The difficulty, of course, is in the details, the lists, how one looks at these various lists, and of course other aspects of the Oil-for-Food program and the escrow accounts. And that is very, very excruciatingly detailed work. As I saw pointed out recently, it took something like, oh, between six months and two years to get agreement on the earlier lists. So that is a major element of discussion in New York.

But I was pleased that, at least among the group that I spoke to here, there is an understanding that we ought to look at doing things in a different way. And we have instructed our delegations in New York to work on this, and I look forward to getting a report from Ambassador Cunningham and Ambassador Welch when I go to work at 0-dark-30 tomorrow morning [12:30 a.m.].

Q: Let me follow up. There are already published reports out of the United Nations that the Russians have said they're not even -- that you're going to end up rolling over the resolution -- the United States hopes by one month, the Russians are insisting on six months -- because there won't be agreement in time to make the June 3rd deadline.

SECRETARY POWELL: There are all sorts of reports coming out of New York, and there are lots of variants, so we'll have to speak to the official New York in the morning.

Q: How are we going to get a resolution by --

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, obviously there will have to be some action taken by early next week, but I don't want to predict or speculate on what that action might be. That action will -- well, I don't want to speculate on what that action might be.

The part that I am pleased about is that there is an understanding, at least among this group -- I don't want to speak for the members of the Council or even the whole Perm 5 -- but there is some agreement among the people I spoke to over the last 48 hours that it is wise to move forward. And you saw that manifested in the British tabling the resolution, our support of the resolution, and the French offering up ideas that suggest they understand the need for change, and the Russians were quite engaged with the conversation.

And I think we'll just wait and see what happens in New York. We're all busy talking to our delegations in the course of the day, but I don't want to speak for anyone else's instructions to their delegation.

Q: At the end of the day, if you can't get this done, does that give more ammunition to those people who would argue for regime change?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know that it gives them any more or any less ammunition. I think that's an issue that stands on its own. The whole Oil-for-Food program was not a regime change proposition; it was an arms control proposition, as you have heard me say I don't know how many times now. And that's what I'm trying to get it back to, and it was never intended that that would be the purpose of that program.

And regime change is not a goal of the UN resolutions. That is a goal that the United States thinks is a -- has for a number of years, specifically, and more concretely I would say from late 1998 when President Clinton mentioned it about three times in a short period of time after Desert Fox, and that made it U.S. policy. But is it not part of UN resolutions or UN policy, so there really is no connection between the two.

Q: Could you talk a little bit about the change in Senate leadership while you've been gone, and did this play into the conversations? Has this affected any of your Administration's goals?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I think our goals are the same. And interestingly, it was noted by a number of my colleagues, out of curiosity as to who the new chairman might be of various committees, but they just sort of took it in stride. It was never discussed in any of the many, many fora I have been in over the last 48 hours, and no formal discussions even over formal lunches or in informal sessions. People are kind of getting used to the magic of contemporary American democracy. As far as I am concerned, I will work with the committees I have to work with in the Senate and I've tried to maintain good bipartisan contact. Of course, I would have preferred to see the committees remain in Republican hands, but if they switch over we'll work with the peoples representatives.

Q: Secretary Powell, when you were in South Africa, did you talk to the South African Foreign Minister or President about what the South Africans say is some possible plot to oust Robert Mugabe?

SECRETARY POWELL: No.

Q: Are you aware of any of that debate?

SECRETARY POWELL: No. An internal plot or an external plot?

Q: Internal.

SECRETARY POWELL: Something going on within Zimbabwe?

Q: Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe (inaudible) four of the South African (inaudible).

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I had no such discussion. And I always assume somebody is plotting something somewhere, but I had no such discussion and I'm carrying around no data point on that at all. It did not come up with Foreign Minister Zuma or with President Mbeki in any way.

Q: Mr. Secretary, since your travels in Brussels, your talks in Brussels, are a preview of next month's discussions when the President goes there, to what extent did you find concern among fellow foreign ministers about this word "unilateralism"? I mean, Don Rumsfeld keeps on throwing out little nuggets and it scares the bejeezus out of them, it seems. And they wonder -- or at least so I've heard -- you know, where the President comes down.

Has anybody used that word "unilateralism" with you in terms of asking you a question about (inaudible)?

SECRETARY POWELL: Surprisingly -- well, no. I read about it a lot and I know it's contained in many, many articles in the European press, and it's a great cottage industry. Lots of people are now working on the "unilateralist" bit. But it didn't come up in conversation directly in our meetings.

