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Below, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright comments on Saddam Hussein, Iraq, containment, and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1284. Her remarks were made on NBC's "Meet the Press," and followed a long discussion about Chechnya and Russian politics (topics that were the focus of most of the discussion time). With regards, Nathaniel Hurd Boston, MA Approved-By: stategov@UIC.EDU X-Authentication-Warning: tigger.cc.uic.edu: stategov owned process doing -bs X-Sender: stategov@tigger.cc.uic.edu Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2000 10:46:32 -0600 Reply-To: "U.S. State Department" <stategov@UIC.EDU> Sender: "Speeches/Testimonies by the U.S. Secretary of State Distribution List" <DOSSEC@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU> From: "U.S. State Department" <stategov@UIC.EDU> Subject: 000102 Albright on NBC's Meet the Press Comments: To: dossec@uic.edu To: DOSSEC@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright Interview on NBC's "Meet The Press" With Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell Washington, DC, January 2, 2000 As released by the Office of the Spokesman U.S. Department of State, January 3, 2000 MR. RUSSERT: Another difficult area, Iraq. One year ago, the inspectors were told, "Get out," by Saddam Hussein. Do you believe that Saddam Hussein has more weapons of mass destruction now than he did a year ago? SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, we are very obviously concerned about his ability to reconstitute and we are keeping him in his box and the no-fly zones are being monitored and, as you know, we occasionally have to take military action as our planes are illuminated or our pilots are in danger. We are concerned about the fact that there are not inspectors on the ground and, as you know, we tried at the United Nations to ensure that that would happen. There is a new resolution which requires the inspectors to go in and that is the law, the international law at this stage. Saddam Hussein has turned that down. And we, obviously, have reserved the right that if we see that he has or is reconstituting his weapons of mass destruction, that we can take action on that. We want to make -- we have set up a regime whereby the inspectors could go in and that is the way that Saddam Hussein could make sure that sanctions might be suspended. MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you what the President said a year ago and get your sense of it as we look at it today: "A rather scary threat to regional stability becomes increasingly alarming. Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein is successfully staving off attempts at the United Nations to reinstate weapons inspectors in his country." One year ago, President Clinton himself summed up the likely consequences of allowing Mr. Hussein to go uninspected for too long. "Mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction, he will deploy them, he will use them." It's been more than a year. Aren't we concerned what Saddam has done this past year? SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: We are obviously concerned. As I said, I think that we have been successful in keeping him in his box and in terms of the threat to the region. We worked very hard on this resolution. We think it is unfortunate that Saddam Hussein has not taken advantage of it because it - MR. RUSSERT: And the Russians, French and Chinese oppose us. SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, they abstained. But what's interesting here, Tim, in their as they call it explanation of vote at the United Nations, they made clear that they believed that Saddam Hussein must abide by what the United Nations -- the resolution is. MR. RUSSERT: And if he doesn't, what happens? SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I think that we still continue to have the possibilities that we've had before of taking unilateral or multilateral action if we need to. But I think we should -- I can't say that we have accomplished everything we've wanted with Iraq. But we, I think, are on the right track in terms of keeping them, as I've said, in the box, of working with the opposition and working towards regime change, and making quite clear to the neighboring countries and to the rest of the world and our partners at the United Nations that what Saddam Hussein is doing is unacceptable. ----------------------------------------------- FREE! The World's Best Email Address @email.com Reserve your name now at http://www.email.com -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full archive and list instructions are available from the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi