www.scoop.co.nz Thursday, 6 March 2003, 12:19 pm Press Release: US State Department

............Ma'am.

QUESTION: Can we move to the Western Hemisphere?

QUESTION: No, can we do Turkey?

MR. BOUCHER: I'm always happy to.

QUESTION: Okay. Yesterday Colombian officers from the Colombian government said that, or confirmed that the leader of the Colombia guerilla, FARC, Marulanda, was operating from Venezuela. My question is, Assistant Secretary Stroebel last week said that the U.S. Government had some doubts about the reliability of Venezuela as an oil supplier and that it doubted that the President Chavez would honor his word to hold elections in Venezuela. Do you believe that President Chavez could be a reliable partner to try to fight the Colombian guerillas in Venezuela?

MR. BOUCHER: I, the first think I need to say is every time somebody quotes what Acting Assistant Secretary Stroebel said in testimony to me, we look it up and we find out if that's not exactly what he said. I haven't had a chance to look up this exact quote yet. But I would suggest that people check it carefully before they use it.

He certainly did talk about our concerns about the situation in Venezuela and stressjed that the situation is deteriorating, said we need to help Venezuela find a solution to avoid further harm, a viable solution that's peaceful, constitutional, democratic and electoral. And that's what we've been saying all along. That needs to be agreed by the government and the opposition.

The effort the United States has made is to try to help Venezuela solve its political problems and get back to a situation of democratic representation and stability. That would certainly contribute to the stability of the region, and that's something that's important not only for us, but for others in the region. That's why we have the Friends Group.

As far as the operation of the FARC, of the Colombian guerillas from Venezuela, as you know, that's been reported from time to time. It's something we've kept in close touch with. We have made very, very clear our view that every government in the region should be doing whatever it can to prevent that sort of thing from happening and that's a view that we've often expressed here as well as to the Venezuela Government.

Yes..........

www.scoop.co.nz Thursday, 6 March 2003, 12:20 pm Press Release: US State Department Interview by Alan Murray and Gloria Borger on CNBC s Capital Report Secretary Colin L. Powell Washington, DC March 4, 2003 (As aired at 9 p.m. EST)

MS. BORGER: Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being with us on Capital Report.

SECRETARY POWELL: You are quite welcome, Gloria.

MS. BORGER: Let me start with the obvious question, which is, of course, how close are we to war?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I can't answer that question. Time is running out on Saddam Hussein. We have been waiting for 12 years for him to disarm. We've been waiting almost four months since Resolution 1441 passed and we still are not seeing a level of cooperation and we're not seeing the compliance that the international community had hoped for. So time is running out.

MS. BORGER: Is there anything you realistically believe can happen to avoid war?

SECRETARY POWELL: Sure, if he really demonstrated that he was going to totally comply and not just wait until the pressure was on him, and he destroys a few missiles, he gives a few more documents. This is all a game he's playing, trying to satisfy the pressure that's being placed on him.

But the level of cooperation we've seen recently is not because he has made a strategic decision to comply, but because there are five American aircraft carriers in the region and thousands upon thousands of troops are assembling to disarm him if he doesn't disarm. So he's trying to divert that pressure through these techniques and tactics.

But if he were serious, what we wanted to see after 1441 was here are the documents, here's the evidence, here's what I did, I'm going to destroy this, I'm going to show you everything, you can interview anybody you want to interview, you can interview them in the country, out of the country; I have a made a strategic choice to disarm. That is what we have not seen and we must not let these tactical moves deceive us into believing he has made a choice.

MS. BORGER: Do you think he'll step aside? There's any shot that he would do it?

SECRETARY POWELL: I can't answer that. It was interesting that a number of the Arab countries, recognizing the gravity of the situation, called upon him to step down.

If he were to step down, I think that would be good for the people of Iraq, it would be good for the region, and it would avoid a potential conflict. But so far in the course of his many years of leadership and dictatorship in Iraq, he has not evidenced that kind of concern over anybody but himself.

MR. MURRAY: Are you going to get the votes you need in the United Nations for a resolution, and is Russia, in particular, going to be one of those votes?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I won't know whether I get all the votes till -- the votes I need, till the day the vote is cast -- the votes are cast. But I'm, frankly, encouraged by the conversations that I've been having with members of the elected ten, those ten members of the Security Council who are elected, and I have a pretty good understanding of where all the permanent members are and what their thinking is.

And as you know, you need nine positive votes and no vetoes from any of the permanent representatives, and I think that is not an insurmountable task, even though others might.

MR. MURRAY: You know, the last time Mr. Blix appeared before the UN Security Council, he made a direct attack on your comments, saying one piece of what you said there was no evidence for that. What was your reaction to that?

