U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2006)

Roundtable With the Press

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
December 19, 2006

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QUESTION: On North Korea, the main issues before the financial sanctions came up last year after the September 19th agreement have to do with sequencing and who does what or who is first and what step forward, another step -- what is it that you're seeking the North Koreans to do in terms of verifiably suspend?

Are you looking for them to allow inspectors from the IAEA in the country? Are you looking for something that perhaps scientists or experts can verify? In specific terms, how would you know that they've made the first step, that then you can go ahead and improve relations and offer guarantees of economic and securities or --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think that the first step is really for the North Koreans to do something that demonstrates that they're actually committed to denuclearization.

QUESTION: Because they said it in that statement.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, they said it in the statement, but have not demonstrated it in any way and --

QUESTION: Is that turning off the reactor?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I -- look, I'm not going to talk about what's going on in the negotiations. But there are -- you know the ideas that are out there about how one demonstrates early on that -- you know, that yes, this is serious. As to the -- what goes on before and after that, the Chinese have had the idea that there should be a work plan and I think that's probably the way to think about this.

I actually think that the sequencing argument -- this kind of tight sequencing is problematic. It's going to get you into endless arguments about what little thing goes before what next little thing and I actually don't think that that's going to get us anywhere. I think rather, if you have a work plan that's going to have obligations for both sides over some period of time -- it's not as if you can't kind of watch and see whether or not people are carrying out obligations and decide whether or not you then are able to move forward on certain other obligations. You know, this is not a science; it's an art. Diplomacy's an art. It's not a matter of -- oh, goodness, I should never have said that because this is going to be quoted everywhere. But it's a (laughter) --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RICE: That's all right. I'll give you talking points tomorrow. (Laughter.) But I think it's not a matter of -- we don't want to get back into a situation where every step has to be gauged against some other step. There are going to be, I would hope, broader steps forward and then broader steps forward that would move this along. Because ultimately, what the world is waiting to see is if this is going to lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, not can we continue to talk.

Everybody knows we can continue to talk. But I can tell you when I was at the APEC and we had that breakfast with all of the foreign ministers, I would say there was considerable skepticism around that table, you know, saying, look, the world has to see that this is actually going to work. And that's why I think you'll see -- why I think the Chinese have had a notion of a work plan and I think that's a good one.

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QUESTION: That sounds a little Pollyannaish.

SECRETARY RICE: I didn't say it was going in a positive direction. What I said is that the old Middle East wasn't going to stay, all right. Let's stop mourning the old Middle East. It was not so great and it wasn't going to survive anyway. And there are some positive elements of the new alignment that is there.

I don't know, for instance, if any of you were at that Security Council meeting that was held on the Middle East which the, you know, the Qatari -- I'm sorry, that the Danes arranged. It was during the UNGA and we had a session on the Middle East toward the end. I thought it was quite phenomenal. You know, there was no -- we were -- it was the end of the -- you know, Lebanon had just ended, you know, what terrible things were going to be said and so forth. There was no posturing and talking about occupation and this and that. There was a real strong sense that actually, if states came together, you know, maybe the Palestinian situation could be resolved. I've never really seen that kind of mood about the issues.

I just -- my only point is that there are -- it's a positive alignment when you have Arab states, some new democratic forces, and the potential for an Israeli Prime Minister who sees the need to try and resolve some of the outstanding questions for the Jewish state, vis-à-vis, the Palestinian state. That's an interesting new alignment and we ought to see if we can make it have an outcome.

So I'm not arguing that it's just going great, no. There are a lot of very difficult places. So of course, some of these, as you put it, teeter on the edge of really bad outcomes. But my point about the Cold War is that if you just go back and put yourself in that time and walk through the events of that time, you will have the same feel of things that could have gone very badly and thrown the whole beginning of the Cold War in a completely different direction, but for the United States getting in there, trusting in the values and working at it day after day.

You know, you've heard it before, but in ‘46, the French Communists won 46 percent of the vote and the Italian Communists 48 percent of the vote. People actually worried that Western Europe -- not Eastern Europe, Western Europe was about to go communist. In 1947, you did have a civil war in Greece, all out civil war in Greece and civil conflict in Turkey. Two million Europeans were starving in Europe in 1947.

In 1948, Berlin, the permanent division of Germany, Czechoslovakia falls to a coup. In 1949, the Soviet Union explodes a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule, the Chinese Communists win their revolution, and in 1950, the Korean war breaks out. Does it look that much better than it looks now in the Middle East? I don't think so.

That's the point that I'm trying to get across, is that at the beginning of big historic transitions, yes, everything is on the table and yes, it can go wrong, but it can also go right. And if you just sit in the middle of it and say, "Oh, my God, it's all going wrong," you miss the hooks, the pillars on which you can begin to build to make it go right. And so I'm just -- am just not given to the day-to-day assessment of the -- you know, where are we today. It's not how my mind works. My mind works, where are we today, but what is there in what is this very difficult situation today that might provide a platform or a hook or a pillar for setting that next brick in place for moving towards something that I am quite certain will not have a full resolution and that you will be able to fully judge for decades and there, I really do mean decades.

MR. MCCORMACK: All right, guys.

SECRETARY RICE: All right. Thanks.

2006/1131