Scoop.co.nz (press release), New Zealand

U.S.-Russia Relations At The German Marshall Fund

Friday, 19 September 2008, 7:30 pm

Press Release: US State Department

Secretary Rice Addresses U.S.-Russia Relations At The German Marshall Fund

Secretary Condoleezza Rice

Renaissance Mayflower Hotel

Washington, DC

September 18, 2008

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much, Craig. Thank you for that kind
introduction. I would like to thank Senator Bennett for being here, as
well as members of Congress and members of the German Marshall Fund
Board. I want to thank everyone at the Fund for inviting me to speak
today. The German Marshall Fund is an indispensable organization `
especially for our transatlantic alliance, but increasingly for our
partnerships beyond Europe as well.

So thank you for the great work that you do in fostering unity of
thought, unity of purpose, and unity of action. These are the elements
that the United States and Europe need more than ever today. You have
made an immeasurable impact in helping us to reaffirm and strengthen
our nation’s ties with Europe these past few years. And so, again,
thank you very, very much. I’m honored to be here.

Now, this is actually the first time that I have spoken at the German
Marshall Fund as Secretary of State. And I venture to say, given our
short time in office, that it is likely the last. Now, I’m glad that
you recognized that that was not meant to be an applause
line. (Laughter.)

I have come here today to speak with you about a subject that’s been
on everyone’s mind recently: Russia and U.S.-Russian relations.

Most of us are familiar with the events of the past month. The causes
of the conflict ` particularly the dispute between Georgia and its
breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ` are complex. They go
back to the fall of the Soviet Union. And the United States and our
allies have tried many times to help the parties resolve the dispute
diplomatically. Indeed, it was, in part, for just that reason that I
traveled to Georgia just a month before the conflict, as did German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, among others.

The conflict in Georgia, thus, has deep roots. And clearly, all sides
made mistakes and miscalculations. But several key facts are clear:

On August 7th, following repeated violations of the ceasefire in South
Ossetia, including the shelling of Georgian villages, the Georgian
government launched a major military operation into Tskhinvali and
other areas of the separatist region. Regrettably, several Russian
peacekeepers were killed in the fighting.

These events were troubling. But the situation deteriorated further
when Russia’s leaders violated Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity ` and launched a full scale invasion across an
internationally-recognized border. Thousands of innocent civilians
were displaced from their homes. Russia’s leaders established a
military occupation that stretched deep into Georgian territory. And
they violated the ceasefire agreement that had been negotiated by
French and EU President Sarkozy.

Other actions of Russia during this crisis have also been deeply
disconcerting: its alarmist allegations of `genocide’ by Georgian
forces, its baseless statements about U.S. actions during the
conflict, its attempt to dismember a sovereign country by recognizing
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, its talk of having `privileged interests’
in how it treats its independent neighbors, and its refusal to allow
international monitors and NGOs into Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
despite ongoing militia violence and retribution against innocent
Georgians.

What is more disturbing about Russia’s actions is that they fit into a
worsening pattern of behavior over several years now.

I’m referring, among other things, to Russia’s intimidation of its
sovereign neighbors, its use of oil and gas as a political weapon, its
unilateral suspension of the CFE Treaty, its threat to target peaceful
nations with nuclear weapons, its arms sales to states and groups that
threaten international security, and its persecution ` and worse ` of
Russian journalists, and dissidents, and others.

The picture emerging from this pattern of behavior is that of a Russia
increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad.

Now, this behavior did not go unnoticed or unchallenged over the last
several years. We have tried to address it in the context of efforts
to forge a constructive relationship with Russia. But the attack on
Georgia has crystallized the course that Russia’s leaders are now
taking and it has brought us to a critical moment for Russia and the
world. A critical moment ` but not a deterministic one.

