Interview on ABC This Week With George Stephanopoulos

QUESTION: While President Bush has urged Israel to be restrained, the U.S. has pointedly not joined the criticism of Israel. And when I spoke with Secretary Rice earlier this morning from St. Petersburg, she emphasized that the U.S. would also not support calls for a ceasefire right now.

SECRETARY RICE: We support at this point an effort to really make certain that when there's a cessation of violence -- and everybody wants a cessation of violence -- that it is one that is sustainable. And that means that we have to deal with the underlying causes here, and the underlying cause is that extremist forces are showing their hand. They're demonstrating that they have determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East like the young state of Lebanon or the movement toward a two-state solution in the Palestinian territories. After all, Hezbollah launched this attack against Israeli territory from the territory of Lebanon without the knowledge of the Lebanese Government.

So we have to go at the root cause here, and right now that means doing something about extremists. We have a framework in which to do it in Lebanon, Resolution 1559, and the international community has already voted for that framework and we need to use that framework to disable these extremists. Because I'll tell you, George, we can have a cessation of violence, but we'll be right back here three weeks from now talking about another cessation of violence because we will be at the whims of Hezbollah or Hamas for launching the next attack.

QUESTION: So when you say you have to go at the root cause, it sounds like you support what many Israeli officials have said, that they have to go for "the kill" here, according to the Israeli Ambassador, and neutralize Hezbollah.

SECRETARY RICE: There are many ways to go at the root cause and I think the way for us to go at the root cause is, first of all, to recognize that Israel has a right to defend itself. No state is going to sit and allow rockets to be fired into its territory and not defend its citizens. But we're also asking the Israelis to think about the consequences for the real basis for peace, which is to avoid civilian -- innocent civilian casualties, to avoid damage to civilian infrastructure to the degree possible, and to not undermine the young Lebanese Government. Because the real peace for Israel comes in having moderate partners in Lebanon and moderate partners in the Palestinian territories. So we have international frameworks that would help us to isolate the extremists. If the efforts of Mahmoud Abbas to bring the Palestinian leadership along the road toward Quartet conditions can be continued, if the Lebanese Government can have international support for the full implementation of Resolution 1559, which means by the way disabling these extremist elements, then we will have a firmer foundation for peace.

QUESTION: Does the U.S. have any quarrel with how Israel has conducted its counterattack so far?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, George, I'm not going to comment on any specific Israeli operation. As I said, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would expect nothing less. But we have been in constant contact with the Israelis to urge restraint, to urge them to think about the consequences of what they are doing, and in the case particularly of the Palestinian territories, to urge them to ease the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories by keeping crossings open and the like. So while Israel defends itself we would hope that it does it in a way that preserves the possibility for a broader peace.

QUESTION: You know, you say that you've been in constant contact with the Israelis and I know you have personally, but President Bush has spoken to President Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan, the Prime Minister of Lebanon. Why hasn't he spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister?

SECRETARY RICE: George, we're in constant contact with the Israelis at numerous levels. The President is making the calls that we think he needs to make at this particular point in time. He's using his time here at the G-8 with other leaders to get a firm consensus around the problem and a way forward to support the UN Secretary General's mission to the Middle East. The President is deeply engaged and using his time well, and the President has spoken out clearly about Israel's right to defend itself and about the needs that Israel has also to look to the future. The President is doing what he needs to do.

QUESTION: The missile that hit Haifa this morning was manufactured by the Iranians. The missile that hit the Israeli warship on Friday was manufactured by the Iranians. Would the United States support an Israeli strike against Iran?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm not going to go into hypothetical issues here. Obviously Iran is involved. Iran is financing Hezbollah. Iran is providing technology. Syria is harboring Hezbollah and the radical elements of Hamas in Damascus, in fact sometimes parading them out into press conferences.

So yes, what you have here is that extremist forces -- Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians and the Syrians -- recognize that they are facing a different kind of Middle East, the emergence of a different kind of Middle East in which democratic and moderate forces will dominate, a Middle East by the way of which Iraq is a part and that's why there are problems with the Syrians and the Iranians in Iraq as well, and they want to stop it. We have to be equally determined that they can't stop it, and we're working with our allies in the region and our allies in Europe and the rest of the world to do precisely that.