SECRETARY POWELL: Nothing whatsoever. I didn't react, particularly. I didn't really consider it an attack. He looked at one of the photos and he said, based on his information, he didn't reach the same judgment. That doesn't mean I was wrong. He didn't reach the same judgment.

MR. MURRAY: Does that undercut your confidence in him?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, it doesn't undercut my confidence in him. I believe that Dr. Blix is a very dedicated, distinguished man who will give you his straight opinion. But I not only had the picture that I showed that day, I had quite a bit of additional evidence that I wasn't able to present that day that certainly confirmed to me what we said about that facility. But based on what he saw and what he did, he came to a different judgment. And that's been portrayed as a huge attack against me, but I didn't see it that way at that moment.

MS. BORGER: Do you really believe there is any great value in further inspections?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think the inspections can only serve a useful purpose if the person on the other side, Saddam Hussein, has made a strategic decision to cooperate. And so the question of how much longer the inspections should continue, do you need more inspectors, do they need more technical assistance, you can double or triple the number. And by the way, the inspectors have not asked for more inspectors. They think they have enough inspectors. What they're looking for and what we've all hoped for was a level of cooperation and an intention on the part of Saddam Hussein to comply, and that we have not seen. So longer inspections, more inspectors, will not solve this problem.

MS. BORGER: So if he's not going to change, what's the value?

SECRETARY POWELL: The value is that the inspectors are there to verify what he says and what he has turned over. There are some in the Council who believe that inspections in and of themselves are the solution to the problem, but we know better. We have seen how he can divert inspectors, how he can deceive them, how he can send them down the wrong trail. We saw that for years.

And then, when the inspectors finally started to get wise and were getting close to the truth in 1998, he created conditions that the inspectors had to leave and stop doing their work. And I think, you know, these are inspectors that are there, really, to verify that he is complying with the resolution and not to be detectives running all over the countryside looking for prohibited materials.

MS. BORGER: Let's switch now to North Korea. There was news over the weekend that the North Koreans are going to start reprocessing plutonium. Is that true?

SECRETARY POWELL: I saw no such news. I saw a press report. I saw an article in the newspaper.

MS. BORGER: Is it true?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't know. Only the North Koreans know what's true. But so far, they have not started to reprocess uranium. They will have that capability if they choose to use it. They did start the reactor up and it would not shock me if I came to work one day and discovered that they had started the reprocessing facility.

We have been communicating to them through all of our many channels and through their neighbors that this would not be a very wise thing to do as we are all searching for a diplomatic solution. The starting up of the reprocessing facility, which would give them the material to produce nuclear weapons, would change the entire political context, and we don't think that would be a helpful thing to do as we look for a political solution.

But I can't tell you about the truth of an article which was speculative.

MR. MURRAY: Under what circumstances would you be willing to consider a face-to-face meeting with the North Koreans?

SECRETARY POWELL: We have said to the North Koreans and we've said to all of our friends in the region that this is not just a problem between the United States and North Korea. The North Koreans would like to make it simply a bilateral problem, but it affects China, it affects South Korea, Japan, Russia. It affects the international community. That's why the International Atomic Energy Agency has referred the problem to the Security Council.

And we believe the best way to approach this is with every neighbor that has an interest getting together and others in the international community getting together and beginning a conversation with the North Koreans. The United States would be at such a meeting and I am sure in the course of that meeting there would be more than ample opportunity for the United States and North Korea to exchange views with each other --

MR. MURRAY: As part of a larger way forward?

SECRETARY POWELL: -- to find a way forward. At least start as a larger way forward. Remember, we had bilateral discussions between the North Koreans and the United States. It produced the Agreed Framework which capped Yongbyon, the facility we're talking about, for eight years, but it allowed the North Koreans to say, gee, this is so valuable, let me go get another nuclear facility and let me start enriching uranium. So it didn't work last time. This time, we need the entire international community involved.

MR. MURRAY: When you take a step back, you've got North Korea, you've got Iraq, you've got the war against al-Qaida, you've got the problems in the Middle East. Nobody can even throw in Venezuela. How did we get ourselves to a point where you had so many problems on your plate at the same time?

SECRETARY POWELL: There are always problems in the world. I have been in this business for a lot of years. I've been a National Security Advisor, the Chairman of --

MR. MURRAY: You ve had this many at once?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I haven't actually done an audit of it. This is certainly in the class of most. I will not argue with that point, but nevertheless, these things happen and they are not all the fault of the U.S. Things happen. And the United States is the leader of this world that wants to be free and whenever one of these problems emerge people will look to us to do something about it. And then they want to know, well, was it your fault? It very seldom is our fault, but almost always somebody wants us to do something about it.