Russia’s leaders are making some unfortunate choices. But they can
still make different ones. Russia’s future is in Russia’s hands. But
its choices will be shaped, in part, by the actions of the United
States, our friends, and our allies ` both in the incentives that we
provide and the pressure that we apply.

Now, much has been said recently about how we have come to this
point. And some have attempted to shift the responsibility for
Russia’s recent pattern of behavior onto others. Russia’s actions
cannot be blamed, for example, on its neighbors like Georgia.

To be sure, Georgia’s leaders could have responded better to the
events last month in South Ossetia, and it benefits no one to pretend
otherwise. We warned our Georgian friends that Russia was baiting
them, and that taking this bait would only play into Moscow’s hands.

But Russia’s leaders used this as a pretext to launch what, by all
appearances, was a premeditated invasion of its independent
neighbor. Indeed, Russia’s leaders had laid the groundwork for this
scenario months ago ` distributing Russian passports to Georgian
separatists, training and arming their militias, and then justifying
the campaign across Georgia’s border as an act of self-defense.

Russia’s behavior cannot be blamed either on NATO enlargement. With
the end of the Cold War, we and our allies have worked to transform
NATO ` form ` to bring it from an alliance that manned the ramparts of
a divided Europe, to a means for nurturing the growth of a Europe
whole, free, and at peace ` and an alliance that confronts the
dangers, like terrorism, that also threaten Russia.

We have opened NATO to any sovereign, democratic state in Europe that
can meet its standards of membership. We’ve supported the right of
countries emerging from communism to choose what path of development
they pursue and what institutions they wish to join.

And this historic effort has succeeded beyond imagination. Twelve of
our 28 neighbor NATO allies are former captive nations. And the
promise of membership has been a positive incentive for these states:
to build democratic institutions, to reform their economies, and to
resolve old disputes, as nations like Poland, and Hungary, and
Romania, and Slovakia, and Lithuania have done.

Just as importantly, NATO has consistently sought to enlist Russia as
a partner in building a peaceful and prosperous Europe. Russia has had
a seat at nearly every NATO summit since 2002. So to claim that this
alliance is somehow directed against Russia is simply to ignore recent
history. In fact, our assumption has always been ` and it still is `
that Russia’s legitimate need for security is best served not by
having weak, fractious, and poor states on its borders ` but rather
peaceful, prosperous, and democratic ones.

It is simply not valid, either, to blame Russia’s behavior on the
United States ` either for being too tough with Russia, or not tough
enough, too unaccommodating to Russia’s interests or too naïve
about its leaders.

Since the end of the Cold War ` spanning three administrations, both
Democratic and Republican ` the United States has sought to encourage
the emergence of a strong, prosperous, and responsible Russia. We have
treated Russia not as a vanquished enemy, but as an emerging
partner. We have supported ` politically and financially ` Russia’s
transition to a modern, market-based economy and a free, peaceful
society. And we have respected Russia as a great power, with which to
work to solve common problems.

When our interests have diverged, the United States has consulted
Russia’s leaders. We’ve searched for common ground. And we have
sought, as best we could, to take Russia’s interests and ideas into
account. This is how we have approached contentious issues ` from
Iran, to Kosovo, to missile defense. And I have traveled repeatedly to
Russia, the last times ` two times with Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, to try to foster cooperation.

Increasingly, Russia’s leaders have simply not reciprocated. And their
recent actions are leading some to ask whether we are now engaged in a
new Cold War. No, we are not. But it does beg the question: Where did
this Russia come from? How did the Russia of the 1990s become the
Russia of today?

After all, the 1990s were, in many ways, a period of real hope and
promise for Russia. The totalitarian state was dismantled. The scope
of liberty for most Russians expanded significantly ` in what they
could read, in what they could say, in what they could buy and sell,
and what associations they could form. New leaders emerged who sought
to steer Russia toward political and economic reform at home, toward
integration into the global economy, and toward a responsible
international role.

