QUESTION: Only in New York could you say that. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: A shrink hour.

SECRETARY RICE: I haven't heard of a shrink hour, but I'll know to use that from now on.

QUESTION: She's kind of on a tight schedule, so let's get going. Does somebody have a question to lead off, or shall I?

Iran is still increasingly in the news, both with the President being here and we understand there's an article coming out in The New Yorker next week, Sy Hirsch talking about plans the Administration is making to go into Iran in a military way. Can you talk to us anything about the situation in Iran and the United States?

QUESTION: Starting with an easy one. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: That's right. Exactly.

This is a very troubling relationship, troubling country. It's probably the single-most difficult country from the point of view of U.S. interest in the world at this point. And that's because Iran's activities in support of terrorism in Lebanon, in support of Hezbollah in the Palestinian territories, in support of the worst elements of Hamas, in support of the death squads and violent militias in southern Iraq, the policies that -- we believe they're using the cover of civil nuclear power to seek the technologies that would lead to a -- could lead to a nuclear weapon, and not to mention the policies that they adopt against their own people. And so this a very troubled -- we don't have a relationship. This is a very difficult country for our interests.

I think we have established, particularly on the nuclear issue, a coalition of states that are concerned about the Iranian nuclear technology. Today I just had a meeting this morning with the, as we call it, P-5 + 1, or another designation is EU-3 + 3, so however you would like to say it. It's the Permanent Five plus Germany. And we came to agreement to again reaffirm the two-track strategy that we are pursuing on the nuclear file, which is to continue to try to stimulate negotiations. There's a very favorable, very generous package of incentives on the table for Iran, should they choose to take it.

But the UN Security Council track, if they do not take that package -- and obviously the condition for beginning those negotiations is that they have to suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activities. And today we agreed that we will pursue over the next -- well, in the November timeframe there are two important events. There is a report by Mohamed ElBaradei about their cooperation on some very key outstanding issues, and then there is also -- we have proposed Javier Solana have a discussion again with the Iranians. But if those do not have a positive outcome, we are in the process of finalizing a text for a vote, should there be no positive outcome, for a third resolution.

So that's how we're pursuing it. But you know the President doesn't take any option off the table, but we still believe that the diplomatic track has legs and can still resolve this if we remain very tough on that track.

I should also mention that the United States, of course, is pursuing other measures, national measures, including financial measures against the Iranians. We have sanctioned some of their banks, which makes it difficult for them to access the international financial system. Just on the basis of reputational and investment risk alone, there are any number of international financial institutions that have decided not to deal with the Iranians -- Deutsche Bank, the Credit Suisse, several others. And there are other countries like Germany that's cut back export credits, France that is doing the same, potentially EU efforts in that regard, that I think should demonstrate to the Iranians that the policy line that they're taking has costs.

QUESTION: Aren't there some discussions with the Russians, too -- I think President Bush mentioned this -- about verification, kind of some kind of agreement with them?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. What we've said with the Russians is we've supported the Russian plan which would allow the Iranians to have a civil nuclear capability but they would have to send the spent fuel back to Russia so that they wouldn't -- it wouldn't have the proliferation risk of what's called the fuel cycle; that is, the ability to enrich and reprocess on Iranian territory. They've so far rejected that, even though we think that would be an excellent idea. It's the way the Russian civil nuclear program is currently structured, the Bushehr facility is structured.

QUESTION: Why do you think they rejected it?

SECRETARY RICE: Because I think they want to be able to enrich and reprocess so that at some point they would have the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

QUESTION: I was in Tehran last week with Scott Pelley interviewing Ahmadi-Nejad. How much of a time deadline do you face? Do you have to resolve this diplomatically or with sanctions before President Bush's term is up? And if you don't, then does that mean that the President would use force? Is he determined to resolve this on his watch?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we are determined to do everything that we can to prevent Iran from getting these technologies because -- let me be very clear. The issue is having the engineering know-how to be able to string together the running of centrifuges long enough to enrich to the -- material to the level at which it's nuclear weapons grade. That's really what we're talking about. We're not talking about a kind of mature program of the kind that the North Koreans have.

That said, no one knows precisely how long it will take them to acquire that engineering expertise, which is why there is some urgency to acting in a way that gets them to change the course that they're on. If they suspend, then they're not making that knowledge breakthrough.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY RICE: So that's why we've been so focused on the suspension issue.

I think we believe that there is still time for the diplomatic track to work. I can't tell you that in four months or five months or six months that there won't have been some other breakthrough in Iran which we have to take account of, but we're not there at this point.

QUESTION: Is force a realistic option? Could force resolve the issue if the President's days become numbered?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't want to speculate on a hypothetical here. Let me just say that the President is not going to take his options off the table, and I don't think people want the American President to take his options off the table.

QUESTION: Were very early diplomatic efforts being very, you know, sort of preliminary kind of diplomatic efforts being made in Baghdad earlier this year, did they -- was that just -- did it run into a brick wall? Was there no way to actually establish a kind of dialogue or --

SECRETARY RICE: It's a channel that's still there if it makes sense to use it. But I think Ryan Crocker, who carried out those discussions, would tell you, as he's told me, that it has been a frank exchange of views without a meeting of the minds thus far, that Ryan delivered a very strong message -- I think he told the Congress this -- that their operatives are not safe any place in Iraq if they are doing things that are harmful to our forces. And these -- and to innocent Iraqis. But these discussions were really limited to Iraq, as are discussions within the neighbors framework.

