U.S.Dept. of State: Roundtable with Traveling Press

[Karapetian Hovik]

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/10/93530.ht m

Roundtable With Traveling Press
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Moscow, Russia
October 13, 2007


SECRETARY RICE: Okay. Why don't we just go directly to questions.

QUESTION: Can we follow up on your human rights meeting with the
activists this morning?

SECRETARY RICE: Sure.

QUESTION: Can you give us a sense of to what extent you talked about
human rights in Russia generally when you met yesterday with President
Putin, and then whether it featured at all -- I suspect it didn't --
in the 2+2 meeting, which is, you know, different turf*.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the meeting with President Putin was also 2+2,
which means that there was a certain subject matter and character to
that meeting. I think you know I've spent lots of time with President
Putin on internal developments, on human rights issues, on the
evolution of the political system. Yesterday was not the opportunity
for that because with both Secretary Gates and myself and their
Defense Minister and their Foreign Minister, we really did focus on
the 2+2 agenda even with President Putin.

I spent a good deal of time on internal developments with both Prime
Minister Zubkov and with Dmitriy Medvedev as well as with Sergey
Ivanov last night. So -- and Sergey Lavrov and I will talk tonight
about a number of issues. So that was the kind of division of how
we're doing this.

QUESTION: Just one follow-up. Can you give us some sense of -- and I
know you don't speak for the Russians, I'm not asking you to do that
-- but this is a conversation that has been going on between the
United States and Russia for many years now, sometimes very publicly
like with Secretary Powell's Izvestia piece, sometimes more sort of
quietly. Do you -- can you give us any sense of how they respond and
whether over time you think that they have gotten any more sympathetic
to your concerns or whether over time they perhaps, you know, have
gotten less sympathetic and have had less of an ear for what they
might regard as American interference?

SECRETARY RICE: You know, it never takes that tone or character. I
think we're beyond the time when we're told to mind our own business.
I, frankly, haven't encountered that tone in any of these
conversations. They do talk about their own history. They talk about
their own evolution. They talk about the fact that this is 15 years in
the making, that it's not a very old system, trying to find its way
toward democracy.

But I've continued to make what I think are the essential points.
There are issues of human rights and we've been concerned and I've
talked a good deal about the problems of individuals, journalists and
others, who have had difficulty. But there are also institutional
issues, issues about the -- in a presidential system not having strong
institutions, countervailing institutions, to the presidency. And I've
been very open about the concerns that that raises in any country, not
just in Russia but in any country. If you don't have countervailing
institutions, then the power of any one president is problematic for
democratic development.

And so I don't -- it hasn't -- if you're asking have they gotten more
aggressive in rejecting those arguments, no. Do I think that they are
-- that they've made much progress in terms of the development of
countervailing institutions? No, I don't think that either. But I did
spend a lot of time today with the human rights groups activists, was
talking about how we might start to design some of our programs so
that they better connect to politics. And I mean to politics in the
country, the politics of people. So that's the kind of thing that
institutionally I think we can help.

QUESTION: They gave a very long list of all the problems they're
facing -- NGO restrictions, anti-terrorism measures that are used
against political opposition. I mean, did you come away with that
given a sense -- with a sense that the U.S. can do anything to reverse
it or are you left with this at the end of the your tenure?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I thought that one interesting comment was that,
if you remember, we worked very hard on the NGO law, and the comment
was that it -- the law itself, like many laws, are not so bad, that
the question is really implementation and concerns really that for
larger human rights groups who can deal with some of the bureaucratic
issues, they can get through them, but concerns about very small human
rights groups. And so that's a place to work and to see if we can
prevail upon the Russian Government to be more forward leaning and
less bureaucratic for smaller groups.

We didn't -- I didn't get the sense, frankly, that on the issues of
the NGOs -- there wasn't much of an argument that the law itself was
problematic. The implementation can sometimes be a problem. But even
then, some examples were given of things that have not yet happened
but that are feared might happen. So that's the nature of the
conversation. It was at that level of detail.

QUESTION: Can I ask just one question just on your philosophy in terms
of how you approach human rights issues? Are there areas where you try
to focus on that you think you can be constructive and are there areas
in which you just say I'm not going to go there because what I have to
say, say about, you know, President Putin's, you know, political
future, it's just not constructive or -- in your mind, can you just
kind of explain your -- how you approach that issue?

