Secretary of State Colin Powell says U.S. and Iraqi officials do not expect the security situation in the Sunni Triangle to continue in its present state of insurgency.

Powell told a Washington Times editorial panel September 16 that those most concerned about Iraq's insurgency do not believe current conditions will persist through December or during the January elections. U.S. and Iraqi officials know "that these areas have to be brought back ... firmly under government control," he said, and military, political and diplomatic leaders in both countries are working towards that goal.

Powell was responding to a question about U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's remarks on BBC television earlier on September 16 concerning the prospects for fair elections in Iraq. "[I]f you read carefully what the secretary general said," Powell replied, "he said that he would find it difficult under this current set of security conditions to have, I think what he called, ‘a credible election.'"

Powell said the security situation "might have been further along" now except for the several weeks of confrontations with Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia in Najaf and Kufa. The resulting agreement to get the militia out of the holy Shiite shrine and turn it over to Imam Ali al-Sistani "wouldn't have happened if we hadn't essentially crushed the militia into a nice, tight circle." If not for Sistani's arrival, Powell said, Iraqis security forces "were ready to go in" and provide a military solution.

According to Powell, a similar tactic is being used in Samara and other places: "circle, pressure, convince people it is no longer in their interest to harbor insurgents." However, he said, these actions are not destroying the insurgents, but rather "squeezing them and moving them somewhere else. And so you've just got to keep doing it until they have nowhere else to go."

Other subjects discussed in the interview included:

-- What the International Atomic Energy Agency will decide about Iran's nuclear weapons program;

-- Work among U.N. Security Council members on a resolution concerning the situation in Darfur, Sudan;

-- Annan's remarks to the BBC about the propriety of the invasion of Iraq under international law;

-- Iranian internal developments and involvement in Iraq;

-- Russian reaction to public U.S. comments about threats to Russian democracy;

-- Saudi Arabia's reaction to being named a state of particular concern for lacking religious freedom;

-- China's economic development and investment in Sudan; and

-- The recent U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria withdrawing its troops from Lebanon.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
September 17, 2004

INTERVIEW

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell With The Washington Times Editorial Board

September 16, 2004
Washington, D.C.

(2:00 p.m. EDT)

QUESTION: Well, Mr. Secretary, we are really delighted to have you with us.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you.

QUESTION: It's always a pleasure to have you out here. I'm sure you came to tell us something and we're eager to hear it and we'd like to have some questions.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I'd really like to go to questions rather quickly. I might say that it's a busy day with a lot of different stories out there.

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY POWELL: I've been spending a good part of my day on the Iran issue and the Iran resolution, talking to my European Union colleagues and my own staff and my team in Vienna to see if we can get a good outcome of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. We think it's time for the international community to speak very clearly, with a strong voice, on Iran's nuclear programs and their failure to satisfy their obligations to the IAEA or to the EU-3 [United Kingdom, France, and Germany].

We've been hard-line on this from the very beginning, the beginning of this administration, and everything we've said about this program pretty much has been borne out as we learn more and more about the program.

So, we will continue to press. The international community has difficulty dealing with this in a way that we would like to see it dealt with, but I think even the EU-3 realizes that this can't continue like this with meetings every couple of months and no resolution and no outcome and no accounting for Iran.

So that's been part of the day. The other part of the day has been with the Sudan resolution. My life in the world of diplomacy is not like my life in the army where I moved divisions around. Now I move resolutions around -- (laughter) -- and I move language around constantly.

The Sudan resolution is coming along, and I think we'll get a pretty good outcome on that. It probably won't be a unanimous vote but, at the moment, I don't see any veto threat out there. And so we're working to get language. It's not just a matter of getting the language that you start out with, or the language you want. It's a matter of making sure that as you go into one of these negotiations, you have your "red lines" [i.e., essential wording or concepts] intact; and then you work to get as many people on the resolution as you can, because that makes the resolution that much more effective, and you can call people to account if they have signed up for the resolution. So that's where we are now on the Sudan resolution.

And, of course, today I've spoken to my Chinese colleague, my German colleague, my British colleague, and a variety of other leaders around the world on those two issues.

I'm following, of course, the breaking stories of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate], which we can get into if you wish to on Q&As; [question-and-answer session]. And, as you know, we had a situation in the [State] Department with one of our employees [Donald Keyser] who was arrested [for allegedly passing documents to Taiwan authorities]. It's an unfortunate situation. We all know him very, very well, and he is a very capable professional, but some things happened that he will now have to account for.

We have been aware of this investigation and this matter for a considerable period of time, and we've been working with the Justice Department and the FBI on it for a considerable period of time, and now it's come to this point. We'll see where it leads, but that's about all I can say about it, since it is now a matter before the Department of Justice and legal proceedings, and I have to then yield to the Department of Justice to answer any questions that someone might have about it.

QUESTION: Are you able to comment on the documents involved in this --

QUESTION: This is all -- excuse me. This is all --

SECRETARY POWELL: This is all on the record.

QUESTION: Unless you go off the record.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: OK.

QUESTION: I mean, reports were unclear whether we were dealing with classified documents or not. Are you able to clarify that?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think it best that I not try to clarify it, and let the Justice Department deal with it. I haven't seen any of the material, of course. We have been working with the authorities but not being privy to exactly what evidence they have, or what exhibits they may be using. It's best that I not speculate about it. The answer is: I don't know.

QUESTION: What is your reaction to Kofi Annan's pronouncement about Iraq, about our action in Iraq? I'm curious, obviously, what you think about that. I'm not -- I don't recall he's used the word "illegal" before.

Also, is that really helpful to our efforts to, you know, increase international involvement and also to the Iraqis' effort to try to establish a peaceful situation over there?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think the Secretary General -- I can't give you a LexisNexis [an on-line commercial legal database used for researching transcripts] of what he may have said over the past year, but he has certainly always felt that it is an action that should not have been taken without additional Security Council resolutions or action. We feel that it is entirely legal and legal in accordance with U.N. Security Council [resolutions] of the past. And I don't know if Nexis had our briefing earlier today, but we'll make available to the press Will Taft's, my Legal Advisor's, long article that was published last summer in a legal journal that makes the case that what we did was totally consistent with international law, and consistent with the U.N.'s own resolution over a period of time.

