A Foreign Policy Discussion

2:30 P.M. EST

MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. I would like to introduce Ambassador Nicholas Burns, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He will address you today. We have 30 minutes, so we’ll go straight to Ambassador Burns.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Good afternoon and thank you to Gordon Duguid for doing such a great job here at the Foreign Press Center. We’re old comrades in arms from Brussels.

I do not have an opening statement, but it’s a busy day and a busy week for United States foreign policy, as we look at the situation in Kosovo--of course, we strongly support Kosovo independence--as we look at the imperative of trying to find our way towards a third sanctions resolution in the Security Council against Iran, and of course, as we look at all the other issues that we have to deal with around the world. In my case, our continued effort to try to complete the India Civil Nuclear Accord; in the case of Secretary Rice, she has just returned to the United States from Japan this morning.

When I was State Department Spokesman some years ago, at the very first press conference I gave, the very first questioner was the dean of the Washington press corps, Barry Schweid. So Barry, take it away.

QUESTION: Okay. I’d be happy to. There’s so many subjects. The Iranian situation; the Council is going to meet, I think, later this afternoon. But do you think that there will be any change in the concessions – pick your word – proffer to Iran? And to be specific, will the mix change to try to get them to comply and do you anticipate a road tomorrow or when?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: It’s always perilous to predict when the Security Council is going to put a resolution in blue and when it’s going to vote it, so I won’t do that. But I would say this. Iran continues to defy the United Nations Security Council, and it’s also, of course, not in conformance with the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors. It hass not suspended its enrichment and reprocessing programs. That’s what the Security Council said in July 2006, in December 2006, and in March 2007. 

We’ve had three resolutions against Iran all asking one thing of Iran: Please suspend your enrichment and reprocessing activities. They’ve not done so. If you look at the report issued by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei last Friday, the Director General of the IAEA, he, of course, reports to the international community that Iran is continuing its enrichment efforts. So I do believe there’s a great deal of pressure on Iran. I think Iran is rather isolated at the present time. And I’m confident that we will have a vote in the Security Council. I don’t know when it will be. We’ll have a vote. I’m confident that resolution will pass. 

Iran will then be one of 10 countries of 192 in the UN system under Chapter 7 sanctions. It’ll be the third sanctions resolution against Iran with Chapter 7 sanctions, and the fourth resolution overall. And following that, we would very much hope that the European Union countries, the EU as a whole, would then pass its own sanctions resolution, which would be significantly stronger than what the Security Council is going to do. And I think the message additionally, Barry, that we have for Iran’s trade partners is that they need to find a way to signal to Iran that this is not going to be business as usual, that the Iranians, in effect, are operating against the will of the United Nations and the IAEA. Therefore, there has to be a price; sanctions is the right price, and we hope the Iranians will then reflect on one final point. 

We offered to negotiate with Iran. We, the countries of the Perm Five – Russia, China, Britain, France, the United States, along with Germany – made an offer in June of 2006 to negotiate with Iran. Secretary Rice has repeated this offer many times over the last several months. She has said that she will be at the table. Iran has to suspend its nuclear operations for that conversation to take place.

Yes, Mr. Lambros, another old comrade in arms from the State Department press corps.

QUESTION: Lambros Papantoniou, Greek correspondent, Eleftheros Typos, Greek daily. Ambassador Burns, tomorrow, in New York City, the UN mediator Ambassador Matthew Nimitz is going to meet once again the representative of Greece and FYROM on the name issue. I’m wondering if you could say something since there is a great concern right now in Athens and Skopje?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, you know, having been American Ambassador to Greece for four years, I certainly understand, and our government understands, the great sensitivity within Greece, among the Greek people, inside the Greek Government about this issue. We realize its importance, and that’s why we’ve put our faith in Ambassador Nimitz, the United Nations mediator. We fully support him, and we hope that he can be successful in working out an arrangement that would be acceptable both to Greece and to Macedonia. 