SECRETARY RICE: I try to -- well, obviously, I raise all of them. But
I think this country is in the process of developing its institutions
and developing the relationship of those institutions to each other
and the relationship of the government to the citizens, and the
ability of citizens themselves to engage in meaningful political
activities. And so I'm always very concerned that there be space for
citizens, Russian citizens, to organize themselves in order to be able
to petition their government. That's why I spent a lot of time with
the NGO community. In fact, I've seen several of these people two,
three, four times. We have worked for -- and let me just give you an
example. Disability rights. You can consider it a human rights issue.
You can consider it an issue of political organization. You can
consider it an issue of cultural tendencies to ignore the concerns of
the disabled. It's all of those things. And some of the work we've
done with -- it's called Perspectiva --

QUESTION: Perspectiva.

SECRETARY RICE: Perspectiva -- tries to address all of those elements.
And I think you have in that organization now an organization while it
is very focused and specialized in what it's advocating for actually
is making a difference in the way the political system responds to
that particular need. I think a lot of Russia's political development
is going to come in that way, because if you think of the way
political systems develop, they develop when citizens decide that
their individual concerns, rights, needs are either being met by
government or not being met by government. And so you need to help
develop political space for people to be able to petition their
government. And I spend a lot of time on that. And I think maybe it's
in part because I'm a Russianist. I think that's one thing that has
been missing; every time there has been political liberalization in
Russia; that has been a gap. And so we've been talking about more ways
that we can use our dollars to support that kind of activity.

QUESTION: Did you raise the case of the inquiry in Politkovskaya murder?

SECRETARY RICE: I will raise that with Lavrov.

QUESTION: You will?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm seeing Lavrov tonight.

QUESTION: And in response to Mike's question, you said -- Mike
specifically referred to the question of President Putin's political
future, and you said I raised all of that. Does that mean you --

SECRETARY RICE: No, I didn't.

QUESTION: We shouldn't read it that way?

SECRETARY RICE: You should not read that that way. I talked to people
about the coming months and how they see the coming months, because it
is a time -- and I have said that I thought that the way these
elections, both the Duma elections and the presidential elections, are
carried out are being watched very carefully, not just by the
international community but by the Russian people. And how these two
elections are carried out will have an effect on whether Russia is
making the next step on toward democracy. I think that is really quite
obvious and I have talked to people about that.

QUESTION: Do you have a view about whether it's a good idea or not on
Putin? Any comments?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm not -- I just don't think that my speculating
about something --

QUESTION: I'm not asking --

SECRETARY RICE: No, I'm just explaining. I'm just explaining why I
think it's better not to answer this question. There's a lot of
speculation about who's going to be president, whether President Putin
is going to take any of a number of jobs or no job at all, and I just
think speculating on that is not going to help this --

QUESTION: He didn't raise it, though? You mentioned on the plane that
you wouldn't turn the conversation down. He didn't --

SECRETARY RICE: As I said, this discussion was very focused on the
kind of 2+2 kinds of issues, just I think because of the composition
of the meeting.

QUESTION: But you've now -- you had dinner with Sergey Ivanov, right?

SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: And you met two other men mentioned to be the most likely candidates.

SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: Did you get any sense from them at all maybe -- I'm not
asking you to speculate now, but do you feel like you understood maybe
a little bit more about where things are turning, or do you still feel
like you simply don't know, like most people seem to not know?

SECRETARY RICE: I don't think any of us know.

QUESTION: To follow up on that, does that in any way affect the way
that the United States deals with Russia now? Because there is a high
degree of uncertainty.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, there's uncertainty. But we -- Russia has a
president and a foreign minister and defense minister, and you deal
with them. And until that circumstance changes, you do the business of
government with those people.

No, it doesn't change the way that the United States deals on the
kinds of issues that we are here talking about, on Iran or on missile
defense or those issues.

QUESTION: But the next 2+2 meeting, if it happens in six months, as
you agreed yesterday, will happen under a new president here.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it depends on when it happens, right? Because the --

QUESTION: The presidential elections would be March, beginning of March.

SECRETARY RICE: But then there's a transition period.

QUESTION: Before the inauguration.

SECRETARY RICE: Before the inauguration. So I don't know whether it'll
be a new president or not.