You have to keep in mind that President Clinton, in 1998, also took a military action and bombed Iraq without seeking a Security Council resolution, and I don't recall this kind of a reaction. So it was not illegal. We agree with what you heard from the British government and the Australian government. It's been our position all along.

And as I read the transcript, the Secretary General was sort of drawn into this conversation by a very, very good reporter and -- who finally took him up to the last step where he used the word "illegal." But we don't accept that judgment.

I don't think it was a useful statement to make at this point. What does it gain anyone? We should all be gathering around the idea and the prospect of helping the Iraqi people, helping the Iraqi government, and not getting into these kinds of side issues which are not relevant any longer.

QUESTION: Let me just follow up a little bit. I understand that our position is, your position is, that it's in conformity with the U.N., et cetera, but it's not -- I assume it's not our government's position that it would be illegal if it wasn't. Presumably, we can assert our own sovereignty and act when we feel like we need to and not (inaudible) illegal.

SECRETARY POWELL: We always -- we always have the inherent right of self-defense and the U.N. Charter provides for that.

QUESTION: But even without the U.N. Charter and the supremacy of self-defense --

SECRETARY POWELL: Even without the U.N. Charter, the president of the United States is empowered by the Constitution of the United States, in the name of the American people, to protect the American people. And it's the first and foremost obligation of an American president. So we would rest on that if we needed to.

In this instance, we rest on that but we don't need to, because there's a consistent body of international law and 12 years' worth of resolutions that we can rest the case on. And I am the author of the resolution, one of the principal authors of [U.N. Security Council Resolution] 1441, and we knew exactly what we were saying. And it was a subject of exquisite debate, down to commas and articles. You remember, Tony [Blankley, Washington Times editorial page editor]: "or" versus "and." Nick will remember.

And the biggest fight we had in the early stages of 1441 was in the first operative paragraph that said they are in material breach, remain in material breach, and we're giving them a chance to get out of material breach. So there was never any question about the sins.

Now, some of my Security Council colleagues -- the French particularly -- wanted to sort of say, forget that, let's just start from now. And our argument was, no, we're not going to ignore 12 years of material breach in order to start the clock running all over again. The clock has been running for 12 years and we're giving them one last chance to get out of material breach, and they didn't take it.

QUESTION: Are you going to have any communication with Mr. Annan over this?

SECRETARY POWELL: I talked to Kofi twice yesterday on another subject. He had not -- he did not mention to me yesterday -- (laughter) -- that he was all over the Beeb [BBC]. And so when I woke up this morning and realized that he was on the Beeb, I'll go talk to Kofi. I haven't had a chance to do it today because I've been doing so many other things.

But we talk many times a week, and I'm sure we'll have a conversation about this, and so: Sure. Whether it's this afternoon or tomorrow morning, I don't know. Sometimes I'll let the dust settle a little bit. We'll chat about it, I'm sure. And, frankly, we both -- I understand his position and he understands my position.

If I can continue with Kofi and his interview a little bit longer, the issue of elections in Iraq also came up. And if you read carefully what the Secretary General said, he said that he would find it difficult under this current set of security conditions to have, I think what he called "a credible election."

I think the context of his comments were, if the Sunni triangle couldn't vote, then you'd put at risk the credibility of a national election. But we don't expect to see the security situation as it exists on the 16th of September as the security situation that's going to exist on the 31st of December or the 31st of January, whenever the elections are held.

And, in fact, while I was going through all this over the last 24 hours, a nice cable comes across my desk telling me all about the municipal elections that are being held now in the southern part of the country -- safely, freely. People are coming out. They're registering and they're voting for local municipalities.

So there's no reason this election can't be held, but I'm sure we're going to get to this. The major problem we're facing right now is this insurgency, and it has to be dealt with.

QUESTION: What do you expect to happen on the ground between now and late December that will change the condition in Fallujah such that we can have a reasonable expectation of people being able to vote?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, it's not -- Fallujah is, I think, a principal --

QUESTION: And the other Sunni areas.

SECRETARY POWELL: The other places I think you also mean as well, Tony.

Our authorities in Baghdad -- Ambassador Negroponte, General Casey, General Abizaid -- and [Defense Secretary] Don [Rumsfeld] and I were talking about this yesterday -- we know and Prime Minister Allawi knows that these areas have to be brought back under government control -- firmly under government control, and not just "kind of" under government control: no "Fallujah brigade" kind of government control.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY POWELL: And the guys, military leaders over there -- theirs and ours -- and the political-diplomatic leaders, John Negroponte and his team, and the prime minister and his team and his national security council are working now on how to accomplish just that.

We might have been further along except for the diversion in Najaf and Kufa that suddenly broke upon us about, I guess, three weeks ago now. And while I was focusing on the Sunni triangle, which is the primary, the main effort in my military mind -- you've got to have a main effort, and that's the main effort -- suddenly, this secondary effort broke out in the south with Muqtada al-Sadr. And it took two weeks of energy to deal with that, and we dealt with it, not by leveling the holy shrine, but [through] a combination of political and diplomatic and military efforts.

It wouldn't have happened if we hadn't essentially crushed the militia into a nice, tight circle, and the Iraqis were ready to go in and deal with that militarily when Mr. Sistani came back on the scene and it was resolved. Not as clean as one might like it, but he is no longer on television every day and the militia is contained.

Now we're working something like that with -- in Samara, and there are other places that we are approaching in that manner: circle, pressure, convince people it is no longer in their interest to harbor insurgents. Very often, though, you're not destroying the insurgents; you're squeezing them and moving them somewhere else. And so you've just got to keep doing it until they have nowhere else to go.

