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Press Conference
By
Stephen Rademaker
Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Secretary Rademaker: Good morning. I assume all of you have copies of my remarks and the remarks speak for themselves, so I will not add much in the way of opening comments here. Allow me simply to observe that the principle thrust of the presentation that I made this morning was to address the concern that is often expressed that the US is embarked on a policy of so-called "unilateralism." It is our view that, properly understood, US policies are profoundly multilateral, and what often happens is that the leadership that the Untied States seeks to bring to bear multilaterally in order to make multilateralism effective is confused with unilateralism. And so in the remarks that I presented, I discussed a number of recent issues in order to demonstrate how, properly analyzed, these examples demonstrate that the US is proceeding in a profoundly multilateral manner.

With regard to Iraq, it is a very strange definition of multilateralism that holds that members of the United Nations--and members of the United Nations Security Council in particular--should be indifferent to defiance of the mandates of the Security Council. Our determination to see that those mandates are taken seriously and are complied with is hardly unilateralism. It is an effort to make multilateralism effective. Likewise with regard to the issue of nuclear weapons development on the Korean peninsula, the view of the United States is that this is an extremely important matter worthy of consideration by the United Nations Security Council. And it is remarkable that in recent months objections were offered to referral of this matter to the Security Council. How can it be that seeking to refer the North Korean nuclear issue to the Security Council is an example of unilateralism?

My remarks addressed a number of other instances where proper analysis reveals that policies pursued vigorously by the United States are fundamentally multilateral in character. It is our hope that this discussion that we hope to have prompted here today about unilateralism versus multilateralism will lead to an increased understanding of the positions that the United States takes, sometimes in a lonely fashion. We hope it is understood that they are in fact calculated to make multilateralism effective. And with that I want to open up to questions that any of you here may have.

QUESTION: Mr. Assistant Secretary, what you call bringing to bear leadership is perceived by other countries as deciding on a cause of action and asking the others to follow you. Shouldn't multilateralism be discussing with the other countries and then deciding together when a cause of action, I'm referring especially to what's happening in Iraq, where you seem to have decided upon armed intervention, no matter if the inspectors find something or nothing.

RADEMAKER: Well, of course, no one can look at the record of discussions of this matter within the United Nations Security Council over the last four or five months and argue that the United States has not sought to consult, has not sought to forge consensus. Resolution 1441 emerged from precisely those types of consultations and the position of the United States today is that we should adhere to the decisions that were reached in a context of those consultations and in the context of the preceding twelve years of consideration by the Security Council on this matter. And far from being a manifestation of unilateralism, it is our view that it would be a mistake for other countries to choose this moment to retreat from multilateralism.

QUESTION: Hello, I'd like to know how the United States plans to protest the Iraq's assumption of the Chairmanship of the Conference of Disarmament in mid March?

RADEMAKER: We are still engaged in consultations with the other governments here at the Conference on Disarmament about how to handle this extremely embarrassing matter. Iraq is a country that for twelve years has been under sanctions imposed multilaterally by the United Nations Security Council because of Iraq's persistent refusal to disarm as mandated by the Security Council in 1991. To permit a country that has been under sanction for twelve years due to its failure to disarm to assume the presidency of an institution called the Conference on Disarmament would make a mockery of this institution. And we believe that the other countries represented here share our view that it would be extremely debilitating for this conference to allow such a country to assume the presidency. And so we will seek to work with them to prevent this from happening.

QUESTION: Just a quick follow up, and you say it would be extremely debilitating while the Conference of Disarmament for one thing is suffering from kind of permanent paralysis as far as I can see in terms of its being able to do any work and I don't think that the chairmanship, how much effectiveness or influences the chairmanship really have, would you consider perhaps just walking out of the meetings until the month tenure is over?

RADEMAKER: We are considering all options. But let me reiterate. Permitting a country like Iraq to preside over the CD would not merely be an embarrassment to the CD. It would be oxymoronic, and we believe it would do permanent harm to this institution, harm more profound than that which has resulted from the past six years of inactivity here.

QUESTION: Sir, is it possible to press you a little more on this issue. You said that all options are being considered. What are those options?