I tried to convey in every single one of the different meetings we had that the United States is committed to Europe, that we are European and we are also a Pacific nation; we have interests everywhere; we fought two wars in Europe. And in one meeting I tried to anecdotalize, but also impress upon my colleagues -- this was in the C-CAP meeting, I think -- no, it was the Vilnius 9 meeting -- you know, I started my career in Europe and I finished my command career in Europe guarding the Fulda Gap, when Joschka Fischer was the head of the Greens Party in my core area. And he put the trees in my tank firing ranges, and I'd pull them up that night and put them in my housing areas. And look how far the world has come since those days. It's in the book. I'm not giving anything new. But Joschka Fischer isn't in the book because I didn't recall he was the Greens Minister at the time.

And so we're committed to Europe. We had 330,000 troops in Europe for 40 years, and we still have tens of thousands of troops there. We are looking for ways of cutting turbulence and op tempo and cost. That's reasonable. Mr. Rumsfeld has been instructed by the President to look for such savings. And when we feel strongly about an issue, we'll take a position on an issue. This means we feel strongly about an issue, not that we're abandoning the world and going off into a cocoon somewhere. Far from it. And I think when foreign leaders, especially European leaders, have come to the United States and met with President Bush, they leave with that impression. I think Tony Blair did, I think the Chancellor of Germany Mr. Schroeder did. And I think when President Bush has the opportunity to present his views in Brussels and Godesberg and then with Mr. Putin down in Slovenia, they will have a better understanding of his openness to dialogue with Europe. And I think this very intense consultation period we're going through now since the 1st of May when he gave the speech is further example of it.

Everybody was using score cards yesterday as to whether we won or lost in Budapest, but we weren't playing a game in Budapest; I was here to continue the consultation dialogue and to hear from my colleagues. My intervention on our strategic framework, I thought, was very much to the point, direct, and relatively brief because I wanted them to talk to me about it. And they did. And they want to hear our thinking on offensive weapons reductions and what we might have in mind. We don't have a number yet, but we're working on it. They wanted to hear about how this all contributes to strategic stability. That's their greatest concern. If we're going to cut loose from something, what are we going to anchor to? And that's part of this consultative process. And I didn't come with a proposal to lay before them to get a vote on or to even get a consensus on. I came to continue to explore ideas with them and to hear from them. And they'll hear more from the President when he has the same opportunity in a few weeks.

The one thing I did hear is from every single one, they were enormously pleased with the approach that the President has taken toward consultations on this very, very important issue. They were pleased at the delegations that fanned out across the world. They are very pleased to see the level of interaction that is now taking place between the United States and Russia. Igor Ivanov and I had two meetings during this -- well, really three meetings during the last 36 hours. So they are pleased at that. It gives them some sense that we're not ignoring anybody and we're open to countervailing views from others.

Q: To follow up, you referred to op tempo and to costs, but you know these are technical military terms; whereas, the reason troops are overseas, as we understand it, is to carry out foreign policy. And so when the President gives these instructions, I mean, what are you telling the President about the need for these troops, be it in Sinai, Bosnia or wherever they are?

SECRETARY POWELL: In almost every instance, they are performing important missions. The question is, do they have to -- one, let's make sure those missions are important; two, that they can best be handled by troops, military forces that are essentially in the structure and trained for other kinds of things; and, three, have we reviewed these missions recently to see whether or not they can be reduced in some way.

People are fond of saying, well, you know, you only got a couple of thousand troops there. But I used to have to train those troops for those missions, and for 1,000 troops, away from families, you know, away on these isolated assignments which you have to sort of keep to about a six-month rotation if it's a field site, like in Bosnia and Kosovo, you've got to have another 1,000 troops ready to go in six months time, and they're training up; they're not doing anything but getting ready for that mission. And the 1,000 who have come home, they have to take leave, they have to go to schools, they have to see their families, they have to reconstitute themselves. Some of them get out of the service, we've got to refill those units with recruits and trainees. And there is an enormous amount of churning that takes place in the accomplishment of these missions.

And so when you add the several thousand in the Balkans to the 100,000 in Asia, which is slightly different -- some are unaccompanied, for the most part, like Korea; others are with their families -- and all of the training missions and all of our ships at sea and all of the boomer submarines that are under the water and hundreds of missions like that, it does generate a considerable op tempo, even for a force as large as the United States Armed Forces.

In my days as Chairman, when we had a much larger force structure to deal with and to draw from, it was a problem then. To some extent, the problem has been alleviated by extensive use of reserves, and they have done a marvelous job, but there is a limit to how often you can go into those communities where reserves reside and say, gee, thanks for doing nine months three years ago, we want you to do it again. Excuse me, I have a job and my boss was willing to buy it once but not two or three times in a six-year period. And you start to have problems with the reserves.

So it's a question of balancing the whole force structure, and it is expensive to move all of this all the time.

Q: Could you tell us more about why another which of concerns it is any reference to the ABM treaty was dropped in the final communiqu� yesterday?

SECRETARY POWELL: Aha. Ah, the temptation, the temptation. (Laughter.)

Did I always promise I'd tell the truth on the record? Yeah. We're back on the record now. That is what is known as an aside.