QUESTION: Will some of these new efforts be conspicuous to us here in America before November 2nd [i.e., U.S. Election Day]?

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, well, believe it or not, I have clear instructions from the president, as does Don [Rumsfeld], that we should pursue this in the most sensible way to bring it to a conclusion, and just tear the November calendar out of our books and don't focus on 2 November.

QUESTION: Now, Secretary Rumsfeld -- we were over at the Pentagon, I guess --

SECRETARY POWELL: Last week, wasn't it?

QUESTION: Last week, yeah. And one of the points he made was is that he just said, flat out, that the Iranians are providing people and money for the insurgency. Do you agree with that?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. I don't think there's any doubt that the Iranians are involved and are providing support. How much and how influential their support is, I can't be sure and it's hard to get a good read on it.

There is a real difference between the Iranian Shias and the Iraqi Shias. There's competition as to who's going to end up with the most holy site in "Shiadom." And so there are reasons for them to cooperate with one another, and there are strong reasons why there is a limit to that cooperation, and there is a practical limit to how much influence the Iranian Shia will ever have on the Iraqi Shia.

I mean, let's not forget the Iran-Iraq War that went on for eight years. And I was National Security Advisor when we negotiated the ceasefire and, to some extent, I've been regretting it ever since. (Laughter.) As Henry Kissinger said, you may remember at the time, Tony [Blankley] and Wes [Pruden, editor-in-chief], "It's a shame they both can't lose." (Laughter.)

But, in effect, a lot of the problem we've inherited is an Iraqi army of a million people sitting around, no longer engaged with the Iranians. But the point there is that these are folks that went after each other for eight years, and that simply hasn't been forgotten.

And so, yes, I agree with Don [Rumsfeld], but I'm not entirely sure what the extent of that influence is. What I am reasonably sure of, in my own mind, is that what the Iranians are doing and what might be happening on the Syrian border -- [is] troubling, [and] mischievous -- but our real problem is a self-generating insurgency within the Sunni triangle that's being fed by Zarqawi's terrorists. The sophisticated car bombs, I think, are Zarqawi. That's his MO [method of operating].

But the kinds of things we're seeing with just your average VBIEDs [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices] in the streets or the kinds of assaults we see with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] or getting ambushed and things of that nature, that, I think, is an insurgency that is self-generating, mostly within the triangle. And if you were totally to block out the Iranians, and totally seal the Syrian border, it might make it harder for this to happen, but it will still be happening because it is self-generating.

And that's what also makes it so difficult. You've got to deal with it. Part of dealing with it is to give these young men something else to do by creating jobs. You create jobs through reconstruction efforts. But you can't get a reconstruction effort going as vigorously as you'd like if you don't deal with the insurgency.

So, to some extent, it's a cycle, and it doesn't have a simply political solution or a simply military solution. You have to come up with a political-military-economic solution to the challenge.

QUESTION: Can you comment on this incident last week with the helicopter gunship? It was a Bradley on fire, a dozen or more people were killed.

SECRETARY POWELL: All I can say -- I think you're really going to have to ask the Pentagon or CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command). My understanding is that after the Bradley got hit and it was on fire, there were two issues came into play. One, a concern that there was sensitive equipment and ammunition onboard that people might try to get out and use it against us, and so there was a desire to destroy what was left. And that brought the helicopters to the scene for that purpose. And then the helicopter pilot, as I understand it, felt he was under fire from somewhere in the crowd and responded, and a number of people were killed, to include Mazen, the al-Arabiya reporter. But that's the extent of my knowledge of the incident.

QUESTION: This National Intelligence Estimate seems to suggest that security on election day in Iraq: there's a good chance it won't be as good as it today. Can you comment on what's in there and how --

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, well, nobody really knows what things will look like in the -- at the end of the year or in January. But the command, as I mentioned to you, working with [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq] John [Negroponte], understand that it has to be our priority to bring things under control in the triangle. The other thing that plays into that is what General Petraeus is doing with that reconstruction money, to build up the Iraqi forces as much as possible, so that they can be a part of that. And when we have squeezed a place, like we did in Najaf, there are Iraqi forces that are ready to go in and seize and secure it and keep it secure.

And so with what we're going to be doing and with the rapid buildup, we hope, of the Iraqi military police and national guard forces, we'll be in a better position at the end of the year. It's one of the reasons that we've put forward this reprogramming request that got so much attention on the Hill yesterday. Well, why are you doing this? The simple reason that we can't do the reconstruction until we do a better job at security, so let's put money where the problem is. And that happened to be a bill that's a little over $3 billion, most of which goes into the buildup of the Iraqi forces.

Now, with respect to the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE], it isn't an NIE of the kind that got all the attention in the fall of 2002, I guess it was. It's pretty much all the analysts coming together and looking over things, and laying out for the policymakers what the situation kind of looks like right now with the "whereases" and "wherefores" and various alternatives.

And it clearly makes the point that the insurgency is a problem; it has to be defeated. It makes the point that it's going to be difficult to achieve the kind of nation we would like to see in an 18-month period of time: one that's solidly resting on institutions which have never been there before and are now in the process of being created.

And it was a good piece of academic work. It wasn't anything that would have caused you to ring alarm bells, or it wasn't anything, frankly, that I didn't know. But it was, you know, good to hear it from the analytic community and read it from the analytic community.

QUESTION: Let me ask you about that.

SECRETARY POWELL: And it's about a three-month-old or two-month-old --

QUESTION: Yeah. Most of us, obviously, haven't read it and shouldn't be reading it --

SECRETARY POWELL: Nah, you've read it, Tony. Come on. (Laughter.) Where's Bill [Gertz, reporter on security and intelligence issues]? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: But the New York Times characterized it as pessimistic. Do you think they caught the right adjective?

SECRETARY POWELL: I wouldn't have used "pessimistic." I would have used "sober." And that's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to give us a sober assessment of where we ought to see problems, and to help us make judgments about where we should be focusing our priority and our energies. And that's what they're supposed to do: Give us sober, sober estimates, and that's what this was -- a sober estimate.

