U.S. Foreign Policy

And as evidence of those charges, or as evidence of those statements, he presents a number of documents. One of those documents is this list that you cite, the oil voucher program. And the oil voucher program was a program in which the Saudi Arabian -- sorry, excuse me -- the Iraqi National Oil Company would provide vouchers to certain individuals or certain entities, let's say, individual, companies, to buy oil or to sell oil at preferential prices, and thereby potentially pocket the difference. And this gave Iraq an opportunity to both sell oil and to influence people.

Now, the question you ask is: Well, how do we know it worked? Charlie Duelfer never provides or never claims to provide proof or argue that it did work. All he's saying is this is what the Iraqis were trying to do.

Now, the next step -- and this is precisely what the UN is doing -- is to conduct an investigation into these documents, into what the Iraqis say they were doing, and find out whether there was complicity, what impact were they having, and if so, what measures should be taken in response. That's what the UN is doing in terms of the program, the investigation that Paul Volcker is conducting into the Oil-for-Food program.

I would expect that based on a lot of the things coming out of this report, individual countries will be conducting their own investigations into the kind of manipulations, subterfuges, deceptions, or violations of UN sanctions that were clearly going on; but the extent to which they were going on in any one individual country, the complicity that was involved, that is something that each country is going to have to look into on their own.

But what we have here, let's be clear, are the findings of an independent group headed by the gentleman who wrote the report and basing conclusions on one source of information, and that source was an Iraqi source. It is now up to others to corroborate those findings or to look at the other side of it and see what those who are being implicated were actually doing.

Does that answer your question?

QUESTION: (Off mike.)

MR. ERELI: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: I have a question on Afghanistan but I have a follow-up on Dmitry's question. Giampiero Gramaglia, Italian News Agency ANSA.

Do you consider a success of the American multilateralism the fact that for 12 years, since '91, Saddam Hussein wasn't able to reach his goals without -- just because the international community was watching on him, or not?

MR. ERELI: What I would say, I would call that a limited success. But I think that the real answer to your question, sir, is President Bush's speech to the UN in September of 2002. And he put to the international community a fundamental challenge, and I think that that challenge is still on the table. Because he said: Look, we have a threat to international peace and security, and that is Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq under his rule. And we as an international community agreed that he was a threat in 1991 -- 1990, excuse me. We agreed he was an international threat. We agreed he was a threat to international peace and security. We have passed 12 years of resolutions reaffirming that consensus, and yet -- and calling on him to do certain things -- right? -- and vowing action if he didn’t. And yet, he continues to not only refuse to abide by those resolutions, not only not do the things that we're telling him to, but -- even worse – to continue in the activities that are proscribed;

So we have a problem, because if we let this go on, our credibility as a multilateral institution is in question, is in doubt, and it weakens the power of that institution, it weakens the influence of that institution and it makes us all more vulnerable to future threats, who will say, multilateral institutions like the UN are not a constraint. So we have to look this failing in the eye, face to face, and decide what to do about it. Either we take concerted action and we make it clear that there are consequences for failing, or repeatedly and over a period of time, failing to abide by the will of the international community when it is made clear, or we consign ourselves to the dustbin of history.

And so then we passed [UNSC resolution] 1441. And what did 1441 say? It said, okay, Iraq, you've got a final chance to do something. You have a final chance to fulfill all the obligations that 12 years of Security Council resolutions have put upon you, or you will face serious consequences. And when the time came to face serious consequences, what did the UN do? It divided itself. So, frankly, I think that, you know, what Duelfer shows is sanctions clearly had an impact, no doubt about it. But sanctions were designed really to compel Saddam Hussein to comply, as with resolutions calling on him to disarm. They were not designed to be the primary instrument of disarmament. And so you've got to understand what they were designed to do and what they evolved into were two different things.

So I think that international action was successful to an extent, but it did not succeed in accomplishing its intended purposes. And its intended purpose was to bring Saddam into compliance with UN Security Council resolutions. And, unfortunately -- and this is something that -- this is an ending that nobody wanted, especially the United States -- unfortunately, it turned out that the only way to bring this guy into compliance was through the use of force.

Do we regret that? Yes. Do we think it was necessary? Yes. Would we do it again? Yes. Do we think the world is better off because of it? Yes. Do we believe there was international legitimacy behind it, and do we believe it was unilateral? We believe it was international legitimacy, yes. And do we believe it was unilateral? No.

