Miércoles 30 de noviembre de 2005 noticias.infoagencia internacional de noticias
Fuente: © U.S. Department of State
www.state.gov/CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Interview With Barbara Slavin and Ray Locker of USA Today /noticias.info/ MS. SLAVIN: Let's begin, I guess, with Iraq. You said last week you thought you'd need fewer troops there next year than there are this year. If the next Iraqi government comes in and requests a timetable for us to leave, would we provide a timetable?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, we are clearly going to work with the new Iraqi government when it is in place, but I would just note that Iraqi governments to this point have felt the need for a multinational force. That's why they requested the UN to provide a mandate for that force and then that mandate was rolled over just very recently. So of course we're working with the Iraqis.
But the point that I was making was simply that Iraqi security forces are getting better. And the President has always said that when Iraqis can stand up, we'll be ready to stand down.
MS. SLAVIN: But there's a bit more pressure, it seems, coming certainly from popular opinion in this country and also from the Iraqis in Cairo.
SECRETARY RICE: But clearly everybody wants this mission to succeed and
so you have to have an effects-based or results-based approach to any discussion of how security is going to be provided. And it is increasingly provided by more Iraqi forces in the lead, more Iraqi forces able to hold territory, Iraqi forces securing the airport highway, for instance. And so they are taking more and more of the functions.
MS. SLAVIN: But you do anticipate that there is going to be a drawdown next year?
SECRETARY RICE: Well --
MS. SLAVIN: I mean, the Pentagon has said that, you know, it'll go back down to 138,000 certainly after the elections and then the hope is to get it down to about 100,000 by the end of the year?
SECRETARY RICE: The President will take from his commanders their assessment of what the conditions permit, what Iraqi security forces are capable of doing, and then determine troop levels.
MR. LOCKER: I'd like to ask you about the EU developments today. There was one of -- an EU minister saying there may be sanctions on some of the member nations for hosting what they call the secret CIA prisons there. How has this situation in the last couple weeks complicated your job in dealing with some of the European countries?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I've been very clear, as have other members of the Administration, that
we are fighting a war on terror, that there are demands of that that we have to meet, that we have to meet in order to protect not just ourselves but to protect others. Unfortunately, Europe has had its share now of terrorist incidents, in Spain and in Great Britain. And so we are all working together through law enforcement cooperations, intelligence cooperation, to try and produce the very best outcome to protect innocent citizens. And I think that is what we have to keep our eye on.MS. SLAVIN: But these are prisons where terrible things have happened, according to a number of accounts.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, I think we have to be careful in assessing what is going on in detention. When you come to Abu Ghraib, nobody would by any stretch of the imagination condone what happened at Abu Ghraib. People were punished for it. People should have been punished for it. It was -- I don't care whether you were operating under the Geneva Conventions or the President's dictate; it was wrong. And so that was very, very clear.
There have been other cases where there have been reports of abuse. [for which there are no photographs] Those have been investigated and will be investigated whenever those reports come up. And I would just note that one of the really important differences that the world is learning about how democracies deal with this, as opposed to how dictatorships deal with it, is that in open societies where you have an open press, where you have young soldiers who will go to their commanders and say something wrong is happening there, as was the case in Abu Ghraib, that you have checks and balances and you have protections against that kind of thing.
MS. SLAVIN: Do --
SECRETARY RICE: So yes --
MS. SLAVIN: If I can interrupt, because time is short.
SECRETARY RICE: Sure.
MS. SLAVIN: Do you agree with Vice President Cheney then that there should be an exception for the CIA from certain international and -- international norms?
SECRETARY RICE: The President is --
MS. SLAVIN: And doesn't -- what does that do for our public diplomacy?
SECRETARY RICE:
The President is going to, within our laws and within our international obligations, do everything that he can to protect American citizens -- and by the way, since the war on terrorism has no borders, when you are acting against terrorists to protect Americans, you are very often acting against terrorists to protect others as well. And so the President has been very clear that that's not going to include torture. He's been very clear that it is going to be within the limits of our laws and it's going to be within the limits --
MS. SLAVIN: Then why the objection to the McCain --
SECRETARY RICE: We are working with Congress. As you know, Senator Graham has also had legislation. I believe we need the Congress in this fight because this is our joint responsibility to protect the American people and these are hard issues. We haven't ever fought a war like this before. We've never fought a war before where you are -- or certainly we don't, when
we pick law enforcement actions, where you can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them because if they commit the crime, then thousands of innocent people die.
MS. SLAVIN: You know, though, what this has done for public diplomacy efforts and the way people are using this issue. Does that -- that has to concern you.
SECRETARY RICE: I do know how people are using the issue and I constantly remind people that, first of all,
we are in a difficult war against a new kind of enemy and that we do have an obligation to protect our citizens as well as protect other citizens; secondly, that the President has been very clear that he will not countenance behavior and activities that are outside our laws and outside our international obligations. And when something goes wrong, as it has on occasion, as it did at Abu Ghraib, that's something that sickened all of us, that we're going to be absolutely forthright about it and punish people who engaged in it.
MS. SLAVIN: Let me ask you a couple other questions about Iraq and al-Qaida and so on. As a result of the war and occupation, Iraq now has become a base for al-Qaida, and Iran has also been strengthened in some ways. How does the United States draw down forces and extricate itself from Iraq without further strengthening al-Qaida and Iran?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, Barbara, I don't actually agree with the premise, so let me go back to the premise of the question.
First of all, on Iran, Iran is a state with whom we -- with which we have numerous problems: terrorism, democracy in Iran, a nuclear program that everybody's concerned about. But
I am not at all certain that the geo-strategic circumstances of Iran have improved with a democratizing, pro-Western Afghanistan [US bases, i.e.]on one border and a democratizing, non-theocratic but Shia-majority Iraq [U.S. bases, i.e.] on another border. So I question the premise that somehow Iran has been strengthened.
Secondly --
MS. SLAVIN: Well, Al-Qaida certainly is doing a booming business lately.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, al-Qaida was doing a booming business since the mid-1990s and finally al-Qaida is actually being challenged. And al-Qaida is being challenged and of course they are recruiting and coming out and fighting, but they are at least now being challenged. And if you want to talk about how you deal with a specific al-Qaida cell on Monday of next week, that's one thing; but if you want to talk about how you
eliminate the ideology of hatred that produced al-Qaida and will produce more al-Qaidas unless you eliminate it -- how you get, in other words, to a permanent peace -- then you have to have a different kind of Middle East than the one that produced the ideology of hatred that made those people fly airplanes into buildings. [slogan soup]
So
an Iraq that is a fundamental pillar of a different kind of Middle East may indeed go through a period of time in which al-Qaida is a presence in Iraq. But if you read Zawahiri, if you read Zarqawi, they know that the political process that is underway in Iraq is, in fact, their worst nightmare. That's why they threatened Iraqi citizens and then 8.5 million of them went out and voted in January. That's why they threatened Iraqi citizens and 10 million went out and voted for the referendum. And that's why they're still threatening Iraqi citizens. Because they know that the political process is ultimately going to be the death knell for their activities there.
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