so we've been talking about more ways that we can use our dollars to support that kind of activity. QUESTION: Did you raise the case of the inquiry in Politkovskaya murder? SECRETARY RICE: I will raise that with Lavrov. QUESTION: You will? SECRETARY RICE: I'm seeing Lavrov tonight. QUESTION: And in response to Mike's question, you said -- Mike specifically referred to the question of President Putin's political future, and you said I raised all of that. Does that mean you -- SECRETARY RICE: No, I didn't. QUESTION: We shouldn't read it that way? SECRETARY RICE: You should not read that that way. I talked to people about the coming months and how they see the coming months, because it is a time -- and I have said that I thought that the way these elections, both the Duma elections and the presidential elections, are carried out are being watched very carefully, not just by the international community but by the Russian people. And how these two elections are carried out will have an effect on whether Russia is making the next step on toward democracy. I think that is really quite obvious and I have talked to people about that. QUESTION: Do you have a view about whether it's a good idea or not on Putin? Any comments? SECRETARY RICE: I'm not -- I just don't think that my speculating about something -- QUESTION: I'm not asking -- SECRETARY RICE: No, I'm just explaining. I'm just explaining why I think it's better not to answer this question. There's a lot of speculation about who's going to be president, whether President Putin is going to take any of a number of jobs or no job at all, and I just think speculating on that is not going to help this -- QUESTION: He didn't raise it, though? You mentioned on the plane that you wouldn't turn the conversation down. He didn't -- SECRETARY RICE: As I said, this discussion was very focused on the kind of 2+2 kinds of issues, just I think because of the composition of the meeting. QUESTION: But you've now -- you had dinner with Sergey Ivanov, right? SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm. QUESTION: And you met two other men mentioned to be the most likely candidates. SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm. QUESTION: Did you get any sense from them at all maybe -- I'm not asking you to speculate now, but do you feel like you understood maybe a little bit more about where things are turning, or do you still feel like you simply don't know, like most people seem to not know? SECRETARY RICE: I don't think any of us know. QUESTION: To follow up on that, does that in any way affect the way that the United States deals with Russia now? Because there is a high degree of uncertainty. SECRETARY RICE: Yes, there's uncertainty. But we -- Russia has a president and a foreign minister and defense minister, and you deal with them. And until that circumstance changes, you do the business of government with those people. No, it doesn't change the way that the United States deals on the kinds of issues that we are here talking about, on Iran or on missile defense or those issues. QUESTION: But the next 2+2 meeting, if it happens in six months, as you agreed yesterday, will happen under a new president here. SECRETARY RICE: Well, it depends on when it happens, right? Because the -- QUESTION: The presidential elections would be March, beginning of March. SECRETARY RICE: But then there's a transition period. QUESTION: Before the inauguration. SECRETARY RICE: Before the inauguration. So I don't know whether it'll be a new president or not. QUESTION: But they seem to be fairly confident that what you agreed on yesterday is going to be carried through, so they obviously have an idea that no matter who's around, no matter who's taking over, they're going to carrying out the same policies, no? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know about the same policies, but I think if there are agreements then, you know, it's not at all unusual that the next government honors the agreements of the former government. QUESTION: But we're not talking about a treaty or MOU, as we were told last night on background. I mean, these are kind of just some abstract ideas, very broad, and you -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, let's see where we are. You mean in terms of missile defense or -- QUESTION: Yeah. SECRETARY RICE: Well, if we have come to an agreement about a sort of joint regional architecture, I'd expect that the next Russian Government, whoever is president of it, would carry that out, just like if we come to agreement on a joint regional architecture I would expect that the next American Government, whoever is president of that government, would carry it out. You know, you couldn't do international politics if there was constant reversing of agreements that have been struck. QUESTION: Well right. But you know, even in case of mistakes, I mean, if one party comes to power there may be less influence, less interest, in missile defense. SECRETARY RICE: Sure, there may be. QUESTION: And you didn't get the sense from the Russians that -- SECRETARY RICE: No. QUESTION: -- they're wavering a little bit? SECRETARY RICE: No, no. I think