And so we hope very much that will take place. It’s an important question, because we have a NATO summit in the first week of April in Bucharest, where this issue, or at least the issue of Macedonia’s candidacy to become a member of NATO, will be on the table. We hope therefore that there can be an arrangement worked out before that summit.

QUESTION: Ambassador, since you mentioned NATO, how do you assess Greece’s right to exercise a veto?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I don’t think it would be helpful for me to comment, to give public advice to the Greek Government. I’ve tried always never to give public advice to any government. I think that I would rather accentuate the positive here, and that is that the United Nations mediator, a very experienced international arbiter, Matt Nimitz, has, of course, put several ideas in front of both governments, and we hope that one of them might be acceptable to both. If that’s the case, we’ll have a deal; we’ll never have to then encounter the worst-case scenario that you have put before us. So I’ll decline very politely to answer that question.

QUESTION: Thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Burns. My name is Arshad Mahmud and I represent the Daily Prothom Alo in Bangladesh. I have a general question. I believe this is your valedictory meeting with the foreign press before you leave. 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Nice way to put it.

QUESTION: Yeah.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Therefore, I feel welcome in this environment. 

QUESTION: Thank you. Being --

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: And you’ll be nice to me as well. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Thank you. Being a principal -- one of the principal architects of the American foreign policy, what do you think has gone wrong that made this surge of anti-Americanism almost all over the world? And since you are leaving, there are two things -- the Indian nuclear deal is all but dead and there is also not much progress on Iran -- so how do you really assess your job as a point man of the U.S. Government? Thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thanks very much for that very considerate question. (Laughter.) I would just say this. I think that you mentioned the Indian civil nuclear deal, and I’m happy that you raised that because it’s a very important agreement for both of our countries. We’ve done a lot of work on it. We’ve negotiated for three years. Many parts of that agreement have been now concluded between India and the United States. I know that the Indian Government is just about to conclude the IAEA safeguards negotiations with Dr. ElBaradei and his team in Vienna. And then after that, if the Indian Government can proceed -- and that’s a question for the Indian Government -- then we’ll take it to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and I’m confident that the Nuclear Suppliers Group will ultimately vote to accept India, and then a final vote in the United States Congress. 

We’ve done a lot of work. It’s become in many ways a symbolic centerpiece of the U.S.-India relationship, and that relationship is very strong. We have greatly expanded our relations with India in agriculture, in the sciences, in education, in civil nuclear power. We have become partners in South Asia. We work very closely with India, for instance, in trying to encourage a peaceful transition in Nepal. We work very closely with India on the question of Sri Lanka, where both of us are quite dismayed by the outbreak of further violence between the government and the Tamil Tigers. 

And so there’s a new quality to the U.S.-India relationship. I count it as one of the great successes for President Bush and his Administration, but also as a continuation of the good efforts started by President Clinton in the mid 1990s. I think we have very strong bipartisan support. When you saw Senator Biden and Senator Kerry and Senator Hagel in New Delhi last week, when they met with Prime Minister Singh, it was a very positive press conference. I do think in the Congress and in the Administration, in both political parties in my country, there is strong support for this new relationship with India. 

On your question about public moods around the world, I’d be careful in trying to depict a world that is awash in anti-Americanism because, obviously, there are significant pockets, places in the world, where a high percentage of the people may be unhappy with the United States in parts of the Arab and Muslim world, for instance. But there are other parts of the world -- and India is a very good example -- where the public opinion polls in India consistently show very high marks both for the United States Government and for our President. That is also true in parts of Southeast Asia and Africa. I do think we’re at a point in time where you have to be sophisticated in looking at this issue and understanding that it is a mosaic, perhaps, more than anything else.

