For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 16, 2001
Press Briefing
By Secretary of State Colin Powell And National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Hotel Korsk Brdo Pri Kranju, Slovenia
6:30 P.M. (L)
SECRETARY POWELL: Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Rice and I are pleased to be with
you, to spend a few moments answering your questions.
I just might begin by saying that I believe
today's meeting between President Bush and President Putin was a
fitting capstone to the Week of Europe, as we call it in the National
Security Council and State Department, where President Bush had a
chance to travel widely across the continent, beginning in Spain, where
we reinforced the bilateral relationship that we have with Spain;
continuing on to NATO, where he had the opportunity at the North
Atlantic council for the first time to meet with all his fellow heads
in government -- government and state of NATO, and to explain his
thoughts with respect to America's continuing role in Europe, to
emphasize the fact that we went into the Balkans together and we will
come out together; to have an opportunity to express his ideas on a
strategic framework for the future -- a future that is quite different
than the past we have come out of, as we have come out of the Cold War
era. And then on to Goteborg, where he had a
chance to meet with members of the European Union, and they had frank
discussions with respect to global climate change. And then
on down to Warsaw, where in a remarkable day yesterday we saw an
outpouring of affection and support, not just for the President, but
for Polish-U.S. relations. And I think the President gave a
landmark speech yesterday, with respect to our belief in the future of
Europe and the fact that we seek no enemies and there are no enemies,
in our view, any longer, behind what used to be the Iron Curtain.
And then, finally, here today, where these two
gentlemen had the chance to take the measure of each other, to express
their hopes and aspirations concerning the future of the relationship
between Russia and the United States. So I
think it's been an excellent week and I'm glad it ended in this very,
very fine way, here in Slovenia. And let me express our
appreciation to the authorities, the leaders here in Slovenia for the
hospitality they've extended to us. The
meeting was about an hour and 40 minutes, just the two of them, with
interpreters and note-takers. And Dr. Rice was a note-taker,
so she has much more information and insight as to the meeting than I
did -- or, I do -- I was in a separate meeting with Foreign Minister
Inanov, and then we assembled, all of us, in a final short plenary
meeting of about 15 minutes. With that, I
would invite your questions and Dr. Rice and I will field them,
depending on the nature of the question.
Q Mr. Secretary, your career was spent, as
you've noted, in a time of blue lines and red lines on the
map. I wonder if you could tell us what kind of a moment it
was for you when Putin read that 1954 directive, and what it said to
you about the prospects for future NATO-Russia cooperation?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I think
there is every opportunity for future NATO-Russia
cooperation. I did spend most of my life looking at the red
side of the map from the blue side of the map, separated by an Iron
Curtain. But some years ago, I had Dr. Rice's job, and I
watched that whole thing disappear. And I watched the world
become a mosaic of changing colors and parts.
And now I am so pleased to be the Secretary of State as I see that
change continue, and I look forward to a productive relationship with
Russia. There is no reason, as both Presidents noted, that
we cannot be friends, that we cannot be partners, that we cannot
cooperate in a number of different spheres, that we can't help each
other move forward into the 21st century. So
as an old soldier, I was deeply moved by not only the activities of
today, the meetings of today, but everything I have seen this
week. I have been this week in places that used to just be
on my target list in the old days. And now they are part of
a free Europe, a Europe founded on democratic principles and values,
and I'm pleased that I'm still around to be a part of it.
Q Sir, can you tell us,
when do you intend to start your consultations with Mr. Ivanov on the
new security framework, and this will include missile defense?
SECRETARY POWELL: We'll begin
rather quickly. Foreign Minister Ivanov and I will have
overall responsibility for it, but there will be parts underneath that
where the Defense Department will be our lead agency working directly
with their ministry of defense. And Dr. Rice and I will set
up our committees in consultation with Minister Ivanov and Minister
Ivanov, and I would hope to see these consultations begin as quickly as
possible. So we're anxious to move
ahead. And Foreign Minister Ivanov and I talked about it
again today. I don't have a specific date for you.
