U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Interview With Judy Woodruff of Bloomberg TV

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
July 1, 2008

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QUESTION: You are just back from a round-the-world trip, including a stop in South Korea and the news of a breakthrough with North Korea on their nuclear weapons program. Now, this comes, though, after, what, six years of disavowing the work that was done by the Clinton Administration on all of this which, in a way, gave North Korea a chance to ramp up its nuclear program. So some are asking: Is the United States really better off with North Korea today than it was under President Clinton in 2003?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it is true that President Bush decided to take a difference course. It was not that we believed that the Clinton Administration had not done their best. But in fact, we learned in 2002 that North Korea was pursuing another path. And indeed, the North did break out of the Agreed Framework. But this is a very different strategy now. This is a strategy that is not a bilateral relationship between the United States and North Korea as the Agreed Framework essentially was. This is a six-party framework. China is, indeed, the chair of the six-party framework. South Korea is at the table, Russia, Japan, the United States, of course. And what it allows is it allows the countries that have the right set of incentives and disincentives for North Korea to all be at the table. Any obligation that the North undertakes is an obligation to all of the parties and therefore, any obligation that the North would break would also be breaking that obligation to all of the parties. And so it's a very different framework. It did not freeze the North Korean reactor, as the Agreed Framework did. It actually disabled the North Korean reactor -- you saw the cooling tower come down. And so, the reactor is disabled, and now we move on to the abandonment phase, where the North has pledged to give up its nuclear weapons. So it's simply a different strategy.

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QUESTION: Now, you were also in Beijing. And my question is: If the Chinese don't do more to improve their record on human rights, releasing political prisoners in the next six weeks, is there any chance that President Bush would cancel his trip to Beijing to make the opening remarks at the Beijing Olympics?

SECRETARY RICE: The President's been very clear that the Olympics is a sporting event, and he's going to go to it as a sporting event. It is also, by the way, a source of great pride for the Chinese people. And we have to remember that this is not just about the regime. This is the 1.3 billion Chinese that are looking to this Olympics as a source of great pride for China.

Now, we are going to continue to press the human rights issues. I pressed them when I was just in Beijing. We have reopened our human rights dialogue with China. We continue to believe that China will be better off when it gives greater freedoms to its people. One of the issues that I've been raising with the Chinese repeatedly now is the issue of internet freedom, because there are problems with China's attempts to constrain this unconstrainable force that is the internet. And so we have many differences with China. But the President has made clear that the Olympics is a sporting event, and that's the right way to treat it.

QUESTION: Well, we know the Chinese continue to supply arms, among others, to the repressive Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe. If the Chinese are not going to change their policies on an issue as clear cut as that one, do you think they can be expected to cooperate on these other issues?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I wouldn't say that the Chinese are not changing some of their policies. They've been somewhat more helpful on Darfur, pressuring the regime there. Not as much as we would like, but they've been better than they had been. We talked about Zimbabwe and we talked about the fact that an arms shipment that was to go to the Zimbabwean Government was turned around because people refused to offload it. I think that was actually something of an embarrassment for the Chinese, and I found them on Zimbabwe recognizing that the international community, even many African states, are condemning what Mugabe is doing.

We are working with China very well on North Korea, and increasingly, even on Iran, we've been able to get Security Council resolutions through. So yes, we have differences with China. You would expect that with a country of China's size and complexity. But I remain in the belief that without a constructive relationship with China, you're not going to be able to resolve very many issues diplomatically.

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QUESTION: Iran. Would it be a mistake if Israel engaged in a pre-emptive strike against Iran over its nuclear program?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let me say first that we do have conversations with the Israelis quite a lot, and at very high levels, about the threat that Iran poses and the threat that a nuclear Iran would pose in particular. The Israelis have been willing to work with us on the diplomatic side. They, too, believe that it's possible to deal with this diplomatically. But we better have really robust diplomacy in order to deal with this threat, because the Iranians are making progress.

One of the bright signs in this was when the President was recently in Europe. After a significant period of time, the Europeans have now sanctioned an important Iranian bank. They are working very hard to look at other things that might be done. The six countries -- the United States, Russia, China and the European three -- have put forward a proposal to the Iranians that would give Iran a great deal of benefit if Iran were willing to stop its enrichment and reprocessing. We'll see what the Iranians say to that proposal. But the world needs to be very serious about this threat.

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