And the greatness of this nation, and I think the greatness of this President, is that he is willing to play a leadership role in trying to solve these problems from a position of strength, but from a position of principle, as well. And we'll continue to do that. Many things are going well -- our relationship with China, our relationship with Russia, a number of other areas, free trade agreements that we have been able to put in place with a number of countries, we've been pushing globalization. So there are many things that are going well in the world, as well.

MS. BORGER: Mr. Secretary, how could it be, though, that we're having so much trouble getting support around the world for war in Iraq, a potential war in Iraq, when you believe, and clearly this Administration believes, that there is such a powerful case to be made?

SECRETARY POWELL: There is a feeling among many people in the world, and a number of our allied friends feel this way, that this problem does not rise to the level of significance that should require the U.S. to use armed forces. We believe differently, as do many of our friends. I mean, most of the European nations, if you want to go through an audit, essentially are supporting the U.S. determination to deal with this problem, even when their populations are not supportive of it. I mean, you take Mr. Aznar in Spain, Mr. Blair in England. They are leaders who are determined to move forward. Mr. Berlusconi. I could name quite a few of them.

Even in the presence of public opinion that is in the other direction, they understand the danger presented by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction; they understand the nature of this despotic, dictatorial regime that has abused its own people, committed torture, and would commit that torture on a greater scale with weapons of mass destruction; and they understand the nexus between that kind of capability and terrorism -- all brought into focus after 9/11.

These leaders are standing firm, and we are standing firm with them and we are going to deal with Saddam Hussein. We'll deal with him peacefully through the United Nations, and if conflict does become necessary, I hope the United Nations will understand that and pass a resolution that will express that understanding.

MR. MURRAY: Mr. Secretary, we had your son on our show just a couple of weeks ago. It was the day that he was handed his first defeat by the FCC. I want to read you what he said on that show and then get your response. It was really -- it was touching.

I was asking him about this -- you were both having a tough week, so I was asking him about the difficulties. He said, "I love my father deeply. I think he's a brilliant individual and made of mettle that I've never seen produced on this earth. He's fighting difficult issues. He had his French delegation and I had mine this week."

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I feel the same way about my son. I am enormously proud of him, as you can imagine.

MS. BORGER: Mr. Secretary, just one last question as we end this interview -- what keeps you up at night as you think about a nation that may be going to war?

SECRETARY POWELL: Whether it can be avoided. I always strive for peace. I don't look for conflict or war. I've been characterized as a dove, a reluctant warrior -- be my guest. I always try to find a peaceful solution and I'm always looking for that peaceful path.

But I also know as a soldier, having been in war, having led men into war and sent men to war, that sometimes you can't find a peaceful solution and then the force of arms must be used. And I'm always thinking, how can we do that with minimum loss of life, get it over with quickly, and then help the country that we had to go into, put them back on a more stable footing? And if that comes to pass in Iraq, if that's what we have to do in Iraq, Iraq will be a better place afterwards.

abcnews.go.com March 5 — By Jason Webb

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - U.S. troops are helping hunt Colombia rebels who captured three Americans but the United States has no plans to expand its military presence, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Washington has flown about 50 extra personnel to Colombia to assist a massive Colombian army rescue operation to find three Defense Department contractors seized by Marxist guerrillas when their plane crashed on Feb. 13.

The deployment in a country bogged down in a messy four-decade civil war means that the number of American military personnel in Colombia has slightly exceeded a cap of 400 imposed by U.S. Congress, but it will make no difference to the ground rules of assistance from Washington, the official said.

"What will remain a base here it seems to me is our interest in having Colombians doing this job for Colombians," the official told reporters, asking not to be identified.

Although he refused to rule out the participation of a small number of Special Forces in a rescue operation, American troops here are otherwise limited to working in training and intelligence.

Future American involvement in Colombia, the third-largest destination for U.S. military aid after Israel and Egypt, will be similar to the recent past, the official said.

"Not breaking caps, no combat forces, this is a Colombian responsibility," he said, adding that the U.S. commitment to the country would not be sapped by its deployments elsewhere.

"I don't think our effort in trying to get Iraq to disarm has anything to do with what we do or don't do with Colombia."

The United States has given Colombia about $2 billion in mainly military aid in recent years, targeted mostly for the cocaine trade but also, more recently, at rebels.

U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman met President Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday to discuss U.S. aid and recent progress in reducing crops used for cocaine.

U.S. TO THE RESCUE

Many in the United States have long feared that U.S. troops could get sucked into a Vietnam-style quagmire in Colombia, where thousands of people are killed every year.