QUESTION: But they seem to be fairly confident that what you agreed on
yesterday is going to be carried through, so they obviously have an
idea that no matter who's around, no matter who's taking over, they're
going to carrying out the same policies, no?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know about the same policies, but I
think if there are agreements then, you know, it's not at all unusual
that the next government honors the agreements of the former
government.

QUESTION: But we're not talking about a treaty or MOU, as we were told
last night on background. I mean, these are kind of just some abstract
ideas, very broad, and you --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let's see where we are. You mean in terms of
missile defense or --

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, if we have come to an agreement about a sort of
joint regional architecture, I'd expect that the next Russian
Government, whoever is president of it, would carry that out, just
like if we come to agreement on a joint regional architecture I would
expect that the next American Government, whoever is president of that
government, would carry it out.

You know, you couldn't do international politics if there was constant
reversing of agreements that have been struck.

QUESTION: Well right. But you know, even in case of mistakes, I mean,
if one party comes to power there may be less influence, less
interest, in missile defense.

SECRETARY RICE: Sure, there may be.

QUESTION: And you didn't get the sense from the Russians that --

SECRETARY RICE: No.

QUESTION: -- they're wavering a little bit?

SECRETARY RICE: No, no. I think on their foreign and defense policy,
to the degree that anybody can predict, you know, it looks like it'll
be fairly stable. But you know, I would just caution that change is
change, and I don't know what the next president of Russia will do. I
think we just have to proceed from the -- from working with this
President of Russia.

QUESTION: Is it frustrating at all, you have - Presidents Bush and
Putin are supposed to have this great friendship. I mean, is it
frustrating to see such big differences on things like missile
defense, on democracy?

SECRETARY RICE: No. I mean, it's the nature of big, complex
relationships. And I do think on missile defense and also on CFE for
that matter, we've been looking to see if Russia indeed does want to
cooperate. They have said they want to cooperate. They have said we
have a common -- we have common threats. We don't agree on the exact
nature of the threat, but we have common threats. And that they're
interested in cooperation.

So what we've done during this trip is to put on the table proposals,
conceptual now -- the details really need to be worked out -- but
conceptual proposals that we think will address what the Russians have
said are some of their concerns about moving forward on missile
defense. To my mind, if they want to cooperate, we've given them every
reason to do so, and so now we'll have the opportunity to find out
whether or not indeed they want to cooperate.

QUESTION: A follow-up on Michelle. As you reflect back on like the
last six years since 9/11, clearly in the first year or two after that
there was a lot of progress made on relations with Russia. There's
been a lot of commentary that since then, you know, things have cooled
off. And as you yourself kind of step back and kind of review the arc
of the relationship, do you feel like there is anything the
Administration, you know, could have handled better? Could it have
made it more a priority? Could it have made it --

SECRETARY RICE: It was a pretty high priority. I think the Zubkov said
that the President and Putin have met 23 times. Now, I can't vouch for
that number, but if it's anywhere near that, that's a lot of priority.

QUESTION: But what about the -- putting that aside, just about your
general analysis of just how you -

SECRETARY RICE: This is a country in the midst of a big transition.
And I think some of the aspects of that transition have made the
U.S.-Russia relationship more difficult. For instance, clearly some of
the ways in which the oil and gas industry have developed here with
very close connections to the politics, with concerns about whether or
not contracts are stable, with concerns about the use of energy for
political motivation, have introduced strains into the relationship.

I don't see, frankly, anything that the United States or for that
matter the rest of the world did that led to that set of developments.
I think it really was a set of variables that are exogenous to the
U.S.-Russia relationship that led Russia to develop that very
important resource in a particular way with more state ownership and
more state involvement in that sector than might have been predicted
even four or five years ago.

Clearly, some of the developments in places like Ukraine, to a certain
extent Kyrgyzstan, and the way that those developments, those internal
-- developments internal to those countries were read by Russia, which
was to read them as potentially threatening to Russian stability, I
think again is something exogenous to the U.S.-Russia relationship. So
I think there are a number of things that developed in ways that put
strains on our relationship.