Obviously, having said that, it’s important that the United States be active in the world, engaged in trying to rebuild the United Nations, as we are, in trying to support the UN in its role. You’ve seen this Administration over the last three or four years make a very strong commitment to NATO, to the U.S.-EU relationship. We have a much stronger relationship with the African Union, and, in fact, the principal partner that we have in trying to look at the tragedy in Darfur is the African Union. We’ve been trying to build up the capacity of the African Union to deal with that tragedy from an African point of view. We work closely with the Organization of American States here in our hemisphere and with ASEAN in Southeast Asia. 

I think we’re a country that obviously, as the strongest power in the world -- and I say that not in an arrogant sense but more in an objective sense – will at times act in coalitions or act with a few friends, but for the most part in the last several years we’ve been accenting and emphasizing the importance of multilateralism and the importance of rebuilding the great multilateral institutions that are at the heart of a global agenda. I think we are pointed exactly in that direction, and it’s the right place for America to be.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Burns, yesterday the three hostages by the FARC who are still in the Colombian jungle sent a message to President Bush. They say basically that the U.S. Government has forgotten them and they are very worried because of the 60-year sentence of Simon Trinidad. They think that they are going to be 60 years in Colombia also. What’s your opinion about that and what’s your message for them? Do you think that the U.S. Government has forgotten them?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I can tell you that the United States Government has not forgotten about the three Americans who were taken hostage five years ago. I think the anniversary of their captivity was two weeks ago. They’ve been there for five years. They have been held in captivity by a vicious terrorist organization. There is no reason, there is no rationale, there is no excuse, for the FARC having taken these people hostage -- those three Americans, but also all the Colombians who have been taken hostage, the thousands of people who have been taken hostage in Colombia itself, and also the other foreigners like Ingrid Betancourt who have been taken hostage. This is inhumane. It is uncivilized. 

It’s been remarkable to see -- and I know you’ve seen this -- the degree of public opposition within Colombia to the FARC itself, and the way that the people of Colombia have demonstrated against the FARC. I think there’s a broad consensus internationally, in South America but also around the world in Europe and certainly here in this country, that all of us need to send the swift message to the FARC that their actions are completely reprehensible and they’re not being supported by anybody around the world. And so, of course, we call for the release of all the hostages. 

But I wouldn't confuse the issue of the hostages with the fact that people, Colombians and others, who have been indicted and convicted on very serious narcotics offenses, are being held in American prisons. There have been a great number of people who have been extradited to the United States on that basis. They’re being held here for good reason, and there’s every reason to believe that this ought to continue, that we have to be tough on those who would traffic in narcotics and therefore poison all of our societies, particularly our young people who are susceptible to drug use. I don't sense any division in the international community, in Colombia itself, on this issue. I think the FARC is much weaker than it once was, both in its ability to retain territory in Colombia, but also very weak in terms of public support there.

QUESTION: So do you think -- to follow up. Do you think there is any possibility to reconsider the 60-year sentence for Simon Trinidad in order to get -- in order to get the freedom for the hostages? 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: In the United States --

QUESTION: Is there any possibility?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: As you well know, in the United States we have a separation of powers. The judicial branch makes these decisions. We certainly stand by them. There is absolutely no reason to question the actions of the courts in this instance.

Yes.

QUESTION: Thank you, Ambassador. This is Tulin Daloglu with Turkey's TRT. This morning President Bush said -- I'm paraphrasing now -- that Turkey's offensive in northern Iraq should come to an end in shortest duration possible. And yesterday in Ankara, or today in Ankara, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described it as one to two weeks. And both the Turkish Prime Minister and Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff says that the operation will come to an end when the mission is completed. That said, do you still look eye to eye with your counterparts in Ankara on this operation? Is there any tension or crisis, as has been reported by and large in the media?

And on a second note, a separate question maybe, but last Friday U.S. Treasury had frozen the assets of Rami Makhluf, cousin to Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. Do you believe that such sanctions will wedge Syria away from Iran? Thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much. I learned when I was State Department spokesman a decade ago the golden rule, and that is when you're a spokesman or an under secretary and the president has made a statement on a question on the record, that suffices. I couldn't possibly improve on what the President said this morning. He's the senior person in our government, and, obviously, all of us stand by what he said.