QUESTION: What about the situation in Russia? Both you and the president have had cautionary words, shall we say --

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- for President Putin.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: And is there anything we can do? You know, give us your view on that.

SECRETARY POWELL: Let me begin by saying that we fully understand the Russian need to fight terrorism and defeat terrorism, and I can just imagine what we would be going through here if, in a one-week period of time, we had had two airplanes blown out of the sky, a subway blown, and then, if that wasn't bad enough, on the first day of school a situation as broke out in Beslan and 300-odd people killed and hundreds more wounded. And so the Russians reacted in a very, very firm manner. And, frankly, the Beslan thing turned out to be not a terribly effectively-run operation, as we all saw.

So we understand the need to go after these kinds of murders and terrorists, and the president's made that clear. I've made that clear.

But at the same time, we felt it was important to say to our Russian friends -- not as anything but a friend -- that as you work your way through these things, and as you deal with this kind of terrorist threat, you have to be careful that you don't do it in a way that starts to undercut democratic institutions, or keeps you from building the kinds of democratic institutions which we think are in the long-term interests of the Russian Federation, and which the Russian people do want in due course.

And so we believe that when we see things that need to be called to the attention of our Russian colleagues, we do so.

I did it in January. Were you with --

QUESTION: Not in Madrid, no.

SECRETARY POWELL: But when I went to Moscow in January, you recall, there were some things that were happening within the Russian Federation that I needed to talk to my colleagues, Igor Ivanov and Sergey Ivanov and President Putin, about. And to make sure there was no confusion about the message, I even did an op-ed for Izvestiya, which is a first for me, and laid it all out and said, "All these things have gone so well in the Russian Federation, but we have some concerns about media freedom, about other aspects of the political process," -- you remember it was relative to the election that they were getting ready to hold.

And then I spent two hours with Putin, with the president, going over some of these issues. And I'll never forget, he even said to me, "Well, do you want to go down these one by one?" And I said, "No, no, I'll do that with Igor." (Laughter.) "I'm just, you know, I'm coming to you as a friend." And I do know Mr. Putin, not only as the president of the Russian Federation, but we've done quite a bit together of the last three-and-a-half years.

I'll never forget the day I sat in that same room and told him we were leaving the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, which was an interesting moment, which we can review if you wish. And so, it's quite appropriate for friends to speak to each other this way, and we did. And we have communicated that message since January. Every time I get together with my Russian colleagues, we talk about these issues.

We've cooperated in Georgia to keep that from blowing up. We've done it very effectively. And the tension inside Russia, and the anger inside Russia over the school and the airplanes and the subway was such that they really didn't want to hear this message right now. But in light of some of the things that President Putin announced the other day, we felt it was important for President Putin to hear it from the United States. And he's hearing it from other nations as well.

QUESTION: Let me ask you about that.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: I understand that friends give friends good advice, but they don't always give it in public. And our decision to give that advice for the whole world to hear would seem to make it look somewhat less likely to be well received by the hearer than if we had simply done it discreetly in private. Do we run the risk -- both that statement and, I think, a statement that came out of the State Department shortly after the Beslan slaughter -- that they would be well advised to start negotiating with non-terrorist Chechens that was taken poorly by the Russian government, are those the sort of statements that run the risk of, particularly in moments of passion, as Russia's in now, to force them into, harden them into a position we don't want them to get in because we've put it in their face around the world?

SECRETARY POWELL: It's always a judgment call you have to make, Tony. But when something like this happens, rather significant statements and decisions on the part of President Putin -- the world is asking about them and wants to know the position of the United States -- we were not just communicating to President Putin, but we were making a statement to the world, and that's why I spoke publicly and the president spoke publicly.

If you look at what I said and what the president said, the statements are fairly close. And I think they're fairly balanced. And we will continue to speak out when we think it is appropriate. Let's see -- there's another thought that I had.

We do speak quietly to them. And my conversations with them in private are very often one-on-one with nobody in the room. And most of my meetings with Mr. Ivanov were one-on-one sessions where we could "let our hair down" [speak frankly]. And with Sergey Lavrov, we will usually have a plenary session, but then he and I will go off alone and talk to one another very candidly.

QUESTION: What do you make of the -- I thought I heard a news story that Russia --

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, I know my train of thought. Sorry.

QUESTION: Sure.

SECRETARY POWELL: What we said last week, Honorable Mr. [Richard] Boucher [State Department spokesman] and me, was that terrorism has to be fought and murderers have to be dealt with. But ultimately, a political solution has to be found in Chechnya.

This is not anything the Russians have not said themselves. But at the time it was said, it hit them in the middle of this school/aircraft thing, and they snapped back.

QUESTION: I mean, it struck me as -- it may have been slightly undiplomatic to have said it at that moment as opposed to a month from now.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. But it was not in an effort to embarrass them, or to put them on the spot in any way. It was merely a statement of fact, and we didn't think that it was offensive because Richard's statement and my statements about the same time were very clear: You can't negotiate with murderers, you can't negotiate with terrorists -- we're not suggesting you talk to terrorists.

What we said, we didn't say you should talk to anybody. We said political solution was the Soviet [sic, Russian Federation] policy, and we hope a political solution can be found. And when it created a bit of a problem on -- last Friday, I think it was -- I called Sergey Lavrov and said, "Sergey, you know, I have made a number of statements since. And I went over and signed the condolence book and made a statement there on Russian television." And he said, "We understand. It's over." But we, perhaps, might have, you know, been a little more sensitive in the heat of the moment.

QUESTION: Last question.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: Is there any -- I just heard it on the news, I don't know if it's true, that Russia and Israel are coordinating some -- something regarding how they're going to jointly fight terrorism. Have you heard that, and is that in any way related to Russia being peeved with us?

SECRETARY POWELL: I saw a report of that, but I don't know anything about it.

QUESTION: I don't know either.