Yes. Yeah, sure.

QUESTION: On Afghanistan, what are your expectations for the vote in Afghanistan? To what level you will consider the vote a success?

MR. ERELI: Well, I don't want to be predictive, and it's not up to the United States to set the bar for what is the measure of success in Afghanistan. That's an issue for the Afghani people. But I would say we are very optimistic because, up until now, the enthusiasm and energy of Afghani people have defied most of its critics. I mean, I remember in June, people were saying, "God, you're going to elections in October? How are you going to get everybody registered? This is not going to work. It's going to be a mess.” Or in May they were saying this, “The idea of having free, fair and transparent elections throughout Afghanistan in five months or six months is crazy."

And guess what? You know, they were registering at like 100,000 a week at one point, registering voters. Now they've got over 10 million people registered to vote, meeting the most rosy scenarios. Over 40 percent of those are women. There is a greater percentage of women registered in the rural communities than the urban communities. You've got 25,000 polling stations.

I would say this. I would say, up until this point, the Afghani people have demonstrated a hunger for democracy and a capacity for peaceful, political participation that we think argues well for the future of democracy in that country and for a vote on Saturday that will be seen as credible and legitimate.

Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Jyri Raiviio, Helsingin Sanomat, Finland.

Coming back to Mr. Duelfer's report, what you said just a few minutes ago was that the resolution, all these, 12, 14, how many they were, called for Saddam to disarm. Wasn't it so that Mr. Duelfer's report showed that Saddam actually did disarm right after 1991? I haven't seen the actual report. And does this mean that something dreaming of the WMD was something that was strictly forbidden, and actually led to the war?

MR. ERELI: No, actually, what the Duelfer report shows is that Saddam Hussein was in material breach of 1441 in a whole host of ways and of previous Security Council resolutions; that he had not given up his research and development activities in long-range missiles; that he continued to illegally import dual-use items, both in the conventional area and the unconventional area; that he had clandestine research and testing facilities for biological weapons that he did not declare and that he hid from inspectors, even when they went in just before -- under 1441; that he continued to maintain the capability to produce chemical weapons; and that he had that capability and that he could have, if he had chosen to, produce mustard gas within a few months and nerve gas within a few years, all of which was contrary to and in violation of previous Security Council resolutions.

Now, as you suggest, there were some things that he did disband that he did voluntarily disarm, that he did destroy -- I wouldn't say voluntarily -- that he did when they were discovered and when his brother-in-law revealed them to the international community after he had lied about them for five years. Some of those had been disbanded, but it wasn't a question of, "Oh, does he dismantle some but not others?" It wasn't like a buffet, where Saddam Hussein can pick and choose what programs he wants to give up and put into what I would call hibernation for use later on, and what programs he is going to continue to pursue. It was an all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it proposition, either you comply with these resolutions or you don't, and if you don't you face serious consequences. Saddam Hussein chose the latter. He chose not to comply. He chose to continue to retain a capability to produce biological and chemical weapons and the intellectual brain trust to pursue nuclear weapons. He never gave up his nuclear ambitions. He gave up significant capability, but he never gave up his ambition. And that's what Duelfer points out. So he kept --

QUESTION: (Off mike.)

MR. ERELI: -- he kept -- excuse me -- he kept the capability. And what is also clear is he was trying to undermine sanctions so that once sanctions were gone, once the international community said, "Look, you know, we're just not going to mess with you anymore because you're too much trouble and you give us a little and we'll let you take the rest," once they said that, he was going to go back to his old ways.

Now, President Bush has said that was a danger, that was a risk that, in a post-9/11 world, when the United States had been attacked by terrorists and we knew that people were after WMD to attack us, that we were not going to allow ourselves to be in that kind of vulnerable position. But, you know, like I said, it's not a question of getting rid of some weapons programs or weapons capabilities but keeping and pursuing others.

You know, you can't give a dictator that kind of choice. And the resolutions were clear: He didn't have that kind of choice. He tried to maintain for himself as much as he could possibly get away with, and under these sanctions he was getting away with a lot. That's what Duelfer shows. He was getting away with a lot.

And so, frankly, I would make the argument that if we knew when we're having the debate on [UNSC resolution] 1441 about what Saddam is doing when we we're in that debate, if we knew what Duelfer knew, we would say, "Hey, look, he's in material breach. Let's go get him." And there wouldn’t have been much of an argument over it.