All of this is true. But many Russians remember things differently
about the 1990s. They remember that decade as a time of license and
lawlessness, economic uncertainty and social chaos. A time when
criminals and gangsters and robber barons plundered the Russian state
and preyed on the weakest in Russian society. A time when many
Russians ` not just elites and former apparatchiks, but ordinary men
and women ` experienced a sense of dishonor and dislocation that we in
the West did not fully appreciate.

I remember that Russia, because I saw it firsthand. I remember old
women selling their life’s belongings along the old Arbat ` plates and
broken teacups, anything to get by.

I remember that Russian soldiers returned home from Eastern Europe and
lived in tents, because the Russian state was just too weak and too
poor to house them properly.

I remember talking to my Russian friends ` tolerant, open, progressive
people ` who felt an acute sense of shame during that decade. Not at
the loss of the Soviet Union, but at the feeling of not recognizing
their own country anymore: the Bolshoi theater falling apart,
pensioners unable to pay their bills, the Russian Olympic team in 1992
parading into the games under a flag that no one had ever seen, and
receiving gold medals to an anthem that no one had ever heard. There
was a humiliating sense that nothing Russian was good enough anymore.

This does not excuse Russia’s behavior, but it helps to set a context
for it. It helps to explain why many ordinary Russians felt relieved
and proud when new leaders emerged at the end of the last decade, who
sought to reconstitute the Russian state and reassert its power
abroad. An imperfect authority was seen as better than no authority at
all.

What has become clear is that the legitimate goal of rebuilding the
Russian state has taken a dark turn ` with the rollback of personal
freedoms, the arbitrary enforcement of the law, the pervasive
corruption at various levels of Russian society, and the paranoid,
aggressive impulse, which has manifested itself before in Russian
history, to view the emergence of free and independent democratic
neighbors ` most recently, during the so-called `color revolutions’ in
Georgia, and Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan ` not as a source of security,
but as a source of threat to Russia’s interests.

Whatever its course, though, Russia today is not the Soviet Union `
not in the size of its territory, the reach of its power, the scope of
its aims, or the nature of the regime. Russia’s leaders today have no
pretensions to ideological universality, no alternative vision to
democratic capitalism, and no ability to construct a parallel system
of client states and rival institutions. The bases of Soviet power are
gone.

And despite their leaders’ authoritarianism, Russians today enjoy more
prosperity, more opportunity, and in some sense, more liberty than in
either Tsarist or Soviet times. Russians increasingly demand the
benefits of global engagement ` the jobs and the technology, the
travel abroad, the luxury goods and the long-term mortgages.

With such growing prosperity and opportunity, I cannot imagine that
most Russians would ever want to go back to the days, as in Soviet
times, when their country and its citizens stood isolated from Western
markets and institutions.

This, then, is the deeper tragedy of the choices that Russia’s leaders
are making. It is not just the pain they inflict on others, but the
debilitating costs they impose on Russia itself ` the way they are
jeopardizing the international credibility that Russian businesses
have worked so hard to build, and the way that they are risking the
real, and future, progress of the Russian people, who have come so far
since communism.

And for what? Russia’s attack on Georgia merely proved what we had
already known ` that Russia could use its overwhelming military
advantage to punish a small neighbor. But Georgia has survived. Its
democracy will endure. Its economy will be rebuilt. Its independence
will be reinforced. Its military will, in time, be reconstituted. And
we look forward to the day when Georgia’s territorial integrity will
be peacefully restored.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia has achieved ` and will achieve ` no
enduring strategic objective. And our strategic goal now is to make
clear to Russia’s leaders that their choices could put Russia on a
one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance.

Accomplishing this goal will require the resolve and the unity of
responsible countries ` most importantly, the United States and our
European allies. We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some
Russian leaders seem to have: that if you press free nations hard
enough ` if you bully them, and you threaten them, and you lash out `
they will cave in, and they’ll forget, and eventually they will
concede.