QUESTION: Well, I think they referred to last week, I think a week ago Monday, Lavrov was in Jerusalem and they signed an agreement with Israel --

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- about cooperation. And I actually wanted to ask you about the possibilities of cooperation between the United States and Russia on terrorists, which I know it's been going on for some time --

SECRETARY POWELL: Sure.

QUESTION: -- but I've been talking to a lot of Russians in the past week, or since the siege happened, and they say, "On one hand, we don't want the United States to lecture us because you didn't want, on September 12th, somebody to come here and tell you how to do it. On the other hand, we would welcome help from the United States in any way that you can help to help us fight terrorism."

And the first issue they bring up every time I talk to Russian person is the political asylum that was given this summer to a spokesman for the Chechen leadership.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. And Sergey and I talked about that last week.

What really got them mad, and what Mr. Lavrov talked about for a few days running, was the fact that the United Kingdom and the United States had given asylum to these two individuals.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY POWELL: In the case of the individual who's here in the United States, as I said to Mr. Lavrov -- and they understand this perfectly -- it's nothing that I can do. It was part of our judicial proceedings where somebody applies for asylum and a judgment is made by our judicial authorities, and the individual is granted asylum. And that's the nature of our system. It's the nature of the British system where the individual is granted asylum, and it's beyond the judgment of the State Department or president.

QUESTION: But there is a process of actually revoking that asylum if another country proves to the United States Government that this person has been involved in criminal terrorist acts, right?

SECRETARY POWELL: That may well be the case. I don't know if such a -- I just don't know if such an approach has been made by the Russian government to our judicial authorities. It's not a matter that I'm -- I don't know if you've heard anything, Adam, [Ereli, State Department deputy spokesman] but I haven't.

QUESTION: Can you talk about possibilities of cooperation between the two countries -- the United States and Russia - (inaudible) want to pursue an axis.

SECRETARY POWELL: Sure. As soon as this happened, as soon as the airplane incident happened, I called Lavrov and said, "We want to help you in any way that we can." We have been sharing information with them about people who might be traveling to the Russian Federation that they should be aware of. And so we do have good sharing of intelligence, and if there's anything else we can do of a technical nature or forensic nature, we're willing to do it.

And in my subsequent calls to Minister Lavrov, I made it clear, as our Ambassador made clear, and as [National Security Advisor] Condi [Rice] made clear when she checked in with her counterpart, and the president made clear when he talked to Putin, "Let us know how we can help, or what else we might be able to do."

And we do have a number of arrangements with the Russians where we can make such offers and exchange such technical, forensic and other kinds of information or find new ways to cooperate.

QUESTION: Do you have a problem with the Russian claim to a right to take pre-emptive action anywhere in the world?

SECRETARY POWELL: Pre-emption is a tactic. I view it more, and this will get us into a two-hour discussion, but I view it as something that is part of the inherent right of self-defense. And so pre-emption is inherent in sovereignty if you're going to defend yourself.

Now, you will have to make your case, once you've pre-empted something, to the world, and to your own people that it was the right thing to do. Now, I think the Russians may have sort of overstated how they might pre-empt, and then they've sort of pulled the statement back a little bit, because of a certain nervousness created in the international community. And I'm not sure, exactly -- they haven't spelled it out in greater detail.

But just as we reserve the right to stop somebody who is coming to, you know, do us bodily harm, and we know it; the Russians, if they know somebody is coming to do them bodily harm to their people and they have found a way to deal with it, then they will have to do whatever they think is in their interest and then be prepared to defend it to their people and to the court of world opinion.

QUESTION: On another subject, we started talking about Iran. There are reports today a senior U.S. official is being quoted saying that you have satellite photographs of a nuclear site in Iran that appears to be a preparation for a weapons test. Can you confirm that, first of all, and secondly, is this something that you would be showing to other Security Council partners to try to build support for your resolution?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, I saw the report, but I don't know what the reference is to. And I don't know if you've researched it, but --

QUESTION: No, sir. We have not.

SECRETARY POWELL: Did you guys write that one? I don't know.

QUESTION: No, it's on Reuters and AP. We saw it this morning.

QUESTION: It was an ABC report from last night that has the photographs patched in.

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, oh. ABC. I got it. Yeah. ABC has been chasing this story for some time. I don't have any knowledge of it, other than I knew that it was a story that was being chased. I'm sure the intelligence community will be telling me more about it, now that they've seen the AP story.

How accurate it is, we'll know in due course, but I think it's indicative of the fact that the Iranians have been moving in this direction and nothing has stopped them yet, and the international community has to take a deep breath and take action within the IAEA and be prepared to refer it to the Security Council in order to put the international community on record.

Now, people will say, well, fine, you refer it to the Security Council, and we can't tell what the Security Council might do. And the Iranians will ignore all of that, perhaps. But I think it makes it a lot more difficult for a nation that is moving in this direction to have everything they do under enormous international scrutiny and more attention from organizations like the IAEA than they might have had before. I think it does have a limiting effect, if not a definitive limiting effect. It makes it more difficult for them. And it causes -- it requires them to pay a higher price, in terms of the reaction of the international community. So resolutions are not exactly strong weapons to stop something, but they can have an effect.

QUESTION: Do you think --

QUESTION: It could be referred to the Israeli Air Force.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, yeah, if -- I don't want to get too deeply into this, but based on what I know about the program, it is not one that lends itself to a simple military solution.

QUESTION: Can I clarify --

QUESTION: I'm going to -- let me just follow this, Nick, and then --

QUESTION: Sure.

QUESTION: Do you think the Iraqi experience, in any way emboldens the Iranians, because they see -- they may think the United States is always hesitant to go ahead, that they can count on delays, what have you, political differences in the Security Council? And do you think that, in any way, that they look to our experience in Iraq and say, well, hey, this could hamstring the United States a little bit?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think that the Iranians are moving to their own dynamic, and that is -- they wanted to move in this direction. They wanted to acquire a nuclear development program which could lead to development of a nuclear weapon. And I think they would do everything needed to go in this direction, whether we were tied down in Iraq, by their judgment, or not tied down in Iraq, by their judgment. They were doing this before Iraq came along.