on their foreign and defense policy, to the degree that anybody can predict, you know, it looks like it'll be fairly stable. But you know, I would just caution that change is change, and I don't know what the next president of Russia will do. I think we just have to proceed from the -- from working with this President of Russia. QUESTION: Is it frustrating at all, you have - Presidents Bush and Putin are supposed to have this great friendship. I mean, is it frustrating to see such big differences on things like missile defense, on democracy? SECRETARY RICE: No. I mean, it's the nature of big, complex relationships. And I do think on missile defense and also on CFE for that matter, we've been looking to see if Russia indeed does want to cooperate. They have said they want to cooperate. They have said we have a common -- we have common threats. We don't agree on the exact nature of the threat, but we have common threats. And that they're interested in cooperation. So what we've done during this trip is to put on the table proposals, conceptual now -- the details really need to be worked out -- but conceptual proposals that we think will address what the Russians have said are some of their concerns about moving forward on missile defense. To my mind, if they want to cooperate, we've given them every reason to do so, and so now we'll have the opportunity to find out whether or not indeed they want to cooperate. QUESTION: A follow-up on Michelle. As you reflect back on like the last six years since 9/11, clearly in the first year or two after that there was a lot of progress made on relations with Russia. There's been a lot of commentary that since then, you know, things have cooled off. And as you yourself kind of step back and kind of review the arc of the relationship, do you feel like there is anything the Administration, you know, could have handled better? Could it have made it more a priority? Could it have made it -- SECRETARY RICE: It was a pretty high priority. I think the Zubkov said that the President and Putin have met 23 times. Now, I can't vouch for that number, but if it's anywhere near that, that's a lot of priority. QUESTION: But what about the -- putting that aside, just about your general analysis of just how you - SECRETARY RICE: This is a country in the midst of a big transition. And I think some of the aspects of that transition have made the U.S.-Russia relationship more difficult. For instance, clearly some of the ways in which the oil and gas industry have developed here with very close connections to the politics, with concerns about whether or not contracts are stable, with concerns about the use of energy for political motivation, have introduced strains into the relationship. I don't see, frankly, anything that the United States or for that matter the rest of the world did that led to that set of developments. I think it really was a set of variables that are exogenous to the U.S.-Russia relationship that led Russia to develop that very important resource in a particular way with more state ownership and more state involvement in that sector than might have been predicted even four or five years ago. Clearly, some of the developments in places like Ukraine, to a certain extent Kyrgyzstan, and the way that those developments, those internal -- developments internal to those countries were read by Russia, which was to read them as potentially threatening to Russian stability, I think again is something exogenous to the U.S.-Russia relationship. So I think there are a number of things that developed in ways that put strains on our relationship. On the other hand, some things developed in ways that made it more -- made us more capable of cooperation. I don't think we had the level of cooperation on nonproliferation that we'd had recently until we found a way to cooperate on the North Korean issue, until we made the decision in May of 2006 to enter the European 3+3 and to form that framework, because it was the European 3 and then Russia was sort of on the sidelines of it. Our decision to enter into that put us in a group of six with Russia that has actually produced two Security Council resolutions. And yeah, we have tactical differences about how strong or when, but the degree to which that has held together I think is pretty remarkable. So there have been some things that have been exogenous to the relationship that have led to strains in it, some things that have actually led to better cooperation in the relationship, and I think it's sort of the character of a big, complex -- QUESTION: And do you think you've misread Putin (inaudible)? SECRETARY RICE: I think I -- we all -- I certainly always read him as somebody who was going to do what he thought was in the best interest of his nation and was going to be, in a sense, transparent about that. Where there have been differences, I think it's because I think we read those interests differently. QUESTION: What is his legacy? SECRETARY RICE: Putin's legacy? Well, let's wait and see where we are in March. QUESTION: Can you talk about your meeting with the Prime Minister, the new Prime Minister, I mean your impression of