RADEMAKER: I would prefer not to discuss details at this point because, as I said, we are continuing to consult with other delegations. Until we have concluded that process it would be premature for me to enumerate what options we are looking at seriously and what steps we contemplate taking. But I would merely reiterate that we see this as a deeply disturbing matter and something that no country that supports the mission--supports the objectives--of this institution can view with indifference.

QUESTION: I'm just curious that we may in fact find Iraq in the position of heading the CD just as Libya will preside over the Human Rights Commission and I mean, how is the US going to deal with this sort of reality and particularly if the US decides to attack Iraq - I mean - that will be a further embarrassment I should think.

RADEMAKER: Well, I would disagree with the last part of your question. The US alone will not attack Iraq. The US and a multilateral coalition may choose to disarm Iraq in accordance with Security Council resolutions, and we see no embarrassment that might flow from such action. With regard to the Libyan chairmanship of the Human Rights Commission, you are correct that that combined with an Iraqi presidency of the Conference on Disarmament will bring great discredit to these institutions, these UN-affiliated institutions operating here in Geneva. I can tell you that the Conference on Disarmament has received more media attention in the United States in the last two weeks than it has received in the last six years, and that attention is directed to this inexplicable prospect of Iraq assuming the presidency of the institution. This is not the kind of publicity that the Conference of Disarmament needs. As you know, the United States is a democracy. We have a coordinate branch of government known as the Congress, and our Congress speaks for the American people. There has been an enormous amount of congressional interest in this combined question of the Libyan chairman of the Human Rights Commission and the Iraqi presidency of the Conference on Disarmament. It has lead some in Washington to question whether we need to contemplate renaming the Palais des Nations, the Palais des Oxymorons. It would not be helpful for the United States Congress to become more exercised about the way leadership of these institutions in Geneva is being parceled out. So we believe that it is the responsibility of our government and all governments that care about the objectives that we seek to achieve here in Geneva to prevent this from happening.

QUESTION: Mr. Assistant Secretary, it seems that you are laying down some ground rules for the chairmanship of the CD and am I right in interpreting you as saying a non-democratic country developing weapons such as North Korea shouldn't be chairman of the CD either? And a related questions is whether your government intends to take the CD as a forum to discuss directly with North Korea about the nuclear crisis. Thank you.

RADEMAKER: The issue we confront in the next few weeks is whether Iraq is an appropriate president for the Conference on Disarmament. Iraq as you know has been under United Nations Security Council's sanctions pursuant to chapter 7 of the United Nations charter for the last twelve years due to its failure to disarm. It is the view of the United States that countries under United Nations Security Council sanction for failure to disarm should not be permitted to preside over this conference. You raised the question of the DPRK and its suitability to preside over the Conference on Disarmament. Fortunately that question is not before us. I would note that as of today the DPRK is not under sanction by the Security Council due to its failure to disarm.

QUESTION: Also my second question, whether your government considers the CD an appropriate forum to discuss directly with North Korea on the nuclear crisis?

RADEMAKER : We do not intend to have direct discussions with the DPRK on the margins of the Conference on Disarmament with regard to the steps North Korea needs to take to bring itself into compliance with its international obligations.

QUESTION: Couple of questions, firstly the North Korean delegate put it straight to you. He'd like to sign off a non aggression pact. I'd like your response on the record to that. My second question is in your speech, unlike your boss Mr. Bolton who likes to point fingers, you are very discrete and between the lines you are fingering China for linking the fissile materials to the outer space issue. I'd like your answer why is a fissile right and the PAROS not right as you see it, since most delegates say it's only the United States holding out on the PAROS issue.

RADEMAKER: I'll answer the second part of your question first. The difference between PAROS and FMCT is very simple. There is no delegation here within the conference that admits to being opposed to initiating a negotiation on FMCT. And so, that being the case, we believe that issue is ripe for negotiation and therefore the members of the conference should direct their efforts at getting such a negotiation started. With regard to PAROS, there is at least one delegation -- and perhaps more -- that does not believe the issue is ripe for negotiation. The United States has with considerable reservations taken the position that we will be prepared to accept an ad-hoc group on PAROS with a discussion mandate. But we consider that there is simply nothing to negotiate in this area because the matter of outer space arms control is already adequately and fully addressed in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. We see no further legal restrictions that appropriately can or should be negotiated at this point. We are prepared to enter into a discussion of this and perhaps other delegations in the context of such a discussion could persuade us that there is something to be negotiated in this area, but we do not currently believe that there is anything to be negotiated there. For that reason there is simply no reason to begin negotiating something that is not ripe for negotiation. That's the difference.