And they may have been emboldened, but what really turned the cards over in recent months was not Iraq, but all the information that started to come out as to what they were doing from, you know, Iranian defectors or dissenters, and just a lot more information was found out about what they were doing. And then the EU-3 got in the middle of it last fall.

And so I think it is almost -- Iraq isn't a variable as to what they're trying to do or not trying to do. They may well think that we are constrained somewhat by what's going on Iraq, but I'll tell you what: we have done quite a bit over the last three years and in the last year to hold people's feet to the fire. The EU-3 wouldn't have gone in and tried to do what they tried to do last year if we weren't putting heat on the whole thing.

When we came into office and started talking about this, everybody said, "hmm, not that big of a problem." But over a period of three-and-a-half years, we've persuaded the Russians that it was a problem, so that they now have a clear idea of concerns we -- they have a clear idea about the inherent problems associated with Bushehr [nuclear reactor construction site] and why there's an absolute need for a fixed, closed fuel cycle.

That was not the case several years ago. The IAEA, which sort of did not see things for a long period of time, now sees them. And we're having the most intense debates at the IAEA in Vienna today because we started this a couple of years ago.

And so, it's a clear case that where we have been firm, hard-lined, dogmatic and pressing, that has even got the whole world involved in this, and even though we're -- you know, [we] have these awful debates over resolution language, it's a debate we wouldn't have had at all a year or two or three ago.

QUESTION: If they think that we're constrained, are they mistaken?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.

QUESTION: That's really my question.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, I was going to get to the answer. (Laughter.) Got to let me do my thing.

QUESTION: Come on, give us some red meat [i.e., especially important information]. Give us red meat. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I'm working this as hard as I can.

QUESTION: And you feel you have all of the policy options available to you -- that the president has?

SECRETARY POWELL: The president has never set a policy option aside, but the president also believes that the principal option and the principal thing we should be doing now is to energize the international community, and put maximum diplomatic pressure and political pressure and international opprobrium on the Iranian regime.

QUESTION: Do you have any sense of timing: how long you've got to use diplomatic and other persuasive methods before the issue becomes a fait accompli?

SECRETARY POWELL: And they have a what now?

QUESTION: And whatever you would judge to be an unacceptable condition comes into being?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't have a time frame in mind, and if -- there is a wide difference of opinion in the international community and in the international -- excuse me, among the intelligence community and the international intelligence community about how quickly this Iranian program is moving or able to move.

QUESTION: But then how do you judge? This would be interesting, technically. You designed and are implementing a diplomatic policy; you're trying to move them where they want. I would assume that if you don't know how much time you have before other policies might have to be applied, you would design at a different pace. I mean, I know in Congress you have to have a vote ready to go before you can start finding out where members really are.

So surely, there must be, somewhere in the back of our collective minds in the government, some sense of: we're looking at a year; we're looking at three years; we're looking at five years before we have to succeed or fail at that process.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, I do.

QUESTION: OK. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: I do. And everybody has a slightly different time line. But yeah, I have a time line in mind. And Iran is a fascinating country, and I'd been there two months before the Shah went down. I went there with then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Charles Duncan, who was asked to go there by President Carter, and I was his military assistant. And we visited with the generals and leaders and went to Tehran and Isfahan and Persepolis and saw all the equipment we had sold them.

But I'll never forget looking around at the military people. While Duncan was talking to all the generals, I was sort of meeting junior-grade Iranian officers and a group of officers called homafars, which are like warrant officers. They weren't from the privileged classes, they were sort of from the people. And you could see this was not a place that was glued together.

And I'll never forget talking to an Air Force officer, American officer who was there, and we were talking about the F-14s [fighter jets] that we had sold them, and they did some fly-bys, corkscrews and whatnot, and everybody was, "Ooh, ooh, gee, look at that." And I called the captain aside, and I said, "Can they really use these things?" And he said, "Oh, they can get them in the air." (Laughter.) It's easy to get it in the air. But the key to an F-14 or an F-15 or F-16 is not getting it in the air, it's the weapons systems operator. And the weapons system operators were the homafars. And the elite, or the privileged class, were the pilots.

And it was just -- you could tell the whole thing was not going to stay together, and two months later, every general I met was on Page One of the Washington Post on a slab in the morgue. They killed them all. And I could just pick them out by name, day after day. You remember that? When the Ayatollah took over? Yeah? OK. And I knew them all. And it was pretty obvious it was coming apart.

So this is a difficult country. The fascinating thing about the country is that, in dealing with it, you have to not get between them, because they'll both -- they'll all come at you. But it's a young country, you know, it's something like 50- to 55 percent are below 30 [years of age] or something, a rather incredible statistic. And they see what's going on in the outside world. People go back and forth. I have friends who are Iranian-American who go back all the time, and they travel freely in the country. They have to be a little careful how they're dressed and whatnot, but they go to shopping centers, back comes the shawl; and this is a young population that wants something quite different than what they're getting now.

QUESTION: You know, I -- I understand exactly. And I wondered, and it's obviously potentially a hopeful sign that there's a lot of resistance in the middle class and [among] the students, et cetera. Is it possible that we might be looking at that and hoping a little more than we should that it will become a strategic element in the Iranian government and lull us into not being quite as vigorous [in] facing a grimmer reality: that as much churning as there might be going on, ultimately, they're not going to change the equation?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think we've clearly said, and the president designated Iran on the Axis of Evil, and we have been acting on that. He's never pulled back from that. And that's why we've been going after this program. They support terrorism and they have been developing weapons of mass destruction, and we have never stepped back from that.

But at the same time, what do we do about it? We're doing what we're doing on the nuclear program in the IAEA, and we keep speaking about their support of Hezbollah and others. We never step back from any of our language on that and our concerns in the international community.

But at the same time, while we're doing that, and as you say, making sure that we are firm, I keep looking over the wall at this 60 percent of the population.