him? He was a fairly unknown entity in the agency. SECRETARY RICE: Well, but he wasn't unknown to us. We had actually had pretty close cooperation with him on issues of anti-terrorist financing -- or terrorist financing and measures against it. And so even though I had not personally met him, a lot of our people had and had a good impression of him in that context -- his capacity to get things done. We made a lot of progress on that whole complex of issues. And so he wasn't unknown to us. I found him competent, on top of his brief this morning. We went through a number of issues. He was very focused on prime ministerial kinds of issues. We talked a good deal about the WTO, about economic relations. I raised, and as I said talked at some length, about issues of institutional development in Russia, democratic institutional development in Russia. But you know, I found him -- QUESTION: What was his response to that? SECRETARY RICE: Well, he -- you know, he talked about the fact that this is a young -- I mean, it's not that long since the revolution and -- or since -- yeah, since the revolution of 1991, and so forth. But again, I talked -- I tend with the Russians to talk a lot about what I see as institutional deficiencies because that's really the issue here is: Is this country going to have countervailing institution to the presidency? QUESTION: You mean the parliament, the courts? SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm. Parliament, the court, independent media, civil society. I think it's extremely important, as all of us have done throughout secretaries of state coming here and even presidents, to raise individual cases of people who have been mistreated or cases of unresolved disappearances or murders or whatever. Those are very important to raise. Ultimately, democratic guarantees come from institutional development. Democratic governance comes from a president who can never be too strong because there will always be a congress or a parliament to check him or her, because there will be an independent media to shed light on what is going on. Now, we did have in one case a kind of interesting discussion of how the Internet will be a source from which people will get their information globally, not -- and so one wonders to the degree that you even control the media how well you'll be able to control information in the long run. And this is a place that is going to be wired coast to coast. Well, I don't guess coast to coast is quite the right image for Russia, but from one time zone all the way out to the other. And so one wonders, even if there is an attempt to control the media, if that's going to work in the long run. And I tend to think not. QUESTION: Is the Russian presidency too strong, in your view, as currently constituted? SECRETARY RICE: I've said that I think there's too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. And I've told the Russians that. I've said it publicly before. Because it's just the absence of -- I think everybody has doubts about the independence, full independence, of the judiciary, although at certain levels -- I think -- I can't remember the numbers now, but Russian citizens almost always win against the government when they go to the judiciary, so it's not -- it's not widespread, but on a lot of very high-profile cases I think there are questions about the independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are I think questions about the strength of the Duma. QUESTION: Madame Secretary, if I might change the subject for a second onto Turkey. Can you confirm reports that Edelman and Fried are going over there right now? SECRETARY RICE: Yes. QUESTION: And also on that, how strained is the relationship with the fact that the Ambassador has been called back? I mean -- SECRETARY RICE: I think it's a tough time and we tried to tell people it was going to be a tough time. This is not unexpected because the Turkish Government is trying to act responsibly. I spoke yesterday to the Foreign Minister, the Prime Minister and the President of the country. They recognize all that the Administration did. And by the way, not just the Administration. On a bipartisan basis, eight former secretaries of state, three former secretaries of defense, people on both sides of the aisle. They recognize how hard we worked to prevent that vote from taking place in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We have pressed the Turks very hard over the years, and not just this Administration, to be forthcoming with Armenia, to deal with the history. They've made some overtures. Those overtures should be taken up. But yes, it's not an easy time for the relationship and it was perfectly predictable. QUESTION: And having said all that that you've tried to do, the Administration (inaudible) what do you do now? How do you go forward? How do you -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, we'll keep -- first of all, we'll keep working to try to prevent it from becoming -- from winning on the floor. I can't give you a predication on it. It will be tough. We'll certainly hope that it doesn't come up in the Senate. We will continue to try to help the