QUESTION: About the non-aggression issue with Korea?

RADEMAKER: The representative of the DPRK presented one side of the story of what has happened on the Korean peninsula. The notion that the failure of the United States to negotiate a nonaggression pact justifies a decision by the DPRK to begin a nuclear weapons program in violation of the NPT, in violation of the North-South denuclearization agreement, and in violation of the Agreed Framework which was entered between the United States and the DPRK in 1994, is to us a bizarre suggestion. There was no non-aggression pact in effect when the DPRK to became party to the NPT, when they signed the North-South denuclearization agreement, and when they entered with us the agreed framework. The history as we know out of their nuclear weapons program makes clear that they made a national decision to turn down the road of nuclear weapons development long before President Bush gave a speech in which he used the term "axis of evil." Indeed, they made that decision long before there was a Bush administration. They made that decision during the previous administration when there was a US administration that was far more interested in negotiating further agreements with the DPRK than is the current administration. At the very time that our former Secretary of State was travelling to Pyongyang to talk about further agreements that might be reached in the area of non-proliferation, the DPRK was embarked upon a nuclear weapons program in violation of all existing agreements. So for the representative of the DPRK to suggest that this was a step that they took in response to a speech given by President Bush a year ago, or in response to some non-existent decision by the United States to list them for preemptive nuclear attack--this is a non existent decision and a total fabrication--that suggestion by them is convenient but entirely contrary to the facts. Therefore we do not readily accept the suggestion that this problem will be solved merely by signature of a non-aggression pact. Instead, we believe this is a matter that requires consideration by the UN Security Council. And for those who say that a diplomatic resolution would be better, our response is that the Security Council is the premier diplomatic forum for addressing threats to international peace and security, and is by design the appropriate forum in which to come to a diplomatic solution to this problem.

QUESTION: First I beg your pardon if I'm trying to put too fine a point on it but it seems to me there's a confusion here between the Conference on Disarmament and the United Nations. On the announcement from the U.S. diplomatic mission it says the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Condolezza Rice and Vice-President Cheney have spoken of the U.N.Conference on Disarmament. You are equating the Palais des Nations which is the seat of the United Nations with the Conference in saying that it may be called Palais des Oxymorons. You also said it's inappropriate for the Conference to have as president a country that is under sanctions from the council making that connection again with the UN, yet the conference is not at all a UN conference, it's an independent body that happens to be meeting here in what is the European office of the UN. The US Diplomatic Mission is usually very punctilious in its usage, in fact they are impeccable ordinarily, and so this on the press release was very surprising and one wonders what is behind it. And I would like if you would elaborate on that. The second point is that the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has said publicly that he has asked President Bush for a waiver so that he may--the US Department of Defense may--use chemical weapons in Iraq. And if the manufacturers of the weapons and the websites that the US has announced it will be using in Iraq are to be believed, these are essentially radiological weapons because the warheads are made of uranium, heavy dense metal, and given the technical specifications it can only be uranium not tungsten. Doesn't that put you in a very awkward position if you're proposing to use weapons of indiscriminate destruction against a country only suspected of weapons of mass destruction? Thank you Sir.

RADEMAKER: Again, you've asked several questions and I will try to address them. With regard to the relationship between the Conference on Disarmament and the United Nations, I think it's indisputable that there is a close affiliation between the two institutions. We are sitting in the Palais des Nations which is owned by the United Nations. This is where the Conference on Disarmament meets. I was looking through my papers here to find a Conference on Disarmament document to show you, but any document put out by the CD bears the United Nations letterhead. The budget of the Conference of Disarmament is approved by the United Nations General Assembly. And so I suppose we can engage in some sort of hair splitting about whether the Conference on Disarmament is separate from the Untied Nations or is affiliated but not part of the United Nations. We can try to characterize its relationship, but I'm not sure how productive that is. The United Nations cannot disavow its relationship with the Conference on Disarmament, and I would suggest that it is a non-productive exercise for the purposes at hand to try to come up with the proper characterization because I don't know what purpose that would serve. I'm not even sure why you're raising the question.