The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behavior,
and to all who champion it. For our sake ` and for the sake of
Russia’s people, who deserve a better relationship with the rest of
the world ` the United States and Europe must not allow Russia’s
aggression to achieve any benefit. Not in Georgia ` not anywhere.

We and our European allies are therefore acting as one in supporting
Georgia. President Sarkozy, with whom we have worked very closely, is
especially to be commended for his leadership on this front. The
transatlantic alliance is united. Just this week, NATO Secretary
General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer led all 26 of our alliance’s ambassadors
on a mission to Tbilisi to demonstrate our unwavering support for the
Georgian people. The door to a Euro-Atlantic future remains wide open
to Georgia, and our alliance will continue to work through the new
NATO-Georgia Commission to make that future a reality.

We and our European allies will also continue to lead the
international effort to help Georgia rebuild ` an effort that has
already made remarkable headway. The United States has put forward a
$1 billion economic support package for Georgia. The EU has pledged
500 million Euros, and it is preparing to deploy a large mission of
civilian observers and monitors to Georgia.

In addition, with U.S. and European support, G-7 foreign ministers
have condemned Russia’s actions and pledged to support Georgia’s
reconstruction. The Asian Development Bank has committed $40 million
in loans to Georgia. The IMF has approved a $750 million stand-by
credit facility. And the OSCE is making plans for expanded observers,
though Moscow is still blocking this.

Conversely, Russia has found little support for its actions. A pat on
the back from Daniel Ortega and Hamas is not a diplomatic triumph.

At the same time, the United States and Europe are continuing to
support ` unequivocally ` the independence and territorial integrity
of Russia’s neighbors. We will resist any Russian attempt to consign
sovereign nations and free peoples to some archaic `sphere of
influence.’

The United States and Europe are solidifying our ties with those
neighbors. We are working as a wider group, including with our friends
in Finland and Sweden, who have been indispensable partners throughout
this recent crisis. We are backing worthy initiatives, like Norway’s
High North policy. We are working to resolve other regional disputes,
such as Nagorno-Karabakh, and to build with friends and allies like
Turkey a foundation for cooperation in the Caucasus. And we will not
allow Russia to wield a veto over the future of the Euro-Atlantic
community ` neither what states are offered membership, nor the choice
of states that accept it. We have made this particularly clear to our
friends in Ukraine.

The United States and Europe are deepening our cooperation in pursuit
of greater energy dependence* ` working with Azerbaijan, and Georgia,
and Turkey, and the Caspian countries. We will expand and defend open
global energy in the economy from abusive practices. There cannot be
one set of rules for Russia, Inc. ` and another for everyone else.

Finally, the United States and Europe, as well as our many friends and
allies worldwide, will not allow Russia’s leaders to have it both ways
` drawing benefits from international norms, and markets, and
institutions, while challenging their very foundation. There is no
third way. A 19th century Russia and a 21st century Russia cannot
operate in the world side by side.

To reach its full potential, though, Russia needs to be fully
integrated into the international political and economic order. But
Russia is in the precarious position today of being half in and half
out. If Russia ever wants to be more than just an energy supplier, its
leaders have to recognize a hard truth: Russia depends on the world
for its success, and it cannot change that.

Already, Russia’s leaders are seeing a glimpse of what the future
might look like if they persist with their aggressive behavior. In
contrast to Georgia’s position, Russia’s international standing is
worse than at any time since 1991. And the cost of this self-inflicted
isolation has been steep.

Russia’s civil nuclear cooperation with the United States is not going
anywhere now. Russia’s leaders are imposing pain on their nation’s
economy. Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization is now in
jeopardy. And so too is its attempt to join the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.

But perhaps the worst fallout for Moscow is that its behavior has
fundamentally called into question whose vision of Russia is really
guiding that country. There was a time recently when the new president
of Russia laid out a positive and forward-looking vision of his
nation’s future.