On your second question, the other golden rule for people from the State Department is that we always support the Treasury Department. (Laughter.) In this case -- in this case, the Treasury acted with good reason, and we have every reason to believe that continued pressure on the Syrian Government of the type that was announced by Treasury is the right way to go for our country. Syria has to understand that it needs to play by the rules in the Middle East, and it seldom does on questions of the type that you've enumerated today.

QUESTION: I think the question is do you think that that will be the tool to wedge Syria away from Iran?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, I don't know what's going to motivate the Syrians to do that. I would just say that we have been disturbed to see the union between Syria and Iran on this question of support for terrorist groups. There have been meetings, of course, that both of them have attended. Both of them have supported some of the most vicious terrorist groups in the Middle East -- I'm thinking of Hezbollah as one of them. This group of countries and terrorist organizations is quite nefarious. It runs counter to the hopes and dreams of most people, that Lebanon might be free and independent of Syrian influence and domination, that the Palestinians -- the moderate Palestinians -- will have a chance to seek a peace with Israel, that the people of Iraq should be free of the type of terrorism that Iran has been fueling by sending sophisticated technology -- explosive technology -- to Shia militant groups. So you see that both Syria and Iran are supporting all these terrorist organizations, and that's caused quite significant opposition from countries like my own, but many other countries in the Arab world and in Europe as well.

Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Thank you, Ambassador Burns. Imran Siddiqui, Voice of America (inaudible) TV. For the past four months, our program Beyond the Headlines has been off the air, and yesterday Richard Eisendorf from the Freedom House said that it's incumbent upon the U.S. Administration to pursue and convince President Musharraf using your diplomatic and congressional means to allow foreign broadcasters to be able to go back on the air. Specific, especially when we are -- Pakistan and the U.S. -- are allies in the war on terror. I'd like you to weigh in on that, please.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, thank you for your question. I'm a little bit limited in answering it because I'm just not aware of the specific issue and problem. Maybe if we could talk afterwards? You could talk with Gordon and we can get a better sense of what your problem – your issue is; then we’ll be in a position to respond to you. But in general, of course, I know that my colleague Deputy Secretary John Negroponte testified this morning in Congress on the issue of Pakistan. He had a lot to say on it, as you can imagine. We hope very much that the trends can be positive in Pakistan, that a coalition government, a new government can be formed. We certainly hope that this process of democratization and of press freedoms can advance in Pakistan. 

You know, we’ve been saying for a number of years now that Pakistan is, if not the most important, among the most important countries in the world to us in terms of the fight against al-Qaida, because of the presence of al-Qaida and the Taliban on Pakistani soil. A very strong interest of the United States is to see that counterterrorism struggle succeed against al-Qaida and against the Taliban. 

But we’ve also said strongly, and I know Secretary Rice has been very careful to stress this point over many, many months going well back to last summer and last spring: we also want to see a more positive trajectory in the democratization of Pakistan and in press freedoms. And we did see an election which produced a surprising result and an election that clearly spoke to the views of the people there. Along with democratization, of course, hand in hand, is the issue of freedom of press. We’re very strongly in support of that. I don’t mean to dodge your question at all; I’d just like to know more about the specific issue and we’ll see what we can do on that. Thank you.

Yes. 

QUESTION: Vidushi Sinha, Voice of America. Looking – going back to the nuclear deal, looking at the state of domestic politics in India, critics say that the deal might not happen and then there are reports that say that New Delhi could abandon the U.S. deal and engage in civil nuclear trade with other nations. What do you say? 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS:  Well, the second would be impossible because what has to happen here. As, of course, you know very well, India has not been able to trade in civil nuclear fuel or nuclear reactor technology for well over 35 years because of international sanctions against India, because of the activities that caused the beginning of the Indian nuclear programin the 1970s. 