On the other hand, some things developed in ways that made it more --
made us more capable of cooperation. I don't think we had the level of
cooperation on nonproliferation that we'd had recently until we found
a way to cooperate on the North Korean issue, until we made the
decision in May of 2006 to enter the European 3+3 and to form that
framework, because it was the European 3 and then Russia was sort of
on the sidelines of it. Our decision to enter into that put us in a
group of six with Russia that has actually produced two Security
Council resolutions. And yeah, we have tactical differences about how
strong or when, but the degree to which that has held together I think
is pretty remarkable.

So there have been some things that have been exogenous to the
relationship that have led to strains in it, some things that have
actually led to better cooperation in the relationship, and I think
it's sort of the character of a big, complex --

QUESTION: And do you think you've misread Putin (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: I think I -- we all -- I certainly always read him as
somebody who was going to do what he thought was in the best interest
of his nation and was going to be, in a sense, transparent about that.
Where there have been differences, I think it's because I think we
read those interests differently.

QUESTION: What is his legacy?

SECRETARY RICE: Putin's legacy? Well, let's wait and see where we are in March.

QUESTION: Can you talk about your meeting with the Prime Minister, the
new Prime Minister, I mean your impression of him? He was a fairly
unknown entity in the agency.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, but he wasn't unknown to us. We had actually had
pretty close cooperation with him on issues of anti-terrorist
financing -- or terrorist financing and measures against it. And so
even though I had not personally met him, a lot of our people had and
had a good impression of him in that context -- his capacity to get
things done. We made a lot of progress on that whole complex of
issues. And so he wasn't unknown to us.

I found him competent, on top of his brief this morning. We went
through a number of issues. He was very focused on prime ministerial
kinds of issues. We talked a good deal about the WTO, about economic
relations. I raised, and as I said talked at some length, about issues
of institutional development in Russia, democratic institutional
development in Russia. But you know, I found him --

QUESTION: What was his response to that?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, he -- you know, he talked about the fact that
this is a young -- I mean, it's not that long since the revolution and
-- or since -- yeah, since the revolution of 1991, and so forth. But
again, I talked -- I tend with the Russians to talk a lot about what I
see as institutional deficiencies because that's really the issue here
is: Is this country going to have countervailing institution to the
presidency?

QUESTION: You mean the parliament, the courts?

SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm. Parliament, the court, independent media,
civil society. I think it's extremely important, as all of us have
done throughout secretaries of state coming here and even presidents,
to raise individual cases of people who have been mistreated or cases
of unresolved disappearances or murders or whatever. Those are very
important to raise.

Ultimately, democratic guarantees come from institutional development.
Democratic governance comes from a president who can never be too
strong because there will always be a congress or a parliament to
check him or her, because there will be an independent media to shed
light on what is going on. Now, we did have in one case a kind of
interesting discussion of how the Internet will be a source from which
people will get their information globally, not -- and so one wonders
to the degree that you even control the media how well you'll be able
to control information in the long run. And this is a place that is
going to be wired coast to coast. Well, I don't guess coast to coast
is quite the right image for Russia, but from one time zone all the
way out to the other. And so one wonders, even if there is an attempt
to control the media, if that's going to work in the long run. And I
tend to think not.

QUESTION: Is the Russian presidency too strong, in your view, as
currently constituted?

SECRETARY RICE: I've said that I think there's too much concentration
of power in the Kremlin. And I've told the Russians that. I've said it
publicly before. Because it's just the absence of -- I think everybody
has doubts about the independence, full independence, of the
judiciary, although at certain levels -- I think -- I can't remember
the numbers now, but Russian citizens almost always win against the
government when they go to the judiciary, so it's not -- it's not
widespread, but on a lot of very high-profile cases I think there are
questions about the independence of the judiciary. There are clearly
questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are
I think questions about the strength of the Duma.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, if I might change the subject for a second
onto Turkey. Can you confirm reports that Edelman and Fried are going
over there right now?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: And also on that, how strained is the relationship with the
fact that the Ambassador has been called back? I mean --

SECRETARY RICE: I think it's a tough time and we tried to tell people
it was going to be a tough time. This is not unexpected because the
Turkish Government is trying to act responsibly. I spoke yesterday to
the Foreign Minister, the Prime Minister and the President of the
country. They recognize all that the Administration did. And by the
way, not just the Administration. On a bipartisan basis, eight former
secretaries of state, three former secretaries of defense, people on
both sides of the aisle. They recognize how hard we worked to prevent
that vote from taking place in the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

We have pressed the Turks very hard over the years, and not just this
Administration, to be forthcoming with Armenia, to deal with the
history. They've made some overtures. Those overtures should be taken
up.