Q Mr. Secretary, to
paraphrase President Putin, he said the 1972 ABM Treaty lies at the
center, or the cornerstone, in his words, of the modern architecture of
arms control. Can you give us a sense -- we had a pretty
good sense before this meeting -- how wide the gap was between the two
countries on that issue? Did it narrow any significantly
today, and how do you go from here? SECRETARY
POWELL: I think I may ask Dr. Rice to talk to this, because
she was in the room. But I think both sides laid out their
position. I don't share President Putin's view that it
remains at the center of the entire arms control structure or the
entire strategic framework that exists between our two nations.
It was a treaty that was written for the time
of the red and the blue map of 30-odd years ago, and I think it is
quite appropriate, in light of a new world, in light of changed
circumstances, to review anything that is from that era to see if it is
still relevant, and why not talk about changing it.
It was interesting that President Putin made
that point, but he also said, now let's get into a dialogue to see what
it is that we think should be updated. So at the same time
that he held his position, he also invited dialogue.
Q Dr. Rice, if you
would expand on that, please? DR.
RICE: Yes. I would also say that there was a great deal of
interest on the Russian side and the question of new and common
threats, and I think a desire to explore that further. As
you know, President Putin has said publicly several times that he
believes that there are new threats, and that was expressed again today
in the meeting with the President. He also
said in his press conference, a new security architecture. And so I
think we'll have serious consultations, discussions about what
constitutes now that new security architecture. But I think
there is an openness to dialogue, there is an openness to discussion,
and I felt that they established a very good basis to move forward.
Q On that dialogue, did
the gap close any in the differences of opinion on the ABM Treaty and
its centrality? DR. RICE: Well, as
the Secretary said, they had an hour and 40 minutes together, and then
an additional 15 minutes. But they covered a wide variety of
subjects. It would be a mistake to think that even the bulk
of this conversation was about missile defense or the ABM Treaty; it
was not. It was about a whole wide range of
issues. This was one small part of the discussion, and they
did not try, as the President said, to get into a negotiating session
about trying to close the gap. But I think it
is also important to note that they gave experts -- both the
Secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and State and the Defense
Secretaries -- a desire to go now and talk about concrete issues.
Q Dr. Rice and
Secretary Powell, during the campaign, Bush seemed to be very skeptical
about Russia, especially compared to the Clinton administration, and
critical of the way the Clinton administration tended to personalize
relations between the countries, and embodied in their two leaders.
It seemed today that we were witnessing a
personalization of diplomacy in a way that maybe you criticized in the
past. I'm wondering, I mean, they seem to have had a very
warm meeting, they talked about how they trusted each
other. How do you look at that now? And, also,
any other atmospherics for those magazine writers in the room that you
could provide would be great. DR.
RICE: Doing the work for all of you, all
right? (Laughter.) On the issue of
personalization, no one has ever said that it's not a good thing for
the President of Russia and the President of the United States to have
a good, warm relationship, to be able to look each other in the eye and
to expect each other to be straightforward. That was never
the issue. The issue was whether or not the
United States started to equate reform with Boris
Yeltsin. And I think you heard something very important,
actually, from President Putin that I don't remember hearing earlier in
the history of U.S.-Russian relations, because he took full
responsibility for creating conditions in Russia in which economic
capital would begin to flow to Russia. He
talked about the work that Russia had to do. And I think
that the United States can clearly try to be a partner; the United
States can be supportive; we can send the Secretary of Commerce and
Treasury and trade representatives and support Russia in WTO accession
when it is ready. But we cannot do the Russian's work for
them. And I think that was the tone of this meeting.
This President has been very clear that he
wants a good relationship with President Putin, but that he's going to
be realistic both about those things about which we agree and those
things about which we disagree. And he did so, the two of
them, in an atmosphere that was respectful and, frankly, quite
straightforward. Q Did
you hear in anything President Putin said or as what we're seeing
emerges, the possibility that there could be some kind of agreement and
embrace of the ABM that would allow us to do what we want and would
allow them to have the sort of reassurances that they seem to --
DR. RICE: Well, Frank, as I said,
they only talked about this issue for a period of time with the
President kind of allaying out a vision. But I do believe
that they are open to discussions and I believe that both the Secretary
and I have said to you that we are open to discussions about what
constitutes the new security framework. We
are quite convinced that it's time for the world to move on, pass the
ABM Treaty, to deal with the new threats, to deal with offensive
reductions, defensive forces that can contribute to deterrence and new
nonproliferation efforts. And, by the way, they did spend a
good deal of time on nonproliferation issues.