The United States now for the last three years has led the way to say: let’s bring India out of its nuclear isolation. We were able to convince Congress to pass an American law that would allow American companies to trade with India for the first time since the 1970s. We now are in the vanguard. We’re the leading country that will support the Nuclear Suppliers Group in making an international case that all countries should engage in nuclear trade with India. That cannot happen without the United States, because that Nuclear Suppliers Group, of which we are a leading member, has to decide by a consensus. 

The Indian Government is not suggesting this, but in your worst-case scenario, if there was an attempt to say: well, we’re going to forget about the deal with the United States, but go forward, it couldn’t happen, because the Nuclear Suppliers Group wouldn’t make the decision in that case. I think the Indian Government is quite sincere in wanting to push this agreement forward. There’s obviously a question of politics within the Indian Coalition, and we don’t want to interfere in internal affairs to the coalition in India. But we do know this, as Senator Biden said last week and I think as Secretary Gates said when he was in India two days ago: time is very short. Senator Biden explained that for the U.S. Congress to make a final vote on this issue in 2008,the entire agreement must land on the doorstep of the Congress by May or June of this year. 

If you back up from there, that means that the IAEA agreement must be made within a week or two, and it means the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have to begin acting in the month of March. So there are very short timelines here, and I’m afraid it’s time for the government to decide. We hope the decision will be positive. We know this is in the interest of both the U.S. and India. It has strong support from Russia, from France, and I think even from the Chinese Government at this point. And so if India is to be given this great victory, which is so clearly in the Indian national interest, there has to be a courageous decision made by the government to move forward. We hope that decision will be positive. 

We have been a very good friend and partner of India all along through these incredibly intense and complex three years of negotiations, and I’ve been in every meeting. So I have a sense of what it was like. What’s emerged from those negotiations is a relationship between New Delhi and Washington, which is quite close, very trusting. This has the potential to be one of the most significant advances for America’s foreign policy in this era, the creation of this new strategic partnership with the Indian Government and the Indian people. 

Yes, sir. In the back, yes. 

QUESTION: Can I have a microphone, please? Thank you, Chris. Thank you for coming today. Mike Kellerman is my name. I have a couple of quick questions. You led the P-5+1 talks the other day at the State Department. My question in that regard is why does it appear that it has failed to produce agreement? What are the objections of the Russians and the Chinese and why are you so positive about getting a vote on the Security Council on sanctions against Iran? 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS:  Thank you very much. I did chair the meeting of the Perm Five: Russia, China, Britain, France, the United States, and Germany. Germany is the sixth country in this mix. There is an agreement among these six countries that we will all vote for a Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran. That agreement was made on January 22^nd in Berlin by our ministers -- Secretary Rice being the American at the table. 

We have a commitment from Russia and China that they will vote for this resolution. The only question is how long will it take to get this resolution into blue, as they say, then ready for a vote within the next 24 hours after it’s put into blue. There are 10 other members of the Security Council, and a number of them are new members of the Council who have not dealt with the Iran issue before. In New York, there’s quite a bit of discussion now to go through the intricacies of the resolution, on the part of the British and French who have tabled it, to explain the purposes of the resolution and hopefully bring it forward. 

I am optimistic. When you have a commitment, when all five of the Perm Five members agree on something, normally the Council will act. And the fact that the Council has acted unanimously three times in the past, twice to sanction Iran and one additional time to warn them, I think is an indication that this issue has great support in the UN, and that the conventional wisdom in the press that somehow Iran is escaping the attention of the international community is wrong, with all due respect. The Iranians are quite isolated. They have very few countries supporting them. They’re just about to get hit with another sanctions resolution in New York. 

Yes. Yes, I think you have a mike right there. 

QUESTION: Yeah. Thank you. Okay. 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Please. 

