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Skriven 2006-03-04 23:33:12 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0603046) for Sat, 2006 Mar 4
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Press Briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 4, 2006

Press Briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
United States Embassy Islamabad
Islamabad, Pakistan



6:12 P.M. (Local)

SECRETARY RICE: Okay, well let me just say a couple words about the trip,
and then I'll take any questions that you might have. This is a region
that, obviously, September 11th changed dramatically American strategic
interests and perspective in the region. It's hard to look back and think
about Afghanistan from five years ago, when the Taliban was in power, when
in fact the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan was one in good
-- Pakistan was one of the only countries that actually recognized the
Taliban. If you look back to December of 2001 or June of 2002, you had a
situation in which everybody worried about war between India and Pakistan.

And you come here now, and there's been a dramatic change in the
relationships among the countries, but also in the relationships with the
United States. And even though, obviously, September 11th and the war on
terror have very much shaped these relationships and the strategic nature
of them, I think that it's clear from all three that they are much more
than that.

Now there are broad relationships in Afghanistan -- a relationship of
helping to have given rise to a young democracy there, and now trying to
help stabilize that young democracy, trying to build a country that, after
25 years of civil war, obviously has a very tough road ahead, to India,
which I might note that the President, also back in 2000 when he was
running for office, noted the importance of the rise of India, and has
followed through on his determination to build a strategic, broad
relationship with India.

I know that there's a lot of focus on the civil nuclear deal, which is an
important step forward, and I think really does bring India into the
mainstream on non-proliferation policy. And for a country that has really
an excellent relationship on proliferation, now will give access to the
IAEA, to its civilian nuclear industry. And I know that a lot of the focus
was on that, but if you just looked at the agricultural agreement,
harkening back to the grain revolution of the '60s, the business
roundtable, the CEOs, the relationship with the business school, if you
look to the extraordinary defense relationship that we now have with India,
where there were exercises here just before the President arrived, air
exercises, that's obviously a deep and broad relationship, based on our
common democratic and multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious -- we
share those elements.

So I think this really was a breakthrough relationship -- trip for India,
but the relationship has been building and moving in that direction now for
some time.

And then finally here in Pakistan, again, we tend to think of it as a
relationship principally in the war on terror. But the President just had a
really wonderful meeting with some members of civil society -- a woman
who's the head of a bank that is -- principally gives micro loans for
women-owned businesses; the head of the American-Pakistani Business
Council, which has raised extraordinary amounts of money for the earthquake
relief; a person here who is head of a Christian center here, who has been
a part of the fight that President Musharraf mentioned to mainstream
minorities and minority religions into the political process; a woman
member of parliament who talked about her work on women's issues and
women's legislation, in particular domestic violence laws against the
adultery and rape as being equal.

So the breadth of the work that we were doing here was very evident when
many of the people around that table said, I have a USAID grant to do this,
or the U.S. Agriculture Department is working with us on this. So it was
very clear that this, too, is a very broad relationship.

Obviously, Pakistan has a road ahead of it, in terms of democratic
development. I think President Musharraf spoke to that this afternoon. But
I would just -- today, I think you have to look back at where Pakistan was
in September of 2001. This was a country that, I think, was very, very
close to losing completely the grip on extremism, very close to
Talibanization of its own, and probably just a step away from losing the
chance to ever return to a state of moderation in this region. And I think
that you've seen now, over the last several years, when you think about
women's rights, when you think about minority rights for religious groups,
you've seen some changes in a positive direction.

So all in all, I think it's been a great trip for the President. I know
he's enjoyed it very much. He just went out and batted cricket, which I'm
not sure if it was a good hit or not, since I know nothing about cricket,
but it looked good to me.

So I'll take your questions.

Q There was a story a while back about how Karzai had hand delivered some
information to Pakistan about some of the extremists down in the western
and southern part. The thought was that he wanted Pakistan to do more to
crack down. Was that discussed today, the border issues, and can you give
us a sense on how each one of them were handling that issue?

SECRETARY RICE: Sure. We discussed it in Afghanistan, and we discussed it
here. There are efforts underway -- the United States has tried to help the
two cooperate more, through trilateral type of efforts. And I think it's
fair to say that this is not easy. This is a very hard place. This region
hasn't been controlled for years, ever. The British didn't control it; the
Pakistanis have never controlled it. And I think that the Afghans
understand that, but they, like everybody, are suffering from the fact that
this is a region that is producing a lot of violence and has been an area
in which terrorists have operated. I don't think there's anyone who wants
more to get them than President Musharraf. After all, these are folks who
tried to kill him a few times, who are very much a block to his -- a
hindrance to his efforts to root out extremism in Pakistan. But it's a very
hard area.