At least seven people were killed and 68 hurt on Wednesday when a bomb ripped through an underground parking lot at a shopping mall in Cucuta, on the border with Venezuela.

Uribe is an enthusiastic U.S. ally and has even suggested that the United States fill the Caribbean with troops to strangle the drug trade.

The arrival of reinforcements for the rescue operation spurred some opposition politicians here to complain that fighting by U.S. troops would violate Colombian sovereignty.

But opinion polls show many Colombians, tired of their troops' failure to beat rebels and right-wing militias, would welcome direct intervention by U.S. forces.

Washington has been pleased with Colombia's attempts to find its citizens, another U.S. official said.

"The Colombian military has done a wonderful job on this. They've got close to 5,000 folks out there and one way or another they're in harm's way."

The three Americans were captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a group known by the Spanish initials FARC, when their U.S. government plane crashed in the steamy southern province of Caqueta, a guerrilla stronghold.

The rebels, who killed a fourth American and a Colombian army sergeant on board the plane, say their captives are CIA agents and want to swap them for guerrillas held in Colombian jails. U.S. officials insist they are civilian Defense Department contractors who were taking part in an intelligence mission.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

CESAP Social Development group has called on the government and opposition to recognize that sovereignty lies in the People and to pay attention to the social emergency.

• In a communique the group warns that immediate action must be taken in the fields of maternity, early childhood, nutrition, unemployment, education and public insecurity.

The government, CESAP insists,  must restore the daycare homes program and all institutions caring for mother and child, as well as allow alliances between public and private sectors.

"One way of tackling the problem of insecurity is to disarm the population and disband armed  groups set up for political motives."

www.iht.com Moisés Naím Thursday, March 6, 2003 The Venezuelan nightmare   WASHINGTON For decades Venezuela was a backwater, uninteresting to the outside world. It could not compete for international attention with nearby countries where superpowers staged proxy wars, or where military juntas "disappeared" thousands of opponents, or where the economies regularly crashed. Venezuela was stable. Its oil fueled an economy that enjoyed the world's highest growth rate from 1950 to 1980 and it boasted a higher per-capita income than Spain from 1928 to 1984. Venezuela was one of the longest-lived democracies in Latin America.Venezuela is no longer boring. It has become a nightmare for its people and a threat not just to its neighbors but to the United States and even Europe. A strike in its oil industry has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices at the worst possible time. Hasil Mohammed Rahaham-Alan, a Venezuelan citizen, was detained last month at a London airport as he arrived from Caracas carrying a hand grenade in his luggage. A week later, President Hugo Chávez praised the arrest orders of two opposition leaders who had been instrumental in organizing the strike, saying they "should have been jailed a long time ago." Chávez has helped to create an environment where stateless international networks whose business is terror, guns or drugs feel at home. Venezuela has also become a laboratory where the accepted wisdom of the 1990s is being tested - and often discredited. The first tenet to fall was the belief that the United States has almost unlimited influence in South America. As one of its main oil suppliers and a close neighbor has careened out of control, America has been a conspicuously inconsequential bystander. And it is not just the United States. The United Nations, agencies like the Organization of American States and the International Monetary Fund, or the international press - all have stood by and watched. Another belief of the 1990s was that global economic forces would force democratically elected leaders to pursue responsible economic policies. Yet Chávez, a democratically elected president, has been willing to tolerate international economic isolation - with disastrous results for Venezuela's poor - in exchange for greater power at home. The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather than strengthening ties with the United States, he befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation and globalization of the 1990s. Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its decline into a failed state. Yet once Chávez gained control over the government, his rule became exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic. Under Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy, and that even longstanding democracies can unravel overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself. Accountability and institutional restraints and balances are needed. The international community became adept at monitoring elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990s. The Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's practices. The often stealthy transgressions of Chávez have unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only trend of the 1990s still visible in Venezuela: civil society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies. This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an inchoate network of people from all social classes and walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a president who has made their country unlivable. For too many years they have been mere inhabitants of their own country. Now they demand to be citizens, and feel they have the right to oust through democratic means a president who has wrought havoc on their country. Even though the constitution allows for early elections, and even though Chávez has promised that he will abide by this provision, the great majority of Venezuelans don't believe him. They are convinced that in August, when the constitution contemplates a referendum on the president, the government will resort to delaying tactics and dirty tricks. With international attention elsewhere, Chávez will use his power to forestall an election and ignore the constitution. Venezuela's citizens have been heroically peaceful and civil in their quest. All they ask is that they be given a chance to vote. The world should do its best to ensure that they have that opportunity. The writer, Venezuela's minister of trade and industry from 1989 to 1990, is editor of Foreign Policy magazine.