State Department Noon Briefing

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2001
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)

Q: Yes, Iraq. The British have drafted a Security Council resolution
on - basically along the lines of your proposals for Iraqi sanctions.
I wondered if you could perhaps explain what is going on. I mean, your
review isn't complete, you haven't finished all your consultations,
you haven't, as far as I know, drafted any detailed any proposals for
this. So what are the British doing drafting this resolution with your
support, apparently? What's going on with the United Nations?

MR. BOUCHER: First and foremost, I think you need to ask the British
as far as what they are doing and where they stand. We work with them
very closely, but I don't speak with a British accent up here - and I
wouldn't dare try.

Let me tell you what is going on. As you said, we have not introduced
a proposal yet on new Iraqi sanctions to the Security Council. We have
been in close discussions with Security Council members, and
particularly the Perm 5. We have been in close discussions with the
frontline states. I would say we are sort of at an intermediate stage
of our consultations. We are going from the general approach, which,
as we have told you, people support, of controlling weapons and
weapons of mass destruction for Iraq in order to control Iraq's
ability to threaten its neighbors. At the same time, we are looking at
opening up channels for civilian goods to go to the Iraqi people.

The consultations are going on in New York as well as capitals, as
well as in meetings that the Secretary might have. So we have gotten
to, I would say, a more and more concrete stage with those
consultations, and there are pieces of paper that people are drafting
and showing to each other and looking at as to what the necessary
steps are, what the necessary elements are in carrying out that
approach. But as I said, we are still in an intermediate stage. We
don't have a broad - we are in a process of consultation with all the
people involved. We don't have a full

-- we don't have a proposal at this point to present.

Q: Okay, can I just have a quick follow-up? So do you think it is
premature to start circulating Security Council resolutions as early
as next week on this?

MR. BOUCHER: I don't know that anybody has done that yet. We will have
to see where we are.

Q: What about next week?

MR. BOUCHER: Well, we will have to see where we are.

Q: Well, is it helpful for countries that you may have shared some of
this information with to be giving it to the Iraqis so that they can
leak it to - throughout the Arab world?

MR. BOUCHER: This is a matter for the Security Council members to
decide; it is a matter for the Perm 5 to decide, for the other members
of the Security Council and the frontline states. We don't see any
role for Iraq in this process. I'll put it that way.

Q: Yes, if I could ask. Has there been a specific decision made
regarding the Iraqi sanctions and whether or not that would be
unveiled separately from an overall Iraq policy?

MR. BOUCHER: There have been a number of specific decisions by the
President and his advisors to proceed in this manner on Iraqi
sanctions, to revise the program to control weapons but to let
civilian goods go to the Iraqi people.

That comes up as a matter of procedure with the renewal of the
Oil-for-Food program at the United Nations. I don't have anything new
on the other aspects that were under review. I don't know if they will
be done at that point or not.

Q: With the review due in June, do you foresee some kind of conclusion
of this process or public discussion of it by the end of June, or by
the time of a vote at the United Nations?

And secondly, the wire service stories this morning report that this
process of - that Oil-for-Food would basically - much of that would
be virtually eliminated - is that true - the review process.

MR. BOUCHER: Let me do two things here. One is, as we have gone
through this process, I think we have become more and more concrete,
not only in terms of our consultation with our other members of the
Security Council, the Perm 5, the frontline states, but also in our
public discussion. So I would expect that to continue.

And yes, as we get towards a vote, we will have to circulate
resolutions, or others will do that. We will have to talk about lists,
we will have to talk about the details as we firm them up and work
them out with people. We are just at an intermediate stage right now,
where it is not in a position to really do that. By the time the
resolution gets voted on, there will be a new program in place
composed of all the elements necessary to make it work.

And the second half of your question was something I can't remember.

Q: Oil-for-Food and the streamlining or elimination of much of the
processes of the review of things going - exports to Iraq.

MR. BOUCHER: As we have said, the goal of this process is to control
effectively Iraq's ability to buy weapons, to control Iraq's ability
to threaten its neighbors, especially to control Iraq's ability to
threaten its region with weapons of mass destruction. So, on the one
hand, you will have a set of controls that do that; on the other hand,
we will smooth out the process and enable civilian goods to reach the
Iraqi people. So that process will be smoothed out and made easier.