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY POWELL: And, you know, they want, I think, a different kind of life than the kind of life they're facing now. But they're going to have to -- it's going to have to come from within.

QUESTION: So it's a race between their setting their power, and us having to deal with an ugly (inaudible).

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. So it will be interesting to see how this quadratic equation works out.

QUESTION: Well, to look at it another way, sir, is there a moderate Muslim center that can somehow be appealed to --

SECRETARY POWELL: In Iran?

QUESTION: -- and used to isolate the extremists, or do we end up inevitably fighting all of Islam?

SECRETARY POWELL: We talk about this a great deal, and for a long time, people thought the president might represent some forces of moderation. And it was interesting, after the earthquake last December -- November, whenever it was -- we reached out and we sent in people and we sent in relief supplies. We even offered to send in a relative of the president and Elizabeth Dole. And they came back to us and said, "Gee, thanks, thanks very much, but we can't handle that right now, politics won't handle it, but thank you for the offer." They didn't say no, they just said not right now. But we knew it meant no. It's only been the last few weeks that I've pulled the remainder of our relief team out. They've been there for all this time helping.

And so we watched that, and then you remember there was the big flap that followed that in their Parliament when they started to boycott the Parliament and they wanted something different, and then the clerics cracked down. And so, we keep debating whether there is this viable moderate segment within their political spectrum, or --

QUESTION: I'm talking not just Iran, but the wider Muslim world.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, yeah. But in Iran, is there really a difference between the clerical leadership and the secular leadership? Is there really a difference between the ayatollahs and the president? Or are we just looking at the same coin with two sides?

Now, moderation throughout the whole Muslim-Arab world, there are people who might be called moderates, who -- what is a moderate? In my judgment, it's somebody who recognizes that reform is necessary in the Arab-Muslim world, and also recognize that the religion of Islam has been abused by radical forces. There are people who wrote the Arab development reports who point out that, you know, this part of the world should not be so poor, should not be so "behind the curve" [i.e., lagging], with respect to economic development, with respect to literature, with respect to scientific accomplishment; the world that gave us the alphabet and numbers, and everything else, and math, has been behind.

And why? And there are people who are looking in the mirror. Now, do I call those moderates? Yes, they're out there and each country is different. I keep telling everyone who asks me about this is: you cannot look at Egypt the same way you look at Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, I, you know, made a judgment on yesterday. Yesterday? Day before?

QUESTION: Yesterday.

QUESTION: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah, OK. But it was -- and I called them last week and told them what I was going to do, and gave them a "heads up" [i.e., advance notice] so that they -- you know, they would -- they'll react, but I gave them a "heads up." And we did it because we can't keep talking about religious freedom without listing Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern.

But even there -- and there was a good piece in one of the papers today about some of the steps they are starting to take now, these municipal elections that are coming up. Nobody is quite sure what they're voting for or why, or what these people will be allowed to do when they are elected to something. But, my God, it's an election. And it's the first countrywide election they've ever had. They had an election back in 1963, for one little piece of the country.

Will women be allowed to vote? The article made the point, the women don't know because it was vague in the edict, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens. They can't even drive. But will they be allowed to vote?

So what the Saudis have said to me is that: we understand the need for reform, but [you must] understand the nature of our society, the nature of our political system and how it has worked for us for the last couple of hundred years. And it has to be at a pace that we understand and our people understand.

And I spent -- when I was in Saudi Arabia last time, I spent some time with young people, young adults who are very gifted men and women, and they made the point that it is not just the royal family. But the society has to take it slow because for a long period of time, they have been trained and taught one way and they have to get used to a new way, just as the kingdom, the leaders of the kingdom have to get used to a new way. But what I am convinced of is that the Saudi leaders know that, however slow or measured the pace, they have to start this journey.

QUESTION: .Is there any -- what kind of reaction did you get when you told them that you were going to put them on this list for religious freedom?

SECRETARY POWELL: They would have preferred, of course, that I not do it, but there was no argument. There was no serious debate; they understood, and I explained why we were going to do it. I spoke to a number of them. Some said, well, it's going to give us a problem but we'll manage it. And one individual even said: this is -- you know, we could use this. Sometimes, you have to push your friends a little bit.

QUESTION: Will there be any consequence if they don't do anything about it?

SECRETARY POWELL: Every year, I have to do the report again, and we'll measure to see whether there has been progress or not. We gave them a number of things that they might do to avoid being so designated and they weren't able to do that. But this is a country that, really, there is no -- I mean, it's based on the fact that other religions are not acceptable and tolerated within the kingdom.

QUESTION: You just implied you'll be here next year. Are you contemplating a second term? There have been reports to that effect.

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, God. (Laughter.) I thought I told you, Emily, it's all over. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I told them, too. I told them, too. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, Nick has also told you the answer then: I serve at the pleasure of the president.

QUESTION: Well, if the president asks you -- if the president is re-elected and asks you to serve again, will you serve again?

SECRETARY POWELL: Come on. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Look we have to ask it and you have to answer it. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, it's -- yeah. I don't have a term. Let me remind people. It usually doesn't get me out of the question, but -- (laughter) -- I don't --

QUESTION: Can I ask you a quick thing on something you're working on -- you mentioned at the beginning -- which is the Sudan resolution?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: And it's actually a sort of a different question, and I think it's very interesting. I was recently in Sudan without you, and then I was in Beijing. It's amazing what sort of business development the Chinese are doing in Sudan.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.

QUESTION: Not only that, but it seems to me, looking at the map, they look at the countries that are on the U.S. list of sanctions and go right there. It's really -- if you look at the map, that's what it seems. Is there any -- I mean, first of all, do you think you will get at least an abstention from the Chinese on the Darfur resolution? And second, is there anything you can do diplomatically to encourage the Chinese to be a little more careful with investing in those regions?