QUESTION: The last time there was a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was in 1996. It was brokered by the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, Warren Christopher. Are you willing to play a similar role now?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I'm certainly willing to play whatever role I'm needed to play. And obviously I'm looking every day at what I can do and I'll do whatever it takes. But I just want to speak to what we're trying to do here. We are trying this time in very different conditions, where you have democratic forces, democratic moderate forces that are trying to establish themselves in the Middle East, to make sure that we use every international tool and every international coalition to disable extremists, not just to get them to stand down for a little while so that they can determine later on that they want to go back and start violence again, but to actually disable them.

That's what Resolution 1559 is intended to do. It's intended to prevent exactly the circumstance that happened, where you had Hezbollah go around the Lebanese Government to launch attacks on Israel. It's the international framework of the Quartet is intended to make Hamas make a choice between being a responsible party in governing or continuing on its extremist path.

So we have to go at the root cause. It's fine to have a cessation of violence. We want to have a cessation of violence. We're worried about and concerned for the escalating civilian casualties on all sides. But unless we go to the fundamentals here and use the tools that we have in the international community to disable extremists, we're going to continue to have these spikes in violence in the Middle East as we've had for the last 30-plus years.

QUESTION: You mentioned the activities of Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been known in the past to strike out not only against Israel but against Israeli interests around the world, against American interests around the world. And on Friday night the Department of Homeland Security put out a warning to local law enforcement officials to be extremely vigilant about the possibility of a counterattack by Hezbollah or Hezbollah sympathizers. Do you believe they have that capability and how worried should Americans be?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we're certainly going to do whatever we need to do to increase vigilance because this is a time in which the Middle East is facing not just a crisis but a crisis that is clarifying the choices; it's clarifying the lines of who's on one side and who's on the other. And so obviously it's something. But look, the United States has more than enough means to protect itself. We just want to be careful and vigilant. And we also want all parties to know -- any extremist parties to know that the United States will of course protect itself.

QUESTION: Also on Friday, Senator John Warner, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a close ally of the President, put out in a statement where he warned that Israelis' extraordinary reaction would affect our operations in Iraq. Do you share his concern?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, what is affecting Iraq is that Iraq is a part of this broader picture of an emerging Middle East that will be very different from the false stability in the Middle East that we've experienced for the last 60 years. For the last 60 years, American administrations of both stripes -- Democratic, Republican -- traded what they thought was security and stability and turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces, to the absence of pluralism in the region. And out of that set of policies we got a situation that produced or helped produce al-Qaida and other extremist elements.

That policy has changed. And part of changing that policy is what is happening in Iraq. Part of that policy is having worked with the international community to get Syrian forces out of Lebanon. Part of that policy is supporting a two-state solution and people like Mahmoud Abbas. And of course they are all linked because extremist forces -- Hezbollah, radical elements of Hamas and Hamas in general, and of course Iran and Syria -- do not want to see the emergence of that kind of Middle East, so of course we have to see them as linked.

QUESTION: But Madame Secretary, but before the war in Iraq, many argued that going into Iraq would stir up a hornets nest. The Administration strongly disagreed, and here's what Vice President Cheney had to say in August 2002: "I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart and our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced."

Extremists now appear to have been emboldened, the moderates appear to be in retreat, there's no peace process, there is war. How do you answer Administration critics who say that the Administration's actions have unleashed, have helped unleash, the very hostilities you hoped to contain?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, those hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on September 11th, and so the notion that somehow policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism I find grotesque.

Secondly, I think that you have to recognize that this is indeed a long process. To take a snapshot some couple of years after these processes are really beginning in the Middle East I think is enormously short-sighted.

And I would just note that for all of those who believe that we had somehow stability in the Middle East over the last 60 years and it's now been disturbed, where do we think Hezbollah and Hamas and these other extremist forces came from? They weren't born yesterday. These forces have been developing and threatening the Middle East and arresting positive developments for decades.

Yes, this is a very turbulent time as the Middle East changes, but it is better to have a Middle East that is changing in the direction in which moderate and democratic forces can take hold than to pretend that everything is just fine in the Middle East and that we're somehow going to get a stable Middle East out of appeasing and dealing with extremist forces. We should have learned at least by September 11th that that wasn't going to happen.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thank you very much for joining us this morning.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. It's good to be with you.

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