QUESTION: Well if it's under the United Nations directly then Kofi Annan ultimately has responsibility as for example the ad-hoc Committee on the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol. In this case because it was set up independently, albeit with an affiliation to the UN, it tends to set its own rules and it doesn't recognize a higher power, and that's very significant in terms of the running of the conference and the authority and the decisions it may take even though it may seem like hair splitting.

RADEMAKER: Well, I think we agree that there is an affiliation. With regard to your second question, which had to do with this alleged decision by the United States to use chemical and radiological weapons in Iraq, I would simply disagree with your characterization of what is at issue here. That view has never been accepted by the United States and it has been our view throughout the history of multilateral negotiations in this area that riot control agents are not chemical weapons. So decisions by the United States about the use of riot control agents in Iraq are not per se a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and would be taken fully consistent with our international obligations. Similarly with regard to your suggestion that depleted uranium munitions are radiological weapons, again, there is an argument that some make to that effect. We simply believe it is misguided and wrong and do not accept that view.

QUESTION: So, if I may Sir, the depleted uranium in the missiles then you believe would not be covered under the term radiological weapons? So in your opinion it is not an issue worth discussing, do I have you straight on that? On the depleted uranium or the uranium because apparently there is both being used?

RADEMAKER: I think I have answered your question sufficiently.

QUESTION: Getting back to the Iraqi Presidency, how would you characterize the Western group's position, is it one of unity, and how do you view the prospect of convincing the Group of 21 to put pressure on Iraq. So if you could address the question of western unity on this issue and then prospects for some of consensus with the other regions.

RADEMAKER: It would be presumptuous of me to characterize the position of other governments on this issue and I believe able journalists are perfectly capable of ascertaining the position of other governments themselves. So, I would let you come to your own conclusions about what other Western group members believe, or what Group of 21 governments believe, about this question. I would merely reiterate the observation I made at the outset that no one who believes in the mission of the Conference on Disarmament can think that an Iraqi Presidency would be a positive development for this institution.

QUESTION: Just to clarify, you are not able to say today that there is western unity on the question, right?

RADEMAKER: I answered your question

QUESTION: You have said that you are engaged in consultations regarding this Iraqi Presidency. Today at the session many countries voiced their concern that they see the United States delegation excercising pressure on them to change this eventual decision. Why would do you think they feel pressured? Have you been too pushy in trying to convince them not to have Iraq as a President?

RADEMAKER: Well, I think Iraq today feels a great deal of pressure from the United States, as well they should. On this particular question of their possible presidency of the Conference on Disarmament, as I already suggested, we believe that all supporters of that institution will want to see some means found to prevent this oxymoron from developing.

QUESTION: I was wondering what the US position was in regards to land mines. The International Committee to ban landmines recently was here and gave a news conference. They said that there were some 90 000 landmines in Qatar right now and elsewhere, and that they were not successful in speaking to the United States government about the possible use of these landmines in Iraq. What is the position?

RADEMAKER: I'm sorry I have no information about deployments of personnel or war material in connection with an Iraq contingency, and so I can't comment on that particular issue that you have raised. With regard with the Ottawa Convention more generally, obviously the United States during the previous administration reached the conclusion that we could not become party to that treaty. The US position has not changed since that time. I think it is important to note that the United States is not alone in this matter. I haven't done the calculation with regard to the percentage of the world's population that lives in countries that have not adhered to the Ottawa Convention, but certainly well in excess of half of the world's population lives in countries that have not adhered. So we respect the right of countries to choose to dispose of their landmines and to decide they do not wish to use them. We are a nation with global responsibilities, however, and there are certain instances, such on the Korean Peninsula, where we have commitments that, in our view, require us to not preclude reliance on landmines. Obviously many other countries have reached that same conclusion with respect to their own security obligations.

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