SECRETARY POWELL: The Foreign Minister and I had a very good conversation this morning, and he understands the need for more action to help the people of Darfur. But I would not -- I'd never predict what someone is going -- someone, you know, not me, is going to say about a particular resolution: whether they'll vote yes, no or abstain; but we had a good conversation. And my folks in New York, [U.N.] Ambassador Danforth, are working with the Chinese perm rep [permanent representative] this afternoon to see if we cannot find language that would sort of bridge the remaining differences.

The Chinese do have significant commercial interest in Sudan, and we talked about that this morning as well. I haven't looked at a map to see if they are on this. But keep in mind that the United States has also played an important leadership role in Sudan in the last couple of years -- and you were with me, I'm quite sure -- when we were in Lake Naivasha last fall.

Nick, where have you been? (Laughter.) What have you been telling these guys? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I was doing my series, remember?

SECRETARY POWELL: Oh, that's right, yeah. But, I mean, we essentially helped bring [the north-south conflict] to -- almost -- a conclusion now. The fighting stopped, but a comprehensive agreement isn't quite there; two more elements have to be dealt with. But we brought an end to the north-south conflict. And we would have had them all in the [White House] Rose Garden [i.e., where important peace agreements have been signed] by now, if the Darfur situation hadn't broken out. If we get Darfur settled down and link it up with the north-south agreement, the United States is going to be the one who helped bring peace to the Sudan.

We have been trying to work off the sanctions, get rid of sanctions on the Sudan over the last couple of years, and welcome them back in. We've increased our diplomatic presence. So whatever the Chinese might be doing, I think that the Sudanese will continue to work very closely with the United States, because we have done a lot for them.

They have been more and more active in the war on terrorism. They have eliminated the offices of some very bad organizations that used to have offices in Khartoum. And so, we've got a good level of cooperation with them, but they have oil. And if you want to look around your map and see what country needs oil just about more than anyone else right now, it's China. And if you want to know what's driving the price of oil up, just take a look at what the Chinese needs are going to be over the next 10 or 20 years.

I first went to China in 1973, right after --

QUESTION: I wasn't born yet.

(Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Jesus. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: You knew that. Come on.

SECRETARY POWELL: I knew that, Nick. Nick always reminds me that he is only 29.

QUESTION: Thirty now: I just turned 30.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thirty now? Yeah.

But in any event, you know -- and you go through Beijing; there was only the bicycles and charcoal stoves choking the air. The charcoal stoves are gone. The bicycles are still around, but they're being rapidly outnumbered by cars, belching all over the place. And you all have seen the numbers, the oil consumption numbers that are going up, that are oil commodities. Astonishing.

QUESTION: All commodities.

SECRETARY POWELL: All commodities. Concrete, oil, it's fascinating to watch.

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY POWELL: But as they also remind me, there are still a billion people out there, who they have to take care of that they haven't taken care of yet. And so, what do the Chinese need more than anything else: a good relationship, economic relationship with the west, and that means with the United States. The neuralgic point, of course, as always, is Taiwan.

QUESTION: Did it surprise you at all -- this is a little tongue-in-cheek -- that such an old veteran as Donald Keyser would pick for his drop site [i.e., a place where one person would place documents for another person to retrieve later] Potowmack Landing, which is sort of populated by GS-16s [i.e., high-ranking federal government employees] and above? I mean, why didn't he go out to Manassas to a pig joint [restaurant that serves barbecued pork] or something?

SECRETARY POWELL: I refer you to the Justice Department. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Let me ask you just one -- I want to pick up on one point. We were talking about moderate voices in the Islamic world. I hear what you're saying about the various countries. But one thing I'm curious about is: Why don't we hear more from those people in the West? I know -- you know, we had David earlier this week just, basically, looking for that desperately. And it's just -- I mean, is it fear of retaliation, or I mean: Where are these people?

SECRETARY POWELL: They don't speak out. I don't know that I can answer that question. I'd love to see them speak out. One, it's not a huge population. But, two, in many of these countries it goes against "the street" [i.e. popular opinion]. It goes against the "street view," and therefore you don't see those powerful voices, and they're -- they are not in countries and in societies and in political systems, where it is that easy to speak out, as we speak out on every issue imaginable here in the United States. And so these voices tend to be more than muted.

QUESTION: Do you get any sense that they're targeted by, you know, terrorist groups and others, if they speak out?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't know. I suspect there is always danger in that, and I suspect the danger varies by country.

QUESTION: You had a resolution last week, I think it was, about Syrian interference in Lebanon, which the Syrians promptly ignored. Is this something we're going to hear more about, or is that a one-off?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I think we need to hear more about it. It was not an easy resolution to get. I mean, unlike most of the resolutions we've gotten, that was nine, only nine votes and the key vote was Chile. No, we're going to keep at it. And as you know, Assistant Secretary [of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Joseph] Burns went to Damascus right after that vote with a strong delegation. Peter Rodman of the Office of the Secretary of Defense went, and some military people, and, you know, it's pretty clear in his message to the Syrians about a variety of things: cooperating with the new Iraqi interim government to seal the border; dealing with some of the financial business that is still taking place in Damascus; the message we always give them [about] harboring terrorist organizations in Damascus.

And we really did mean what we said, about: It's time for the Syrian Army to think about coming on out. We've seen some statements from the Syrians recently that suggest that they were looking at that. What actually happen remains to be seen. But Syria is still a country under a leader who is, I think, still finding his way and making judgments as to whether he should be making strategic changes of the kind that we believe are in his interest to make.

QUESTION: Is he looking for a fight with us?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't think -- I don't think they're looking for a fight, but they are not looking -- they are very reluctant to change their policies in the kind of fundamental way that we believe that they should, to have a better relationship with us and to be a better friend to their neighbors. But the -- you know, the Iraqi interim government, they've had a number of exchanges with the Syrians now, and there is a level of cooperation between the interim government and the Syrians that, hopefully, we can build on and see some improvement in the situation along the border, and in the relations between these two neighbors.

[I have] got to go, guys.

QUESTION: Yes, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much. Appreciate your coming.