Turkish Government make the case that this is not how the American -- that the American people don't feel that the current Turkish Government is the Ottoman Empire. And you know, we'll continue to try to deal with anti-American sentiment that has been heightened by this vote. But we are certainly working to try to minimize any concrete steps that the Turkish Government might take of some of the kinds that have floated around -- you know, restricting the movement of our forces or the like. And I'm hopeful we can prevent that because I think we and Turkey both understand the importance of the strategic relationship. But yeah, it is very difficult. And this is not a situation that we should have been in. QUESTION: (Inaudible) can you just give us some insight on what the reaction was from them yesterday when you spoke with them? SECRETARY RICE: They were dismayed, let's say. QUESTION: To what extent were those conversations yesterday dealing directly with the bill; and to what extent were they addressing, if at all, the recent Turkish statements, which I know are not new, about the possibility of incursion? SECRETARY RICE: I addressed both. I addressed both. QUESTION: And I presume that you -- SECRETARY RICE: -- urged restraint. Absolutely. I urged restraint, urged them to use the mechanisms that are available, which are trilateral mechanisms between the United States, Iraq and Turkey. Reminded our Turkish colleagues of something that they always say to me, and by the way said to me yesterday, which is that we all have an interest in a stable Iraq and that anything that is destabilizing is going to be to the detriment of both of our interests. So we did have that discussion and then we talked also about our common desire, I think, to minimize any -- to minimize damage to the relationship. But it's very hard for that government, where I think the people are perhaps having a hard time distinguishing as to who favored this and who didn't. QUESTION: What is the purpose of the Fried and Edelman mission? Do they have -- is it to talk about (inaudible) repercussions if -- SECRETARY RICE: It's obviously not -- it's a difficult time for the relationship. We're good friends and good allies. And we just thought it was a very good idea for two senior officials to go and talk with the Turks and have reassurance to the Turks that, you know, we really value the relationship and that we're looking for ways to minimize difficulties in it. QUESTION: Did you get a sense they will exercise restraint with regard to the possibility of a major action, not hot pursuit -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, that's certainly what we're advocating. And I do know that they recognize the danger to their own interests of destabilizing the north of Iraq. QUESTION: How about the Iraq conference? Has that at all (inaudible)? SECRETARY RICE: Well, it's scheduled to go on and I'm assuming that it will. Again, we have so many common interests with Turkey. This is -- it's not as if anyone is looking to make trouble. We have good relations with that government and good relations with Turkey. But clearly, the vote was dismaying for them and, frankly, dismaying for us. QUESTION: What is the status of General Ralston? QUESTION: He's gone, right? So now it's -- QUESTION: His resignation has been accepted or -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, we have not had a chance to talk, so let me not comment. I know that he is -- he is desirous of, you know, not having to continue. But he has said that he'll try to help where he can and when he can. And he's terrific. He's really done a good job in trying to bring that together. QUESTION: (Inaudible) so you're hopeful that he'll stay on? SECRETARY RICE: No, I think that we will have -- it'll be a different relationship. But I know that he has offered that when he can help, he will. QUESTION: You said that the relationship with Russia is strained. Do you think there is -- SECRETARY RICE: I said there are strains in the relationship. QUESTION: Do you think there is an internal political reasons to that? SECRETARY RICE: You mean here in Russia? QUESTION: Yes, in Russia. That's -- it can be convenient for Putin to lose the -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, we have talked from time to time about the need to avoid certain rhetoric and the need to avoid painting the United States as responsible for various ills. And so I don't -- I'm not going to try to judge motivations, but I've made the point that we need to try to keep this on a professional level of international partners and not to vilify the other. QUESTION: And you think you have time before the end of this Administration to mend this relation? SECRETARY RICE: Again, I don't think that most of the strains in this relationship, and it is -- the reason I reacted to the notion of strained relationship is that we have an awful lot of things that are going well in the relationship, too. But I don't see the strains in this relationship as having come up as a result of particular policies. Many of them, whether you're talking about the energy issues or whether you're talking about our concerns about