Communiqu�s are documents that are written over a period of weeks by drafting experts and perm reps and remarkable people who stay up all night working on these things. What surprised me about this communiqu�, since it is the first one I have seen like this since my return to government, is how long and extensive and detailed they have become from my former days. They really have become tomes, and I was astonished at the number of paragraphs.

So I did not read every single paragraph and every reference. I had to work on those that were in dispute. I had to work the brackets. I spent a lot of time on various bracketed items, which we will not go into. And somewhere in the process of writing the communiqu�, wisdom prevailed and the ABM acronym was left out. Whether that was the result of American intervention on the part of my seconds and agents, I have not lined them all up to see, but I think it made for an improved communiqu�.

Q: Can I follow up on ABM? Mr. Secretary, I get the impression -- others do too -- that there is some internal debate or discussion among the administration over what to do with the ABM Treaty, whether to keep it until research or testing of some technology requires that it be revoked or immediately renegotiated, or whether to get rid of it fairly soon, or drive a stake through the heart of it, as one person said to me, fairly soon so that the message is sent to all those that need to be sent to, including scientists who develop technologies, that we are going to live in a world without these kinds of treaties, and we need to have a missile defense.

I wonder which side you are on.

SECRETARY POWELL: This exact debate I have been participating in for 17 1/2 years since President Reagan first came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. At what point does this become a hindrance? And I have had battalions of lawyers argue this point. When you start bending metal? When you start putting components together? Whether you are using new technologies, I think what we are doing now is examining the programs that look most promising -- this is what Mr. Rumsfeld is doing -- and measuring the development cycle of those programs, and when they would run up against what our understanding is the limits of the ABM Treaty. Even at that point, it is not necessary to go forward if you are willing to accept a delay, or you might not want to accept any delay and move forward right away.

Those are all options, and the President will make the decision at an appropriate time when he gets the advice of all of his advisors. I think, for the time being, the President said he would consult, and he is waiting for the results of those consultations before he would make such a decision.

Q: I am not absolutely sure you've answered my question (inaudible).

SECRETARY POWELL: Okay. But I think I have, really. He has made no decisions; therefore, no decisions have been made. And there are different points of view within the administration and outside the administration. It's something that has been seriously argued for as long as I have been at senior levels of government.

And with respect to right now, no decision has been made as to how we will deal with that event that will come along in due course when one of our promising programs runs into the constraints of the ABM Treaty and we have not yet determined when that point in time is. And the President will wait for someone to present that to him as an event and then he will, I am sure, listen to both the military, technical, legal and political and policy advice of all of his advisors, and then make a decision.

Q: One more thing on this. It sounds as if you're saying you do not favor -- you take for granted that the President would not abrogate the treaty or demand its renegotiation prior to that event.

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't want to take any position on behalf of the President. I'll let him take his own position because he hasn't taken a position on this one yet. So you drew that conclusion, but I don't think it was a conclusion that I made.

What I am saying is that he will make a judgment when the event is put before him and he is told this is when we run against a constraint. And when that event is put before him, he will then have to make a judgment based on how quickly we feel it's necessary to move forward, the results of the consultations, and his examination of all those considerations that he will have to take into account -- political, legal, military, developmental. And I am sure at that point he will listen to all his advisors and make a sound and correct decision, but I don't want to prejudge what it might be or when it might be and signal a story in any way because I have no story to signal.

Q: In Uganda, one of the Ugandan officials at the AIDS center suggested that if Uganda or Africa can get itself going to deal with the AIDS problem, then perhaps that will have ripple effects in other areas of economic development.

To what extent do you share that view that this big effort, this global fund, could serve as a spur for larger development in Africa, and to what degree do you worry that if this fund doesn't succeed in the way that it's supposed to succeed that the West will get tired of Africa and cut it loose?

SECRETARY POWELL: You know, the second part of your question, I don't think we can ever say that the West will get tired of Africa. We're not going to be given that luxury. The problem is so great that it will be a problem for the world and a problem for the West for a long time to come.

If Uganda continues to do well with HIV-AIDS and it looks like they're using that kind of assistance correctly, then we'll invest in places like that. And that's what we have done with the $50 million additional we have given Uganda.

If Uganda also continues to move in the correct direction with respect to democratization and pluralization of their society, we believe that should draw additional assistance with respect to economic development. I've been making that case all along. If you want people to invest in your country, either with official government-to-government aid or government-to-NGO aid or investment support for your companies, you've got to show that you are a legitimate government with a rule of law and with a democratic base and with a relatively free market system, or a totally free market system preferably, and that you will draw aid and you will draw private investment because it's going to be safe and it's going to have a positive result and there will be no corruption that wastes the money or sends it off to Swiss banks. And if you are the kind of country that is also seen as responsible with respect to how you try to take care of your citizens, that makes for a more attractive environment for investment and aid.