But yes, it's not an easy time for the relationship and it was
perfectly predictable.

QUESTION: And having said all that that you've tried to do, the
Administration (inaudible) what do you do now? How do you go forward?
How do you --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, we'll keep -- first of all, we'll keep
working to try to prevent it from becoming -- from winning on the
floor. I can't give you a predication on it. It will be tough. We'll
certainly hope that it doesn't come up in the Senate. We will continue
to try to help the Turkish Government make the case that this is not
how the American -- that the American people don't feel that the
current Turkish Government is the Ottoman Empire. And you know, we'll
continue to try to deal with anti-American sentiment that has been
heightened by this vote.

But we are certainly working to try to minimize any concrete steps
that the Turkish Government might take of some of the kinds that have
floated around -- you know, restricting the movement of our forces or
the like. And I'm hopeful we can prevent that because I think we and
Turkey both understand the importance of the strategic relationship.

But yeah, it is very difficult. And this is not a situation that we
should have been in.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) can you just give us some insight on what the
reaction was from them yesterday when you spoke with them?

SECRETARY RICE: They were dismayed, let's say.

QUESTION: To what extent were those conversations yesterday dealing
directly with the bill; and to what extent were they addressing, if at
all, the recent Turkish statements, which I know are not new, about
the possibility of incursion?

SECRETARY RICE: I addressed both. I addressed both.

QUESTION: And I presume that you --

SECRETARY RICE: -- urged restraint. Absolutely. I urged restraint,
urged them to use the mechanisms that are available, which are
trilateral mechanisms between the United States, Iraq and Turkey.
Reminded our Turkish colleagues of something that they always say to
me, and by the way said to me yesterday, which is that we all have an
interest in a stable Iraq and that anything that is destabilizing is
going to be to the detriment of both of our interests.

So we did have that discussion and then we talked also about our
common desire, I think, to minimize any -- to minimize damage to the
relationship. But it's very hard for that government, where I think
the people are perhaps having a hard time distinguishing as to who
favored this and who didn't.

QUESTION: What is the purpose of the Fried and Edelman mission? Do
they have -- is it to talk about (inaudible) repercussions if --

SECRETARY RICE: It's obviously not -- it's a difficult time for the
relationship. We're good friends and good allies. And we just thought
it was a very good idea for two senior officials to go and talk with
the Turks and have reassurance to the Turks that, you know, we really
value the relationship and that we're looking for ways to minimize
difficulties in it.

QUESTION: Did you get a sense they will exercise restraint with regard
to the possibility of a major action, not hot pursuit --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, that's certainly what we're advocating. And I do
know that they recognize the danger to their own interests of
destabilizing the north of Iraq.

QUESTION: How about the Iraq conference? Has that at all (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it's scheduled to go on and I'm assuming that it
will. Again, we have so many common interests with Turkey. This is --
it's not as if anyone is looking to make trouble. We have good
relations with that government and good relations with Turkey. But
clearly, the vote was dismaying for them and, frankly, dismaying for
us.

QUESTION: What is the status of General Ralston?

QUESTION: He's gone, right? So now it's --

QUESTION: His resignation has been accepted or --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we have not had a chance to talk, so let me not
comment. I know that he is -- he is desirous of, you know, not having
to continue. But he has said that he'll try to help where he can and
when he can. And he's terrific. He's really done a good job in trying
to bring that together.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) so you're hopeful that he'll stay on?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I think that we will have -- it'll be a different
relationship. But I know that he has offered that when he can help, he
will.

QUESTION: You said that the relationship with Russia is strained. Do
you think there is --

SECRETARY RICE: I said there are strains in the relationship.

QUESTION: Do you think there is an internal political reasons to that?

SECRETARY RICE: You mean here in Russia?

QUESTION: Yes, in Russia. That's -- it can be convenient for Putin to
lose the --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, we have talked from time to time about
the need to avoid certain rhetoric and the need to avoid painting the
United States as responsible for various ills. And so I don't -- I'm
not going to try to judge motivations, but I've made the point that we
need to try to keep this on a professional level of international
partners and not to vilify the other.