I'm sorry. You had a question.

QUESTION: John Zang with CTITV of Taiwan. I have two Taiwan questions.

There is an AFP report coming out this morning quoting White House spokesman as saying that President Bush, during his phone call with Chinese President Hu Jintao, President Bush said something like supporting China's reunifying with Taiwan.

Have you ever heard of such a policy statement within the Administration? Would this go -- would your "one China" policy go this far?

This is my first question. Second question --

MR. ERELI: Let me answer the first question.

QUESTION: Sure.

MR. ERELI: There is no change in U.S. policy. We continue to support a "one China" policy and the three communiqués, and speculation that there is a change in U.S. policy or a new direction that's being taken is uninformed.

Second question.

QUESTION: Second question. Earlier this week, there were two full-page ads in the Post and New York Times challenging the U.S. "one China" policy. Deputy Assistant Secretary Randy Schriver asked for a clarification from the Government of Taiwan. Have you got that clarification, and are you satisfied with the clarification?

MR. ERELI: I don't know. I don't know what we have heard back from the Taiwanese Government. I wish I could answer. I just don't have that information.

QUESTION: Can I follow up?

MR. ERELI: Sure

QUESTION: My name is Daphne Fan with ETTV from Taiwan.

You said there is no speculation for the new direction, but we both understand your policy toward Taiwan or the balance across the Taiwan Straits based on those subtle expressions. You know, sometimes it change because we keep hearing you say that, not only the President, but also Secretary Powell is saying do not support the movement toward Taiwan independence, but now you say support reunifying Taiwan with China.

How does that subtle expression happen, and is that related to the pressure you need help from China for the North Korea issue?

MR. ERELI: I think you're reading too much into it. There is no change in U.S. policy. We support the peaceful -- we do not support unilateral moves by either side to change the status quo. We support peaceful dialogue, and we support a peaceful resolution of this issue, and the United States remains committed to its "one China" policy and the three communiqués.

She's got a follow-up.

QUESTION: But when you say support reunifying Taiwan with Mainland China and you do not support --

MR. ERELI: I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I don't know who you --

QUESTION: I said that.

MR. ERELI: Well, I don't know what remarks you're referring to.

QUESTION: Mm-hmm.

MR. ERELI: What remarks are you referring to?

QUESTION: President Bush this morning make a phone call to --

MR. ERELI: Right, but did President -- I did not -- all I know is what you're reporting he said. So who -- did he make any comments? Did he make any remarks that you're quoting? Are you saying these are what other people said he said?

QUESTION: McClellan.

MR. ERELI: Pardon?

QUESTION: Yeah, the spokesman, White House spokesman said that.

MR. ERELI: Oh, okay.

QUESTION: Does that, you know, when you say support, you know, reunification and do not support Taiwan independence, are you making, you know, a prejudgment for the future settlement for Taiwan issue?

MR. ERELI: No, we're not making -- we're not prejudging anything.

Yes.

QUESTION: Just a quick follow-up. Are you aware of President Bush's remark to the Chinese President, in the sense that the U.S. --

MR. ERELI: I did not receive a readout from the phone conversation, so I don't know what the conversation -- it's a White House issue so you'll have to address yourself White House for comment on that specific conversation. But I can tell you, as I just did, that there is no change in U.S. policy, that we remain committed to the "one China" policy and the three communiqués, and that we are opposed to unilateral actions by either side to change the status quo, and that we believe that peaceful dialogue is the way to resolve the issues, cross-Straits issues.

QUESTION: Thank you.

QUESTION: Oliver Lin with Central News Agency, Taiwan.

China says it is going to write a law, unification law. Do you think it's a move of unilateral change of status quo? What is the position of U.S.?

MR. ERELI: I don't know what this law is. I don't know who said it. I don't know that it will take place. So those are all unknowns in the future that don't give me any basis to really provide an answer.

Sir.

QUESTION: T.V. Parasuram, Press Trust of India.

From your statement, I get the impression that the Duelfer report is support your decision to go to war. By now, you must have heard the reaction from the rest of the world. What's your assessment of how the rest of the world views the Duelfer report?

The first impression one gets that the near unanimous feeling is that it -- the war was not justified. Is that the impression you get, not from the facts, but from how the rest of the world views it?