This was a vision that took into account Russia’s vulnerabilities: its
declining population and heartbreaking health problems; its failure
thus far to achieve a high-tech, diversified economy like those to
Russia’s west and increasingly to Russia’s east; and the disparity
between people’s quality of life in Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and in
a few other cities ` and those in Russia’s countryside.

This was a vision that called for strengthening the rule of law, and
rooting out corruption, and investing in Russia’s people, and creating
opportunities not just for an elite few, but for all Russian citizens
to share in prosperity.

This was a vision that rested on what President Medvedev referred to
as the `Four I’s’: investment, innovation, institutional reform, and
infrastructure improvements to expand Russia’s economy. And this was a
vision that recognized that Russia cannot afford a relationship with
the world that is based on antagonism and alienation.

This is especially true in today’s world, which increasingly is not
organized around polarity ` multi-, uni-, and certainly not bi-. In
this world, there is an imperative for nations to build a network of
strong and unique ties to many influential states.

And that is a far different context than much of the last century,
when U.S. foreign policy was, frankly, hostage to our relationship
with the Soviet Union. We viewed everything through that lens,
including our relations with other countries. We were locked in a
zero-sum, ideological conflict. Every state was to choose sides, and
that reduced our options.

Well, thankfully, that world is also gone forever, and it’s not coming
back. As a result, the United States is liberated to pursue a
multidimensional foreign policy. And that is what we are doing.

We are charting a forward-looking agenda with fellow multiethnic
democracies like Brazil and India, and with emerging powers like China
and Vietnam ` relationships that were once colored by Cold War
rivalry.

We are transforming our alliances with Asia ` in Asia with Japan and
South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, with other countries of
ASEAN and expanding them for platforms for our common defense to
catalysts ` as catalysts for fostering regional security, advancing
trade, promoting freedom, and building a dynamic Asia-Pacific region.

We are rebuilding relations with countries like Libya, whose leaders
are making responsible choices to rejoin the international order.

We are deepening partnerships, rooted in shared principles, with
nations across Africa ` and to support the new African agenda for
success in the 21st century. We’ve quadrupled foreign assistance to
promote just governance, investment in people, fighting disease and
corruption, and driving development through economic freedom.

We are moving beyond 60 years of policy in the broader Middle East
during the Cold ` which, during the Cold War, led successive
administrations to support stability at the price of liberty,
ultimately achieving neither.

And we are charting a hopeful future with our friends and allies in
the Americas ` from whom we were, at times, deeply estranged during
the Cold War. Here, we have doubled foreign assistance. And now, we
are pursuing a common hemispheric vision of democratic development,
personal security, and social justice.

Anachronistic Russian displays of military power will not turn back
this tide of history. Russia is free to determine its relations with
sovereign counties. And they are free to determine their relationships
with Russia ` including in the Western hemisphere.

But we are confident that our ties with our neighbors ` who long for
better education and better health care and better jobs, and better
housing ` will in no way be diminished by a few, aging Blackjack
bombers, visiting one of Latin America’s few autocracies, which is
itself being left behind by an increasingly peaceful and prosperous
and democratic hemisphere.

Our world today is full of historic opportunities for progress, as
well as challenges to it ` from terrorism and proliferation, to
climate change and rising commodity prices. The United States has an
interest in building partnerships to resolve these and other
challenges. And so does Russia.

The United States and Russia share an interest in fighting terrorism
and violent extremism. We and Russia share an interest in
denuclearizing the Korean peninsula and stopping Iran’s rulers from
acquiring the world’s deadliest weapons. We and Russia share an
interest in a secure Middle East where there is peace between Israelis
and Palestinians. And we and Russia share an interest in preventing
the Security Council from reverting to the gridlocked institution that
it was during the Cold War.

The United States and Russia shared all of these interests on August
7th. And we share them still today on September 18. The Sochi
Declaration, signed earlier this year, provided a strategic framework
for the United States and Russia to advance our many shared interests.

