State Department Noon Briefing

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2001 - 1:35 P.M.
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)

Q: The Syrians - Iraq is starting regular commercial flights into
Syria from 19 years. Can you comment on that? And also while you're on
Syria, why did Mr. Powell add Syria to his itinerary? What are the
US-Syrian interests at this point?

MR. BOUCHER: On the question of Iraqi flights to Syria or vice versa,
let us double check on that and see what's actually going on. I think
that was the Iraqis reporting it, and they've announced things like
that several times in the past when they haven't turned out to be
precisely true. So let us look at that one a little more and figure
out what's going on.

In terms of going to Syria, obviously Syria is an important country in
the Middle East. As the Secretary discussed, he wants to take a
regional approach to many of the issues in the region, and he thought
it was useful to go to Damascus at this time to talk about all the
issues of the region, including the peace process and Iraq.

Q: On Syria, does the United States consider Syria an ally in the
region? And does Secretary Powell - will he be bringing up the
question of the pipeline with Iraq for oil?

MR. BOUCHER: No, and yes.

Q: No and yes --

MR. BOUCHER: No, we don't consider them an ally, and I would expect
the issue of pipelines to Iraq to come up.

Q: We keep hearing this line about broad regional context. Can you
perhaps elaborate to us what exactly you mean by this?

MR. BOUCHER: Isn't that the same question you asked me Friday, so I
can give the same answer I gave on Friday?

Q: Did I? Well, the Secretary used it again over the weekend, but
again didn't throw any extra light on it. It's just puzzling some of
us.

MR. BOUCHER: I don't see why it should. As I said on Friday, I think
if you look at the pattern of what the Secretary has been doing in
terms of his meetings, his phone calls to the region, his contacts and
the plans for his trip, that he is looking at the many issues that
affect people in the region in a regional context, understanding that
if it comes to the question of whether Iraq is threatening its
neighbors and threatening the people of the region, it's obvious you
need to talk to the people of the region who would be threatened. And
that's part of the circumstances of this trip. We want to discuss
things with them and work with them as we develop the policy, and
therefore he is looking to talk to the people of the region.

He has had meetings, I think, here with the Jordanian Foreign
Minister, the Tunisian Foreign Minister last Friday. It was quite
clear in our discussions with those gentlemen and others that these
issues do play throughout the region. They affect each other and we
need to take a regional approach that emphasizes not only our interest
in the peace process or in making sure that Iraq can't threaten people
but their interests in these things as well. And that these be based
upon very solid bilateral relationships that we can develop with the
countries in the region.

....

Q: Please don't say that this is a hypothetical question because I
don't think it is. But in Syria - well, actually, I know it is - in
Syria, are flights, direct flights, commercial flights, regularly
scheduled flights between Iraq and Syria, something that the United
States would frown on?

MR. BOUCHER: Flights would have to be notified to the Sanctions
Committee. And, again, not knowing the facts of the matter, flights --
all flights are supposed to be appropriately notified and inspected.

Q: Right. And going back to when we were on the same or similar issue
under the last administration, was there ever an answer about whether
notifying could include just the publication of a flight schedule? Was
there ever an answer to that?

MR. BOUCHER: I think we answered that fairly clearly that the UN would
expect to be told more than that, specifically to the Sanctions
Committee.

Q: On the pipeline, this has come up many times, have your endeavors
to determine whether oil is flowing along that pipeline made any
progress?

MR. BOUCHER: I don't have anything new on that, no.

Q: I mean, how hard have you tried? It seems extraordinary that it's
now been three months since these reports surfaced. Do you mean that
you really haven't been able to, for example, examine the oil which
Syria is selling and determine its origin, which I believe can easily
be done?

MR. BOUCHER: I don't think that has been the allegation. The
allegations, the reports that we read in the press and elsewhere, are
that somehow that the imports of oil from Iraq are substituting for
domestic consumption and that Syria is, in fact, exporting larger
quantities of Syrian oil because of it. So it's not so simple as to
say, oh, you know, let's go dip our dipper in the barrel and go test
it.

We are certainly looking at the numbers. We are certainly --

Q: Are you looking at local petrol pumps? I don't know.

MR. BOUCHER: I am sure they haven't put them right in their cars. The
point is, we have pursued this with the Syrian Government. We and
other United Nations members are looking at this. We are certainly
discussing it with other members of the UN Sanctions Committee, and
our Embassy will follow up and we continue our analysis of the
situation. But I don't have any definitive word on it for you now.

Q: Have they responded to your last request - three weeks ago?

MR. BOUCHER: I am not aware that we've heard anything new.

....

Q: Richard, just for the record, after Mr. Powell, Secretary Powell
had strong statements about Iraq, the Iraq mission to the UN last
Friday - maybe someone noticed - put out a long diatribe - is that
an impartial word? - accusing the US and Britain of blocking hundreds
and hundreds of contracts for humanitarian supplies, just tying them
all up in red tape, keeping all sorts of especially children's --
serums for children. That seemed a new wrinkle in a long-going back
and forth.

Do you want to, for the record, deal with that?

MR. BOUCHER: I would have to look at all the particulars of any kind
of diatribe that they might have released. But I am not really
surprised because the fault lies clearly on the Iraqi side that they
have, first of all, as we have pointed out many times, there is no
embargo on food and medicine. So those kind of supplies shouldn't have
any kind of problem at all.

And second of all, we know from the statistics of what they have
applied for contracts for and for the last half of last year, those
six months, they only tried to spend I think it was 33 percent of the
money available for health and 29 percent on education. But it's less
than a third in those categories. So they are not signing contracts or
presenting contracts for those areas - and that's the problem in
getting those things in there. The Iraqi government is not trying to
spend the abundant funds that are available to it.