QUESTION: And you think you have time before the end of this
Administration to mend this relation?

SECRETARY RICE: Again, I don't think that most of the strains in this
relationship, and it is -- the reason I reacted to the notion of
strained relationship is that we have an awful lot of things that are
going well in the relationship, too. But I don't see the strains in
this relationship as having come up as a result of particular
policies. Many of them, whether you're talking about the energy issues
or whether you're talking about our concerns about the development of
Russian internal politics or whether you're talking about the
neighborhood and some of their feeling or expressed feeling that
they're being encircled, I don't think these are issues of policy. I
think these are issues of the way that Russia is developing in this
period of transition. And so, frankly, I think there are strains that
-- those are strains that might be there for a while and they're
probably going to have to be managed.

QUESTION: On Iran, to what extent did that subject come up in your two
days of talks here?

SECRETARY RICE: Quite a lot.

QUESTION: Especially with Mr. Putin. Can you give us any insight? Did
you gain any more insight into how they think about --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we talked a lot about it.

QUESTION: -- the way forward?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, we talked a lot about it. But we talked about it
in the context of the agreement that we have about next steps. I don't
find the Russians all that impressed with the Iranian record either.
They do have concerns about how certain actions could lead the
Iranians to, you know, not cooperate with the IAEA and so forth. We
don't want to see Iran fail to cooperate with the IAEA either. But
it's our belief that their cooperation with the IAEA is probably going
to be incented more by making certain that they know there's an
alternative and that there are consequences to noncooperation. So we
have those kinds of discussions. But we know where we're going over
the next couple months and so that's what we -- that's the framework
in which all these discussions take place.

QUESTION: And where would the differences be, do you think?

SECRETARY RICE: I think they're more to --

QUESTION: Lavrov yesterday publicly seemed to --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. Look, there are three. First of all, I think
there is the issue of how much of a next step the next resolution
should be. And that comes really down to details of what are you going
to put in a resolution or not, and that's what political directors are
working on.

The second is timing. It's no secret that we would have preferred to
do this a month or so ago, but recognize that there were others who
thought that it might make sense to get some read from ElBaradei and
some read from Solana before we did it.

And the third is this issue that arose yesterday, although it's been
there for a while, which is what else is going on outside of the UN
Security Council track. And I've had to explain that there are certain
things that the United States is doing that are consistent first of
all with our laws and second -- and we're going to remain consistent
with our laws; secondly, consistent with our concerns about what Iran
is doing to endanger our forces in Iraq; and third, consistent with
our intention to keep the integrity of the international financial
system, and that is not to allow Iranian entities, banks that are
using the financial system to trade in terrorist financing or
proliferation financing, to use the international financial system in
that way. And that means that when we find that kind of activity,
we're going to -- you know, the Treasury will, in accordance with our
law, sanction that activity. That then leads to have the cascading
effect because then private entities in other countries don't
generally want to be associated with entities in Iran that are under
suspicion for dealing in terrorist assets or in proliferation assets.
So it has a cascading effect. I fully acknowledge that. But the
intention is that we're not going to let Iran use the international
financial system in that way.

QUESTION: Were the Russians onboard with the FATF statement yesterday?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm sorry?

QUESTION: Were the Russians -- the FATF put out this big statement
yesterday about Iran. Maybe, I don't know, I just saw it briefly, but
I'm just wondering if the Russians were onboard with that.

SECRETARY RICE: I'm not sure I've caught up with this.

MR. MCCORMACK: It's not a story, Matt -- I can get you --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I'm sorry, Matt. I wasn't -- I didn't catch up with it.

QUESTION: And yesterday when -- before, as we were all waiting at the
dacha, Lavrov came out for a smoke in the billiards room.

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, did he?

QUESTION: And he was asked if there were going to be any
breakthroughs, or if he thought that there were going to be any
breakthroughs. And he said, "Breaks certainly; through or down, I
don't know." How would you react? Were there any breakdowns or --

SECRETARY RICE: No, there were no breakdowns. Sergey has a sense of
humor. No, there were no breakdowns. (Laughter.)