We will continue, by necessity, to pursue our areas of common concern
with Russia. But it would be a real shame if our relationship were
never anything more than that ` for the best and deepest relationships
among states are those that share not only interest, but goals, and
aspirations, and values and dreams.

Whatever the differences between our governments, we will not let them
obstruct a deepening relationship between the American and Russian
people.

So we will continue to sponsor Russian students and teachers and
judges and journalists, labor leaders and democratic reformers who
want to visit America. We will continue to support Russia’s fight
against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. And we will continue to support all
Russians who want a future of liberty for their great nation.

I sincerely hope that the next president and the next secretary of
state will visit Russia and will take time to speak with Russian civil
society, and will give interviews to Russia’s diminished but still
enduring independent media, just as President Bush and I have done.

The United States and our friends and allies ` in Europe, but also in
the Americas, and Asia, and Africa, and the Middle East ` are
confident in our vision for the world in this young century and we are
moving forward. It is a world in which great power is defined not by
spheres of influence or zero-sum competition, or the strong imposing
their will on the weak ` but by open competition in global markets,
trade and development, the independence of nations, respect for human
rights, governance by the rule of law, and the defense of freedom.

This vision of the world is not without its problems, or its setbacks,
or even its significant crises ` as we have seen in recent days. But
it is this open, interdependent world, more than any other in history,
that offers all human beings a greater opportunity for lives of peace,
prosperity, and dignity.

Whether Russia’s leaders overcome their nostalgia for another time,
and reconcile themselves to the sources of power and the exercise of
power in the 21st century ` still remains to be seen. The decision is
clearly Russia’s ` and Russia’s alone. And we must all hope, for the
good of the Russian people, and for the sake of us all, that Russia’s
leaders make better and right choices.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Secretary Rice. That was a very
compelling and thoughtful speech. The Secretary has agreed to take
three questions. Where is the first one? Over here.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, Russia is a petro-state, and its level of
assertiveness pretty much correlates to the price of oil. The price of
oil is down by 30 or 40 percent, and the oil markets look like they’re
going to get softer. Would you expect Russian behavior to be at all
modified because of the price of oil and its importance to their
economy?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don’t know if their behavior will be
modified. I do know that there are significant vulnerabilities for
petro-states that do not diversify. And there are significant
vulnerabilities for petro-states that depend on their ability to
engage in monopolistic behavior during good times, when those ` when
the price of oil is down and that monopolistic behavior doesn’t pay
off in terms of customers. So those are facts that I understand and
realities that I understand that are independent of Russia in
particular.

I will say that there had been a time when Russia talked a lot about
the diversification of its economy because of its ` this period of oil
boom. But again, half in and half out. It’s difficult to diversify
your economy if rule of law and transparency and predictability of
contracts is not available. And so whatever the future of the price of
oil may portend, I think that the problems in the Russian economy are
ones that are there structurally, and they will, of course, be more
vulnerable or made worse when commodity prices are, as they are,
headed south.

But there are just certain structural problems with being a
petro-economy. And if you look at places that have handled it well,
for instance like Norway, they have taken very different course, and
of course, as a democratic state, have had to take a different course.

MODERATOR: Next question. Over there.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) German Marshall Fund. About the G-8, I just
wonder what your thinking is of the G-8 now. Is it time, perhaps, to
reinvent it, to make it larger? And how do you see Russia’s role now
in the G-8?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think that Russia has called into question
whether it shares the goals and aspirations of many of these
institutions. And what has happened thus far ` first of all, there’s
never been a G-8 finance ministers, and so the G-7 finance ministers
have been the ones that have been working on the Georgia package and
so forth. We have also met at the level of G-7 foreign ministers
meeting telephonically a couple of times because issuing one statement
that said that it was unusual for G-7 foreign ministers to criticize
the behavior of another ` of a member of the G-8. So there is a lot of
activity that has taken place outside the context of the G-8, and more
in the context of the G-7.