And so we believe that there is a new security framework to be had.
Its form is really up for discussion. And I think they set
in course a very high level set of discussions to get that done.
Q I'm wondering what
kind of talk there was between the two Presidents on actually reducing
nuclear arsenals? DR. RICE: Again,
they did not talk in specifics. The President laid out the
framework that you have heard him lay out. President Putin
listened, said that he looked forward to further
discussions. But they didn't get into details.
Q Did they agree on the
basic idea that it was important to reduce nuclear arsenals on a
general level? DR. RICE: Well, I
think we have known for some time that the Russian Federation feels
strongly that nuclear reductions are in its interest, and the President
has made clear that he believes that getting to a level that is
consistent with our deterrent needs is important to us. So I
don't think that there was anything there to bridge.
Q Dr. Rice, Mr.
Secretary, when President Putin said today that he agreed with
President Bush that the U.S. and Russia can be good allies, is that
meant, allies in the sense that the members of NATO are allies?
SECRETARY POWELL: Let's call it
small "a." I think he was talking in terms of a partnership,
friends, countries that could get together, that have mutual and shared
interests, that can work together. I don't think he was
talking about an alliance in the sense of a military alliance or a
political alliance.
Q Are you ruling that out?
SECRETARY POWELL: I'm not ruling
anything in or our at the moment.
Q Can I ask you to elaborate on your answer to
Jay's question on the atmospherics? For example, who's idea
was it to take a walk in the woods? Did the President enter
the meeting intending to invite him to Crawford or did that just
develop? I mean, what were the atmospherics?
DR. RICE: The President had said --
really it wasn't planned hours in advance. The President
said, I would like to invite him to come to Washington, and I think on
the spot then President Putin invited the President to come to
Russia. It was a quite remarkable meeting in that it was
both warm and straightforward. Sometimes meetings are warm
because people are trying to blur differences. This was not
the case. This was a case in which I think President Putin
feels he had his say, in which President Bush felt that he had his say,
but they maintained a kind of warmth about it, a kind of respect about
it. And, frankly, I think both men, I think,
connected on a kind of sense of humor. The President
mentioned the point about the daughters being named after
mother-in-laws. That was kind of an interesting
moment. But it was really not a very scripted
meeting. It was a meeting in which the exchanges were
long. There was a lot of dialogue between them on every
issue. They went into depth on some issues; others, they
left to their experts to do. But it really
was one of the more remarkable meetings of this kind that I've been in,
because it was extremely straightforward. They did not blur
their differences. The President brought up freedom of the
press. The President brought up Chechnya. Mr. Putin brought
up concerns that he had about the region to his south. They
did not try to blur their differences, but it was still a very warm
meeting. Q In his
speech in Warsaw yesterday, the President seemed to put the United
States' weight behind full membership of NATO. Did President
Putin understand that speech in that way, and what was his general
response to the possibility of the Balkan states coming into it?
DR. RICE: The President, in his
speech in Poland, I think simply laid out some important principles,
which were that he believes NATO should continue to
expand. He and the allies, as Lord Robertson said, believe
that something should happen at Prague. There cannot be a
zero option at Prague. The President also clearly said that
there should be no geographic and historical red-lines, and that no one
has a veto. He did not bother -- he did not need to
reiterate that to President Putin. President Putin had read
the speech, he understood that. But the
President did reiterate that there was nothing for Russia to fear with
Europe moving toward it, that this is an alliance of democracies and
peace-loving states, and that he looked forward to a relationship that
completely took cognizance of Russia's European-ness in much the way
that he talked about in Poland. But President Putin did not
comment directly on specific areas, specific questions that the
President had raised -- or specific points that the President had made
in Poland. We'll miss the plane if we don't
get out of here. THE PRESS: Thank
you. END 6:45 P.M. (L)
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