I think the more cooperation that you have, and that's one thing that we've
been encouraging, in intelligence, the more that specialized forces start
to be developed that can deal like regions like this -- and I think both in
Pakistan and Afghanistan you're seeing the development of more specialized
forces, the better that they're going to do. But this is a very tough
region.

Q Did the President ask him to do anything?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, the President discussed it in full with him, and --

Q What was the message to him?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the message was to him, we all have to really work
hard and continue our efforts in this very difficult region -- is there
anything more that we can do, is there anything more that Afghanistan and
Pakistan can do together? I mean, it was more of a kind of problem solving
approach.

Q What did you say?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I'm not going to go into details here, but we're
working it. Everybody is working it. There are long histories of suspicion
between Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's no secret to anyone. What's
remarkable is that they now have a relationship in which President Karzai
could come here, could present information to President Musharraf, could
talk to him about it, and they can agree to work together. But this has
been a difficult relationship for a long time. It's getting -- the good
news is that they're getting better. That picture that we had last year, of
President Bush, President Karzai and President Musharraf in the same room,
you could not have taken just a few years ago.

Q That having been said, it is a difficult region, and I'm sure everyone at
the table today acknowledged it. President Musharraf has a delicate
balancing act as he tries to move forward. But does President Bush feel
like U.S. forces, U.S. intelligence has the ability to act in that border
region, and pursue every tangible lead in a real-time way, or are there
obstacles that need to be dealt with?

SECRETARY RICE: We have a very good, cooperative relationship with the
Pakistanis. It is a politically delicate area, and we coordinate and we
work closely together. I don't think you'll find a closer working
relationship than Ambassador Crocker and the military here and General
Abizaid and with the Pakistanis. Everybody wants to defeat these terrorists
in this region.

One point that I would make about the region is, yes, it's delicate, but
President Musharraf talked about not just getting the terrorists, which is
obviously extremely important, but also creating conditions in this region
where terrorism won't continue to breed.

So one thing that we talked about today is a zone, kind of an opportunity
zone, in the area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which could give some
economic development to this region by tariff-free export to the United
States. So you also have to do some -- this has been an area that's been
economically and politically isolated for its entire history. The
Pakistanis, also, after the tragedy of the earthquake, have been trying to
do redevelopment projects that bring that region closer to the Pakistani
mainstream.

So there's a short-term effort -- the Pakistani military is fighting up
there, as I said, nobody has, ever. They're changing the kinds of forces
that they use up there in order to be more effective. They're working very
closely with us, and they also are -- we always talk about winning the
hearts and minds, well, this is an effort to reintegrate that region into
Pakistan proper.

Q Did you all discuss the air strikes and whether that can happen again? I
mean, will the United States be allowed to do that again?

SECRETARY RICE: We've been through this issue, and I think the Pakistanis
spoke to it at the time.

Q It was not a topic today?

SECRETARY RICE: We've been looking forward since then.

Q Do you have any take on the latest in Iran, with the --

SECRETARY RICE: I keep reading in the newspapers a breakthrough here, or a
breakthrough there. I don't think that -- when you talk to the diplomats, I
think what you're getting is that the Iranians have still not said the
words that everybody needs them to say, which is that, first of all,
they'll suspend the activities that they restarted in violation of the
Paris Agreement, and secondly, that they understand that a civil nuclear
program for Iran is going to have to be one that does not include
enrichment and reprocessing on Iranian territory. Those are the bottom
lines, and I haven't heard anything to this point that suggests the
Iranians have accepted those bottom lines.

Q March 6th is two days from now. So is there anything we should watch for
there?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, one thing is I think March 6th is why you're seeing
all this Iranian activity. You know, people have offered them these things
before, and they haven't been as interested as now.

Q So they're hoping for maybe a delay in the referral?

SECRETARY RICE: I think they're trying to find some way to fade the heat,
to get people to -- they'd love to get us back into a situation where
they're talking, but doing all the things that they've been doing since
they broke the Paris Agreement. And I don't think anybody is prepared to
have them do that.

We've said all along that going to the Security -- being in the Security
Council, which is where we are at this point -- remember that the London
Agreement was that we are in the Security Council, but we would not take
action until after the board report. But after the board report, I think
the Security Council will have to have a serious discussion about what the
next steps will be. Nobody has said that we have to rush immediately to
sanctions of some kind. We've love to solve this within the IAEA framework,
by having Iran react to the requirements of the February 4th resolution.
But thus far they haven't shown any inclination to do that.

