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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