Following are excerpts from Powell's briefing:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
(Reykjavik, Iceland)
May 14, 2002

Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell
Press Briefing on Board Plane
En Route Gander, Newfoundland

May 13, 2002

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, on a different subject, but staying within the hemisphere, as you know, former President Carter is in Cuba today. He has said today, that although he got a briefing from State Department personnel and perhaps from other government personnel before he left, that no one had briefed him that Cuba had BW [biological weapons] or CW [chemical weapons] capability. He said he asked specifically if Cuba had been involved in sharing information that could be used for terrorist activities. He was told no. Do you know anything about the briefings he got and why this might have been so even though others at the Department have actually said this?

POWELL: I don't know what briefings President Carter may have received. I'm sure we made ourselves available to him. As Under Secretary Bolton said recently, we do believe that Cuba has a biological offensive research capability. We didn't say that it actually had such weapons, but it has the capacity and the capability to conduct such research. This is not a new statement, I think that it is a statement that has been made previously. So Under Secretary Bolton's speech which got attention on this issue again wasn't breaking new ground as far as the United States' position on this subject goes.

Q: After this very contentious Likud party meeting, do you believe that Sharon will still hold to establishing a Palestinian state eventually? And what if Netanyahu wins in the election?

A: I will let Prime Minister Sharon speak for himself, of course, but my understanding is that he is still committed to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state that will live side by side at peace with the Jewish state, Israel. The Likud Party committee meeting was that -- a committee meeting. It was noted that before they took the vote, in a straw poll, some 80-odd percent of the members of that committee also said that ultimately they probably would have to deal with the reality of a Palestinian state. So I think we have to keep moving in that direction and make sure that remains our vision to see if we can move forward to create, through peaceful discussions and negotiations, a Palestinian state, that will live secure and in peace with the Jewish state, Israel, that also will be able to live secure and at peace with its neighbors.