Q I have just one more question on the nuclear. Did he -- did Musharraf
today actually say, gee, I'd like to have the same kind of deal as India,
or was that just kind an unspoken --

SECRETARY RICE: You heard it at the press conference, that the Pakistanis
have energy needs, and of course they've expressed an interest in civil
nuclear. It's not the right time for that with Pakistan. It's, as the
President said, a different history with India. And I think we can address
energy needs on each country's terms, on different terms for each country.

Energy Secretary Bodman is coming out shortly. He'll be able to talk about
Pakistan's energy needs. We had some interesting discussion today at a
lunch about biomass, and about the possibilities of using ethanol. There
are a lot of technological ways to pursue the energy needs, but civil
nuclear just isn't possible.

Q But was that a pretty prickly term, thing to go into here, giving their
history of rivalry on this and so many things, that here we're agreeing
with the Indians to do this, and they argue the same thing, we have the
energy problem?

SECRETARY RICE: One of the things we've worked very hard to do, and I think
we've mostly succeeded, is to de-hyphenate these relationships. These are
very different places, with different histories, different sets of
problems, different prospects. And so when you have a particular deal with
India that moves in a particular direction because of India's long history
of protecting nuclear technology, you have that deal. But with the
Pakistanis, you can have a quite different approach to the energy problem.

And I think we've been effective in taking these relationships on their own
terms, and not assuming that everything we do in Pakistan is going to be
appropriate in India, or that everything we do in India is going to be
appropriate in Pakistan. And that's the approach that we're taking.

Nobody has been prickly during this visit about anything. It has been
problem solving, warm, cooperative. I think the Pakistanis appreciate very
much that the President has taken time and been here for an extended period
of time. He's been able not only to meet with President Musharraf and with
the government, but also with members of Pakistani, you know, got to see
the cricket kids, have a state dinner tonight. It's been a great visit.

MR. McCLELLAN: Last question.

Q Last question, I was going to follow on something else.

SECRETARY RICE: All right.

Q Well, just to follow on Deb's question. Did President Musharraf express
an interest in that sort of deal? I know you said that it wasn't discussed,
it was talk more broadly, but did he express at least an interest in that,
or want to have discussions to do that direction?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it's just not -- the time isn't right for those
discussions with Pakistan.

Q So it didn't happen?

SECRETARY RICE: No, it came up, and I think the President made clear what
he made clear in the press conference, that the history and the situation
are just not there on the Pakistani side. But we want to try and pursue
energy development with Pakistan; we talked about clean coal technology as
another direction to go. But nuclear energy has a particular character,
given both the energy possibilities and the proliferation concerns. And I
think we believe that the agreement with India can meet those
simultaneously. But it's generous.

Q When the President was in India, he met with opposition leaders. But
here, he didn't do so. There's been a lot of stuff in the press about the
opposition leaders -- the round up over the evening and this morning. Does
that send a sort of message to President Musharraf that the United States
agrees with the way he's handling democracy, and also does it send that
same message to the opponents, that the United States believes Musharraf is
moving toward democracy?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I can tell you that in this meeting that we had,
people expressed what they needed their government to do. This was a
meeting with civil society; they expressed what they needed their
government to do. And they seemed, by the way, quite unafraid to express
that.

Pakistan is in a different stage of development than India, in terms of its
democratic development. Again, the relationships --or the countries are not
identical. But Pakistan is pointing toward elections in 2007, and I think
our best -- the thing that we can do is to speak faithfully in favor of the
need for free and fair elections, to continue to support Pakistan in the
development of that.

I'll give you one example. One of the participants there talked about the
weakness of the party structure in Pakistan, that there really needs to be
the development of centrist, more moderate parties. And the NDI, which is
National Endowment for Democracy, is doing work here in party development.
And so I think that's the way that we support Pakistan as it gets ready for
those elections. We've also done work here in women's empowerment, we've
done work here with the press. We've done lots of elements of trying to
support the democratic enterprise. But, clearly, the elections in 2007 are
going to be very important.

Q Just one thing, your comment on Iran. You are basically expecting the
referral then to happen?

SECRETARY RICE: The referral has happened. The report has happened. It is
in the Security Council now. The question is, what action will the Security
Council take. And we still have a few days to see what Iranian behavior
would be. But I would expect that you'd need at least something that tries
to give the IAEA the weight of the Security Council, in order to get Iran
to do something. But I don't think people are talking about going directly
to sanctions.

Thank you.

END 6:20 P.M. (Local)

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