State Department Noon Briefing

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2001 - 12:45 P.M.
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)

Q: Do you have any comments on Syria and Iraq's newly-signed free
trade zone, and calls by Syria for increased economic cooperation? I
can't tell from the piece I read whether there is any questionable
elements in the deal that would require UN approval or not.

MR. BOUCHER: We have seen some reports about this, and the agreement
that was approved by the parliament would look to establish some kind
of free trade zone between Syria and Iraq by the year 2007. So we
really don't have any details of it, but we, in the Sanctions
Committee, would look at it, make sure it is consistent with the
sanctions regime, as we have said I think several times during the
meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. He assured the Secretary that
Syria wished to be in compliance with UN practices and that they did
not intend to violate UN sanctions.

Q: What I'm reading says there is planned an all-Arab free trade zone
by 2007, but it indicates that this deal is just one step on that
path, but certainly not that they would wait till 2007 to enforce it.

MR. BOUCHER: My understanding from our people who follow this is that
it would establish free trade by 2007. That is the target date. It may
coincide with something else. I'll have people double-check, but that
is our read of it.

....

Q: There is another story in the same newspaper, The Financial Times
today, saying - quoting a UN secret document claiming that Iraq still
has chemical and biological weapons, and also SCUD rockets or SCUD
missiles to launch them.

Can you confirm?

MR. BOUCHER: The report in question, whatever it may say, is a
restricted distribution report of the UN Monitoring Inspection and
Verification Commission, so I am not in a position to talk about its
contents.

The general judgment that is reported that Iraq has not disarmed is
fully consistent with our views. Iraq, in our terms, is not meeting
its obligations under UN Security Council resolutions to disarm and to
demonstrate to UN inspectors that its weapons declarations are in fact
true. In fact, Iraq has done very little to try to demonstrate that
any of its declarations are true on this subject.

Secretary Powell has said that if Iraq does not comply with its
obligations, Saddam will remain trapped in the situation and the jail
that he has built for himself. And that remains the case. But I think
the general tenor of the article that Iraq has not lived up to its
obligations, that Iraq is still hiding programs, and that Iraq is not
fully disarmed, is quite consistent with what we know.

....

Q: You said Iraq has not disarmed. Could you flesh that out? What do
you think they have?

MR. BOUCHER: I think - I don't want to stand up here and try to make
it up on the top of my head, but if you look at the Defense Department
Proliferation Report that was put out in January, I think the CIA just
recently did an unclassified report on proliferation, you'll see
plenty of indications there that Iraq is still interested in weapons
of mass destruction.

What is absolutely clear is that Iraq has not demonstrated to the
world that their declarations are true. Iraq has not demonstrated to
the world that its assertions that they have disarmed are true. And
the burden rests with Iraq to demonstrate that. If they want to show
us that they are somehow clean, let them try. But they are not even
trying.