I think that we will have to see. The jury is still out on a couple of
elements about Russia, and I hope that Russia will, frankly, stop
digging the hole that it has dug by recognizing Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. One of the things that Russia could do to show that it
understands that a different course is necessary would be not to try
to alter the status quo in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. So no permanent
military bases. Don’t start exploring for resources in territory that
is clearly within the international boundaries of a member-state of
the United Nations.

I think these are the kinds of issues that people are going to be
looking at. Is Russia going to block the entry of observers and
monitors into Abkhazia and South Ossetia itself? Is Russia going to
actually withdraw its forces fully and go back to the status quo ante?
So there is a lot to still look at here, but I think that the last
couple of months have clearly ` or the last month or so, has clearly
cast a pall on the question of Russian engagement with the diplomatic
and economic and security institutions that were built on certain
premises about what kind of engagement and interaction Russia wished
to have with the world.

MODERATOR: Final question. Okay, way over there.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) visiting fellow at the Brookings
Institution. Thank you for excellent speech.

There are a few things I would like you to elaborate if you
can. First, you didn’t talk about unintended consequences of a
strained relationship with Russia. You mentioned the cooperation on
terrorism and nonproliferation. But what ` if they don’t collaborate,
that would be a major setback for everybody.

The second point is: Don’t you think that we as Western democracies
have somehow lost our moral force in invading Iraq and now we have
difficulty at making ` Russia understands that invading is not such a
good thing and, you know, you’re breaking international law? Thank you
very much.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, let me ` on the first question of the
consequences, look, I think we still have an interest in cooperation
on terrorism, and I think Russia still has an interest. Russia, given
its problems with extremism on its periphery, has always understood
that it had an interest in cooperating on terrorism. I might note,
too, that separatism and terrorism, in some of that area around the
south of Russia ` the southern flank ` go somewhat hand in hand. And
so, the recent moves by Russia, I think, have consequences also for
the way that those regions will develop. And we will continue to do
what we do with every state, which is to share information, to share
whatever intelligence we have. Because none of us have an interest in
another terrorist attack, and I expect that to continue.

If you remember, the United States was most ` probably the most
supportive country in the world of ` with Russia after Beslan. And I
don’t think that that is going to stop. And I think if there are those
out there who would wish to exploit what they see as tensions in
U.S.-Russian relations, they shouldn’t do it. Because the common fight
against terrorism is one that I expect to continue.

As to Iraq, I think we have to be very clear here. Saddam Hussein was
an international outlaw by numerous, numerous, numerous Security
Council resolutions which Russia itself had voted for, including the
last resolution, 1441, which called for consequences should the Iraqis
not carry through on the demands of that resolution. This was a state
that had attacked its neighbors, used weapons of mass destruction both
against its own people and against its neighbors. It was a state that
had started two major wars and that frankly was an outlaw state. And
it was a brutal state to its own people. What the United States and
the coalition of states that liberated Iraq did was to give the Iraqi
people an opportunity to build a new and decent kind of society.

Now to be sure, it has been harder than any of us might have
dreamed. But if you look at where Iraq is today, reemerging as a
strong Arab state in the center of the Middle East, but a multiethnic,
democratic state with a functioning parliament, with a functioning
government whose neighbors are recognizing that and going back in
important numbers from places like UAE and Bahrain and Jordan to
reestablish embassies there, if you look at an Iraq that will not seek
weapons of mass destruction like the Saddam Hussein regime, that will
live in peace and security with its neighbors and that will give its
own people a chance for democratic governance, I don’t think that that
bears any resemblance to invading a small democratic neighbor whose
only crime, apparently, was that it wished to be a part of the
emerging transatlantic world.

And so I just don’t think that there is any comparison, and we
shouldn’t allow the Russians to make such an argument.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. (Applause.)

ENDS