Transfer of sovereignty should occur as scheduled, he says

The United States is approaching the situation in Iraq along two tracks aimed at addressing both the political and security situations, Secretary of State Colin Powell said during an interview for the NBC television network April 29.

In an interview in Berlin, Powell said the political track is "well understood" based on U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's plan for a sovereign Iraqi government. The secretary added that the transfer of sovereignty should be possible on June 30, as scheduled, "without a great deal of trouble."

The security situation, he acknowledged, must still be gotten under control, particularly in Fallujah and Najaf.

Powell was in Berlin for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Conference on Anti-Semitism.

Following is a transcript of the interview:

(begin transcript)

U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman (Copenhagen, Denmark)
April 29, 2004

INTERVIEW
SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN L. POWELL INTERVIEW WITH NBC'S ROSALIND JORDAN

Berlin, Germany
April 29, 2004

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, this morning's New York Times is reporting in its latest poll that the public is evenly split -- not just on the decision on whether to go to war in Iraq but also whether continued U.S. presence in Iraq is necessary. Yesterday Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats questioned whether the Administration has a clear and focused policy on Iraq. Given that the June 30 date for handing sovereignty over to the Iraqis is approaching, what more does the U.S. need to do in order to convince Americans that staying the course is indeed the best strategy?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we are approaching this on really two tracks. First, the political track. Ambassador Negroponte appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing the other day. I think he made a good case to the Senators as to what we have in mind: put in place the political process that will replace the CPA with an Embassy no later than the 30th of June. That Embassy will be working with now a sovereign government of Iraq. The same day that Ambassador Negroponte testified, Mr. Brahimi, Ambassador Brahimi, went before the United Nations and described his plan to bring into being that sovereign government. So on the political track, our Embassy is well on the way to formation and ready to work with a sovereign government. We now have a plan about what it should look like and how to create it. And Ambassador Brahimi is going back to do that. So the political track is well understood. And we should be able without a great deal of trouble to have a sovereign government of Iraq by the 30th of June.

The other track really is security. We've got to get the security situation under control. We've got to resolve the difficult problem that we have at Fallujah and also the one in the south in Najaf. We want to do it peacefully. As you have seen, the Marines will defend themselves. But what they are really doing right now is working with local tribal sheiks and other city elders to persuade these thugs and criminals who are inside the city to give it up, lay down their arms, and leave or turn themselves in, so that we can restore Fallujah to the citizens of Fallujah, and not cause any more death and destruction. So we hope that will be successful, and it certainly will be resolved before the 30th of June. So when we resolve those situations, and when the American people see that we are moving to returning sovereignty to Iraq, I think they will see that we have done the right thing and that we are moving in the right direction.

QUESTION: Is it realistic to expect that that local-level diplomacy can be achieved quickly?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, diplomacy always takes some time, and it requires some patience. And I think we have been showing patience. And I am pleased to hear that a number of additional tribal leaders, sheiks, are going to Fallujah over the next 24 hours to assist in this process.

It is a tribal society in that part of the country. It has been a difficult area to manage. Saddam Hussein and his predecessors had difficulty with Fallujah, and so we hope that these local leaders will be in a position to help us resolve this matter without any further violence and destruction to the town.

QUESTION: The past focus of the last two days here in Berlin -- the ongoing problem of anti-Semitism worldwide. When you consider the recent call for Jihad and establishing a Muslim Caliphate at 10 Downing Street, is it possible to separate anti-Semitism from this radical Islamic viewpoint? Can the two problems be attacked together in an out-of-the-box way?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I think there is some relationship between the two in that there are radical movements in the world: Muslim radicalism, and there is radicalism that manifests itself in anti-Semitism. But anti-Semitism is not something new that just came along with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or came along with the Iraq War. Anti-Semitism is a curse that has been on the face of the world for many, many decades. It really received its full flower, its full manifestation here in Berlin under Hitler and the Third Reich. That Third Reich is gone, but nevertheless, sixty years later, what we have discovered is that there is still anti-Semitism in the world. It has to be defeated and destroyed. That is why we are here at this Anti-Semitism Conference. I am so pleased that 55 nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe came together to put out a strong statement and an action plan as to how we all have to come together to defeat this particular form of radicalism.

We also have to defeat Muslim radicalism, which takes to the streets and takes to bombs and violence in order to pursue some unclear aim. That is not the faith of Islam. Islam is a faith of peace and understanding and that's what we have to keep reminding people.

QUESTION: Is it possible, though, that it might be overlooked as the war on terror continues?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I don't think it will be overlooked. The war on terrorism is being fought and increasingly the world is coming to realize that nobody, nobody can take a bye on the war on terrorism. We are all affected. Every civilized nation is at risk, whether it is Spain or Germany or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia. We are all at risk and we all have to come together. And we are. There is greater and greater cooperation between the nations of the world with respect to law enforcement exchange of information, or intelligence information exchange. We are working together to go after terrorists, their financing, the means by which they travel around the world. Take Saudi Arabia. For a while, they thought they would be exempt from terrorism; and now they have seen that they are just as vulnerable as anyone else -- and they are responding just as aggressively as the rest of us are.

QUESTION: Secretary Powell, thank you.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much.

(end transcript)

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