Look, we'll see. But as I said, our goal in coming here was not to
have the Russians say, oh yes, that's a great idea. Because we came --
Secretary Gates and I came with conceptual ideas as to how to break an
impasse that we've had, particularly on missile defense, about their
concerns about what that system could mean, about their concerns that
we even though we know it is aimed at an Iran that we have a
particular assessment of that they don't have the same assessment, and
they're worried -- some of them are -- and the most articulate on this
is their -- are their generals, who have a certain view of this
system.

Now, I think you've all heard me say that I cannot conceive of how
somebody could think that this system would have an impact on the
Russian strategic nuclear deterrent. But let's take at face value that
there are -- that they have concerns. Not we believe, that they have
concerns that there is a breakout potential or a future development
potential that could degrade their strategic nuclear deterrent.

We came with a set of ideas about how to deal with those various
concerns, because we really do believe that the best thing to do would
be to cooperate. When President Putin was at Kennebunkport, he told
President Bush that he believed that cooperation in missile defense
could lead to a fundamentally different level of U.S.-Russian
cooperation that has ever been seen or -- you know, it was a -- he had
a very almost dramatic way of presenting what missile defense
cooperation could mean for the relationship.

So we want to take that very seriously. And if they say here are the
reasons we think we can't cooperate, then we came with some conceptual
ideas of how we might address those concerns, and now we'll see with
those ideas on the table whether or not they believe that cooperation
is possible.

QUESTION: Did his -- does that concept include lunar -- (laughter).
Because fundamentally, you know -- because, you know, the Russians --
the Kremlin spokesman, you know, their interpretation of that comment
was a bit of a shock.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Was that, you know, he was not trying to make fun of it. He
was trying to say that, look, you know, we can get to a point where
this -- is that --

SECRETARY RICE: I thought it was kind of a joke. I don't know what you --

QUESTION: You didn't see it as derogative form?

SECRETARY RICE: No. Look, President Putin does have this kind of way
of speaking, you know, and he makes these sort of offhanded comments
from time to time. That's how I read it. It didn't really occur to me
that it was a comment that was serious.

QUESTION: Did you laugh?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, actually, I did, I think.

QUESTION: Can you -- two quick things on Turkey.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: The call for restraint or the urging restraint -- that came
up in all three conversations yesterday?

SECRETARY RICE: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: And to what extent do you think that the possibility of an
incursion into northern Iraq is related to dismay over the committee
vote on the resolution?

SECRETARY RICE: I don't know. I can't answer that. I hope that this is
going to proceed on a logic of its own, which is they are concerned
about the PKK, we are concerned about the PKK. But there are
mechanisms to deal with it in the trilateral format that we've set up.
And so I hope that it retains its own logic.

MR. MCCORMACK: Is there one last question?

SECRETARY RICE: One last question? Yes.

QUESTION: Did they complain about the lack of cooperation of the
Iraqis in terms of the PKK? What else can you do to help them --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it --

QUESTION: -- convince the Iraqis --

SECRETARY RICE: Terrorism, particularly terrorism that's been kind of
buried into an area that way for a long time, is not easily -- not
easy to root out. What we've tried to emphasize is that they have in
the Iraqi Government's fall of Saddam Hussein a more cooperative
government that wants to see no terrorism from its territory; that has
a good relationship with the United States and Turkey has a good
relationship with the United States, so there are possibilities for
trilateral cooperation that did not exist prior to the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein; and that this is, you know, a government that's
capacity is just not that great and we're trying to help it build
capacity across the board. I mean, it's trying to build the capacity
to defend itself against terrorism, and so it's not surprising that it
has trouble defending against terrorism in its -- you know, other
parts of its territory.

But we believe that there is will there. We just have to try and work
it through. But we're as concerned about PKK terrorism from Iraq into
Turkey as anyone.

All right.

QUESTION: Are you sure we're not going to be able to see you on the ice?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm positive. I told you, I don't even own skates
anymore. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY RICE: No, no, no. You have no idea how carefully skates are
fitted to your particular foot. You used to have order skates you
waited something like two months to get your skates because they're
hand -- they're custom-made for you. And plus the fact, as I said to
Jonathan earlier, there's this theory. I've been -- not been on the
ice in ten years. There's this theory that ice skating is like riding
a bicycle, right? You just get back on and you immediately know how to
do it. I'm not going to take that chance in front of you all just in
case that's not true. (Laughter.)

2007/T17-5


Released on October 13, 2007
U.S. Department of State