the development of Russian internal politics or whether you're talking about the neighborhood and some of their feeling or expressed feeling that they're being encircled, I don't think these are issues of policy. I think these are issues of the way that Russia is developing in this period of transition. And so, frankly, I think there are strains that -- those are strains that might be there for a while and they're probably going to have to be managed. QUESTION: On Iran, to what extent did that subject come up in your two days of talks here? SECRETARY RICE: Quite a lot. QUESTION: Especially with Mr. Putin. Can you give us any insight? Did you gain any more insight into how they think about -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, we talked a lot about it. QUESTION: -- the way forward? SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, we talked a lot about it. But we talked about it in the context of the agreement that we have about next steps. I don't find the Russians all that impressed with the Iranian record either. They do have concerns about how certain actions could lead the Iranians to, you know, not cooperate with the IAEA and so forth. We don't want to see Iran fail to cooperate with the IAEA either. But it's our belief that their cooperation with the IAEA is probably going to be incented more by making certain that they know there's an alternative and that there are consequences to noncooperation. So we have those kinds of discussions. But we know where we're going over the next couple months and so that's what we -- that's the framework in which all these discussions take place. QUESTION: And where would the differences be, do you think? SECRETARY RICE: I think they're more to -- QUESTION: Lavrov yesterday publicly seemed to -- SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. Look, there are three. First of all, I think there is the issue of how much of a next step the next resolution should be. And that comes really down to details of what are you going to put in a resolution or not, and that's what political directors are working on. The second is timing. It's no secret that we would have preferred to do this a month or so ago, but recognize that there were others who thought that it might make sense to get some read from ElBaradei and some read from Solana before we did it. And the third is this issue that arose yesterday, although it's been there for a while, which is what else is going on outside of the UN Security Council track. And I've had to explain that there are certain things that the United States is doing that are consistent first of all with our laws and second -- and we're going to remain consistent with our laws; secondly, consistent with our concerns about what Iran is doing to endanger our forces in Iraq; and third, consistent with our intention to keep the integrity of the international financial system, and that is not to allow Iranian entities, banks that are using the financial system to trade in terrorist financing or proliferation financing, to use the international financial system in that way. And that means that when we find that kind of activity, we're going to -- you know, the Treasury will, in accordance with our law, sanction that activity. That then leads to have the cascading effect because then private entities in other countries don't generally want to be associated with entities in Iran that are under suspicion for dealing in terrorist assets or in proliferation assets. So it has a cascading effect. I fully acknowledge that. But the intention is that we're not going to let Iran use the international financial system in that way. QUESTION: Were the Russians onboard with the FATF statement yesterday? SECRETARY RICE: I'm sorry? QUESTION: Were the Russians -- the FATF put out this big statement yesterday about Iran. Maybe, I don't know, I just saw it briefly, but I'm just wondering if the Russians were onboard with that. SECRETARY RICE: I'm not sure I've caught up with this. MR. MCCORMACK: It's not a story, Matt -- I can get you -- SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I'm sorry, Matt. I wasn't -- I didn't catch up with it. QUESTION: And yesterday when -- before, as we were all waiting at the dacha, Lavrov came out for a smoke in the billiards room. SECRETARY RICE: Oh, did he? QUESTION: And he was asked if there were going to be any breakthroughs, or if he thought that there were going to be any breakthroughs. And he said, "Breaks certainly; through or down, I don't know." How would you react? Were there any breakdowns or -- SECRETARY RICE: No, there were no breakdowns. Sergey has a sense of humor. No, there were no breakdowns. (Laughter.) Look, we'll see. But as I said, our goal in coming here was not to have the Russians say, oh yes, that's a great idea. Because we came -- Secretary Gates and I came with conceptual ideas as to how to break an impasse that we've had, particularly on missile defense, about their concerns about what that system could mean, about their concerns that we even though we know it is aimed at an Iran that we have a particular assessment of that they don't have the same assessment, and