QUESTION: Yesterday U.S. intelligence has said that Venezuela have four time more arms than before. What do you think those arms are going to be used for? And in case -- we hope not -- there is like a deadly confrontation with Colombia, will Colombia count with the support of the U.S.?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS:  Well, there’s another golden rule for people at the microphone and that is that we never comment on intelligence matters, so I will not begin to do that today. But I will just say very generally concerning Venezuela, obviously from an American point of view, that the Venezuelan government, not the people of course, but the government seems to be out of step with most of the rest of the hemisphere. As I perceive things, one of the great movements in the Americas is that from left to center to right, the United States has been able to put together very close relations with nearly all of the hemisphere, with the exception on a government-to-government basis of Venezuela and of course famously, Cuba, the government of the Castro brothers. 

Look at the developing relationship between Brazil and the United States, between President Lula and the United States. I just hosted for several hours today my Brazilian counterpart, Mr. Everton Vargas, at the State Department, on biofuels, on Haiti, on the Middle East. We’re developing a very close Brazilian-American partnership. And the same is true of our relationship with Chile, with Panama, with Ecuador, with Mexico, of course. We have good relations with nearly every country in the hemisphere, and I think there’s just these two countries that find themselves so far off to the left that they’ve really isolated themselves from the mainstream in all of the Americas, from Canada down to Chile and Argentina. 

And I guess that’s what I’d say. I know that it seems to bother Hugo Chavez, it seems to grate on him that our leadership rarely talks about him. He seems to want attention. But you know, when President Bush went to Latin America last February, I don’t think he ever uttered Chavez’s name. And Secretary Rice hasn’t either. We’ll let him say what he has to say. He talks a lot. But I think we’ll work for good relations with the vast majority of countries in our hemisphere who want good relations with us.

MODERATOR: I regret to say we have time for just one more question. 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: It depends how long the question is and how short the answer is. 

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Yes, I’d like to talk about Kosovo.

QUESTION: Short question. If in the near future the Serbian minority in the northern of Kosovo will decided to get the independence from Kosovo, what will be position for -- of the United States of this?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, we’ll be absolutely opposed to partition of Kosovo. And the great majority of countries around the world are not going to stand for that. I know that my colleague, my European Union colleague, Peter Feith, had a very strong statement this morning, as head of the EU mission, saying that we would not support and tolerate any move towards partition, either a de factor partition, or creeping partition by trying to take over the United Nations-administered institutions north of the Ibar River, or de jure partition. We will not support it.

I think what’s being lost in all of the words coming out of Belgrade, including that very artful but not very convincing op-ed by the Serb Foreign Minister in The New York Times yesterday, is this: They can’t forget the history of what happened in the Balkans in the 1990s. And it really is quite curious to see this continued, I must say, invective from the government in Belgrade about what’s happening in Kosovo, when their predecessor government, in the name of the country, marched into Kosovo in 1999 and tried to drive a million Kosovar Albanian Muslims out of the country, or what happened, of course, in Bosnia a few years earlier. That’s the history.

Because of that history, the United Nations took Kosovo away from Serbia in June of 1999, and the United Nations has administered the province since then. And now the United States and all of Europe, with very few exceptions, is strongly supporting the independence of Kosovo. With good reason, because we haven’t forgotten the history of what happened there. It is not convincing, and indeed it’s hypocritical, for the Serb Foreign Minister to go in our newspapers, on our media, and to act as if nothing happened in 1998 and 1999 when those terrible injustices were suffered by the Kosovar Albanian Muslim population. In remembering that history, we are seeking a stable Balkans. We are seeking an independent Kosovo, to support it, that will one day have an option to join the EU and NATO.

We do want a close relationship with Serbia. Serbia is an important country. I suppose when passions cool, that relationship between Europe and Serbia, the United States and Serbia, will continue to develop. In the meantime, we hold the Serb Government responsible for what happens in the streets of Belgrade; we have been assured by that government that there will be no repetition of the attacks that we saw against many embassies last week. We will hold the Serb Government to that commitment to us. 

MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That’s all we have time for. 

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you.

MODERATOR: We thank you, and we thank Ambassador Burns not only for appearing here, but also for his extensive service to the U.S.