MR. ERELI: The Duelfer report -- I haven't read it all -- I haven't read it, period. I've seen summaries of it. In nothing that I've seen has it come to the conclusion that the war was justified or not justified. That was not the purpose of the report. The purpose of the report was simply to document what Iraq's WMD programs were.

So your statement that the Duelfer report says the war wasn't justified is not exactly accurate. The Duelfer report doesn't even address that issue. It just addresses a very narrow question, although it's a big question: What was the status and extent of Saddam's WMD programs?

So that's point one. Point two, as to what international reaction the Duelfer report is, I think it's a little early to say. There is certainly a lot there to chew on, and I think it will get the attention of a lot of people. It should get the attention of a lot of people. There are some very revealing discoveries in that report that say a lot about the effectiveness of international regimes.

But if you're asking me, is there a greater or lesser consensus now in the international community about whether the war is justified or not, that's just too big a question for me to answer. It's really a question that you'll have to do some more research on.

I think I would make this point: I think that when we took action, when the coalition took action, there was a strong consensus among like-minded nations that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that the only way we could effectively deal with that threat, having exhausted every possible peaceful means, was through the use of force, and that while that decision was not accepted or was unpopular with some, that feeling was by no means universal, and to the contrary, there were numerous and significant states and groups and populations that felt that our action we took was necessary.

Yes, sir.

QUESTION: One more small thing on this report. Does this finally put your boss's appearance in the United Nations into somewhat -- how should I say -- not so nice light? I mean, Secretary Powell's pictures of laboratory vans and -- is this -- this is all now proven totally wrong.

MR. ERELI: Well, you know, the issue of the laboratory vans, I think, has been -- there's been some doubt cast on the conclusions of the February 5th report for some time. It came as a result of the faulty sourcing of those reports. And I think what Duelfer has done is just confirmed what we've long suspected and, I think, the conclusion we'd come to some time ago. Clearly -- and the Secretary, I think, has been very upfront about this -- some of the information that we had for the February 5th report was in error, and it was based on the best information we had available, it was based on the best intelligence we had available.

You know what? The intelligence wasn't all it was cracked up to be. That is something that we regret. It's also something, I think, that we have identified as a weakness of our system, and it's something that the President spoke about today. He said, look, we made what we believed were well-informed decisions based on a wealth of data, data from a variety of sources that corroborated each other, and that, in the end, some of which, not all of which, but some of which turned out to be not as accurate as we thought. And that is something that we need to fix, because policy-makers in the future are going to have to make decisions based on the information available to them, and they have to have the confidence that that information is reliable and accurate. And so, we've got to get it right. We've got to get our intelligence agencies right. We've got to figure out, you know, where the gaps where, where the miscues were, and fix them. So he set up the Rob -- find his name -- let me get this -- the Rob Silverman, Rob Committee to do that, to improve our intelligence operations. There's work in Congress to do that. There's a proposal in Congress.

So we are working to fix what went wrong. But it was not a wholesale failure, number one. Number two, it did provide, I think, enough information that was substantiated by Duelfer to justify what we did. And I would make this final point, because you hear a lot about it and I think it's very important for foreign audiences to understand this, you know, a lot of people say that the Administration misled the American public. Well, that, I think, is important to point out that, what does misleading mean? Misleading means that you know something is true, and that you deliberately distort what you know in order -- and give false information. That didn't happen.

Secretary Powell, when he went before the UN on February 5th, had spent four days at the Central Intelligence Agency going over in exquisite detail, in excruciating detail, every piece of information he was going to present, every word he was going to say at the UN. He went over it with experts from throughout the U.S. Government, from the intelligence agencies, from the White House, from the State Department, to make sure that, “hey, are you all comfortable with this? Do you all, as professionals, have every confidence that what I'm saying is backed up by the best information? Could you stand by it?”

And so the Secretary went out on February 5th. He wasn't misleading anybody. He was presenting the case that we believed were the facts. And it was our best assessment, and so if some of that turned out to be off the mark, okay. But it wasn't deliberate. It was because our system didn't work as well as it should have. And so we're trying to fix the system. But there's a big difference between being misleading and being in error, and I want to make sure we clarify that. We might have been in error, but we didn't deceive.

Yes.

QUESTION: Patrick Jarreau, Le Monde. Was it misleading or was it an error when the President endorsed Sharon's plan of withdrawal from Gaza, a plan which Sharon's main advisor just said two days ago that it has been designed to indefinitely postpone the prospect of a Palestinian state?