they're worried -- some of them are -- and the most articulate on this is their -- are their generals, who have a certain view of this system. Now, I think you've all heard me say that I cannot conceive of how somebody could think that this system would have an impact on the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent. But let's take at face value that there are -- that they have concerns. Not we believe, that they have concerns that there is a breakout potential or a future development potential that could degrade their strategic nuclear deterrent. We came with a set of ideas about how to deal with those various concerns, because we really do believe that the best thing to do would be to cooperate. When President Putin was at Kennebunkport, he told President Bush that he believed that cooperation in missile defense could lead to a fundamentally different level of U.S.-Russian cooperation that has ever been seen or -- you know, it was a -- he had a very almost dramatic way of presenting what missile defense cooperation could mean for the relationship. So we want to take that very seriously. And if they say here are the reasons we think we can't cooperate, then we came with some conceptual ideas of how we might address those concerns, and now we'll see with those ideas on the table whether or not they believe that cooperation is possible. QUESTION: Did his -- does that concept include lunar -- (laughter). Because fundamentally, you know -- because, you know, the Russians -- the Kremlin spokesman, you know, their interpretation of that comment was a bit of a shock. SECRETARY RICE: Yes. QUESTION: Was that, you know, he was not trying to make fun of it. He was trying to say that, look, you know, we can get to a point where this -- is that -- SECRETARY RICE: I thought it was kind of a joke. I don't know what you -- QUESTION: You didn't see it as derogative form? SECRETARY RICE: No. Look, President Putin does have this kind of way of speaking, you know, and he makes these sort of offhanded comments from time to time. That's how I read it. It didn't really occur to me that it was a comment that was serious. QUESTION: Did you laugh? SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, actually, I did, I think. QUESTION: Can you -- two quick things on Turkey. SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. QUESTION: The call for restraint or the urging restraint -- that came up in all three conversations yesterday? SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm. QUESTION: And to what extent do you think that the possibility of an incursion into northern Iraq is related to dismay over the committee vote on the resolution? SECRETARY RICE: I don't know. I can't answer that. I hope that this is going to proceed on a logic of its own, which is they are concerned about the PKK, we are concerned about the PKK. But there are mechanisms to deal with it in the trilateral format that we've set up. And so I hope that it retains its own logic. MR. MCCORMACK: Is there one last question? SECRETARY RICE: One last question? Yes. QUESTION: Did they complain about the lack of cooperation of the Iraqis in terms of the PKK? What else can you do to help them -- SECRETARY RICE: Well, it -- QUESTION: -- convince the Iraqis -- SECRETARY RICE: Terrorism, particularly terrorism that's been kind of buried into an area that way for a long time, is not easily -- not easy to root out. What we've tried to emphasize is that they have in the Iraqi Government's fall of Saddam Hussein a more cooperative government that wants to see no terrorism from its territory; that has a good relationship with the United States and Turkey has a good relationship with the United States, so there are possibilities for trilateral cooperation that did not exist prior to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and that this is, you know, a government that's capacity is just not that great and we're trying to help it build capacity across the board. I mean, it's trying to build the capacity to defend itself against terrorism, and so it's not surprising that it has trouble defending against terrorism in its -- you know, other parts of its territory. But we believe that there is will there. We just have to try and work it through. But we're as concerned about PKK terrorism from Iraq into Turkey as anyone. All right. QUESTION: Are you sure we're not going to be able to see you on the ice? SECRETARY RICE: I'm positive. I told you, I don't even own skates anymore. (Laughter.) QUESTION: (Inaudible.) SECRETARY RICE: No, no, no. You have no idea how carefully skates are fitted to your particular foot. You used to have order skates you waited something like two months to get your skates because they're hand -- they're custom-made for you. And plus the fact, as I said to Jonathan earlier, there's this theory. I've been -- not been on the ice in ten years. There's this theory that ice skating is like riding a bicycle, right? You just get back on and you immediately know how to do it. I'm not going to take that chance in front of you all just in case that's not true. (Laughter.) Source: US Departement of State, www.state.gov. |