MR. ERELI: Last I checked, Dov Weissglas does not speak for the Government of Israel. Last I checked, the Prime Minister of Israel speaks for the Government of Israel. And the last time I checked, the Prime Minister of Israel put out a statement saying that his government is committed to the roadmap, and is committed to the agreements he made with President Bush in April here, and that the -- and for our part, the two-state vision that President Bush articulated in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2002 remains the goal that we are working towards, and remains the objective of the roadmap.

So I categorically reject any suggestion that anybody's misleading anybody. The United States' position is clear. The United States' position is firm. Israel, the Government of Israel, in the name of its Prime Minister, has reiterated that commitment and that support of that policy, so I don't see why there should be any doubt on the issue.

Yes.

QUESTION: Parasuram again. The Secretary has supported the desire of Japan and Brazil to become members of the Security Council. So far, he has not said anything about the two other members of the four-power consulate that met in New York recently, and that is India and Germany. Does the Secretary support also the applications of -- the desire of India and Germany to be members of Security Council? And yesterday, one of the Italian correspondents says that Italy also wants to be a member of Security Council. I wonder how you view that.

MR. ERELI: Yeah, I'm not aware that we've -- I'm not aware that we've said we've supported Brazil's candidacy. I think we said that -- I've have to look at the -- I would refer you to the transcript, but I think we said Brazil would be a strong candidate, a strong candidate -- there would be a strong -- there's a difference. There's a difference.

But let me be clear. The U.S. position is, let's wait for the report of the Eminent Persons Group, or the Eminent -- I'm sorry, the Eminent Persons report, which is a report that the Secretary General has commissioned -- or maybe it was the Security Council, I'm not sure; I think it was the Security Council -- has commissioned on the question of UN reform, and they are studying this issue. They are studying how to, you know, how the Security Council should be reformed, and they will make recommendations. And we still study those recommendations.

I think, obviously, there are a number of countries that have aspirations to be members of the Security Council, but on what basis, in what combination, these are, I think, complicated questions, and questions that need to be discussed by the Security Council, with these countries, on the basis of the Eminent Persons report.

So let's not get ahead of ourselves. Saying that a country is a strong candidate is, in a sense, stating something that's clear to everybody. So I wouldn't look for us to pronounce on every single country, but, you know, our view is that there are aspirants to Security Council status, that those aspirations need to be addressed, and that we are awaiting the Eminent Persons report to see how they can be addressed in a way that is acceptable to everybody.

Yes, sir. Yes.

QUESTION: Giampiero Gramaglia, the Italian News Agency, ANSA, again. Two items related to Iraq. Did Secretary Powell speak to his Polish colleague to clarify the Poles' position after some misunderstanding on the intention of Poland as the ally of the United States in Iraq? And second item, today, France did a formal step for a formal protest for the list of persons and societies distributed in the CIA report. And other countries did same or similar protest or not?

MR. ERELI: On the subject of the Polish contribution to the multinational force, Secretary Powell there was no call at that level. We have regular interactions with our friends and partners, with the Poles. And, you know, on the basis of those regular consultations, interactions, discussions, we have no reason to doubt and no reason to question and are fully confident of Poland's unswerving commitment to the mission, and that mission is helping to secure the stability of Iraq to the point where they can train and equip and deploy their own security forces and can ensure a democratic future so that the need for a multinational force presence is gradually dissolved, and that their commitment to this is mission-driven and not calendar-driven; in other words, that Poland will participate until the mission is accomplished, and that's what will decide their engagement, as opposed to some arbitrary date on a calendar.

The second question dealt with -- remind me again? Oh, the French. I'm not aware of that protest. I don't know whom they protest to, because, as I said, this isn't a U.S.-Government product, number one. But number two, all we're putting out is Iraqi documents, and we are not opining, or we are not providing judgments or conclusions as to whether those documents prove anything or not. The only thing they prove, actually, is that this is what the Iraqis did, but they don't prove what anybody else did. So, these are Iraqi documents, the decision to put them in the report was Charles Duelfer's decision, not the U.S. Government's decision, and they are part of the historical record of Iraq. And that's not a political decision. That's the basis of research and investigations, which is what Duelfer was tasked to do.

MR. DENIG: We need to conclude the formal part of our briefing right now, so I want to thank Mr. Ereli very much for the briefing.