Ironically, the nuclear file is the way for the Iranians to access us for broader discussions because we've made clear that if they suspend then we will reverse the 28 years of American policy. I said that I would meet my counterpart. I also said that we could talk about anything. We didn't -- ironically, it's not within the Iraq context that we will talk about anything because that's really about Iraq. But within the nuclear framework, if they will suspend, we can talk about whatever they'd like to talk about. So I've been pretty clear that I -- I don't think the question is why won't we talk to them. I think the question is why won't they talk to us.

QUESTION: If Mohamed ElBaradei comes back next month and says they look like they're in compliance --

SECRETARY RICE: ElBaradei is trying to resolve outstanding issues of the past, issues like what technologies did they buy for P1, P2, why was there -- is there a military component to that. These are issues of the past.

The problem is the current technologies progress, progress on technologies, and the potential future. And that's what the Security Council -- the Security Council track covers both. It covers the past behavior and says that they need to answer these outstanding issues, but it also says they need to suspend and so that they can't keep improving their technology.

And that was one of the valuable outcomes of today with the P-5+1 because there had been some noise in the system that this was really only about the ElBaradei activity, and if they complied with the ElBaradei activity then that would somehow satisfy the requirements of the Security Council resolution. And we have a very clear statement today; I think you see that it's not just ElBaradei, it's also the Solana track. And the Solana track is suspension.

Enough Iran? Charlie?

QUESTION: One more on Iran. There's been mention made of squeezing them, what you're doing in various ways of which you talked about, to getting more reasonable leadership there. What do we know about their leadership and (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: Right. I really don't -- I'm not focused on who the leadership is, but on what they do. And what you'd hope is that you would stimulate more reasonable people even within the leadership to decide that they need to take another course.

Obviously, there was some difference that was emerging, and emerging publicly, a few months ago as you had Ahmadi-Nejad saying, well, the Security Council resolution is just a scrap of paper and any number of people coming out and saying, no, actually, it's not a scrap of paper, that is a joint decision of the international community, that's not just U.S. -- the United States, it's the whole international community. Some -- there is some observable divergence there. Whether or not it is strong enough to have them take a different course, I think is what we're still probing with the continued ratcheting up of the pressure.

QUESTION: President Bush has addressed the Iranian people from time to time. Does that get you anywhere or does that automatically lead to a backlash and become counterproductive to efforts to try to get a government that you would be able to deal with better?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, again, we're not trying to -- this is not a matter of changing their government, it's changing their government's behavior. And so in that sense it's a kind of classical diplomatic effort.

From all that I hear -- and to be very frank, we haven't been in Iran for 28 years and so our depth of understanding and knowledge about the country, our ability to really read it is frankly a bit weaker than I would like it to be. We have good friends who are in the country who can talk to us about what's going on there. But it is a problem and -- but from those who are there, you hear very often that the United States is very popular, Americans are very popular. It is one of the most pro-American populations in the whole region.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY RICE: Some say that, in fact, if we can get through to the Iranian people that the United States is not trying to deny Iran civil nuclear technology, but rather trying to deal with the proliferation risk of a nuclear weapons technology, that that is a message that Iranians would be receptive to. Because what does their regime tell them? They tell them they're trying to deny you technology, they're trying to keep Iran backwards, they don't want Iran to be a part of the technological revolution.

Well, we have to counter that message because we would be very pleased to be in a circumstance where we could be working with the Iranians on civil nuclear technology. We've actually said that we would consider that -- on medical research using nuclear technologies. This is about the fuel cycle and the capacity to turn the fuel cycle into nuclear weapons grade material. That's what this is about. And it's not an easy message to get through, to have penetrate, but that's just an example. That and the fact that we'd like the Iranian people to know that their aspirations for a freer, more democratic way of life are shared by the United States.

So those are the kinds of messages that we try to get through, and there are a lot of Iranians who listen to the radio of the diaspora and the television stations of the diaspora. It's a society that's fairly well connected on the internet and the like. So I actually think the regime has a harder job than, say, the North Korean regime in keeping its people in the dark about what is going on.

QUESTION: What is your sense about how powerful Ahmadi-Nejad actually is? And are you concerned that there's been a fair amount written that all this attention is actually enhancing his reputation?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I have no idea of what the power politics looks like inside of Iran.

QUESTION: The spin, the Iran spin?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, look --

QUESTION: You don't? I mean --

SECRETARY RICE: No, no, I mean whether -- what he controls and what he doesn't. And you know, it's a very opaque decision-making process, and so I don't know.

As to whether or not the attention to him -- well, I could see an argument by which the fact that he comes and he gives speeches and he's received and so forth --

QUESTION: Interviewed by every network, you know --

SECRETARY RICE: (Inaudible) every network. But frankly, the things that he says are so outrageous and receive such a skeptical -- to be nice about it -- skeptical response, it's again a question of what's getting through to the Iranian people. And if that skeptical response is getting through to the Iranian people, I don't know that it does him any good. I do know that when he took on, if you will, the United Nations Security Council, took on the world, that it didn't play particularly well in Iran.

QUESTION: Can I ask one more Iranian question?

SECRETARY RICE: Sure.

QUESTION: And that is -- because we have a lot of us.

SECRETARY RICE: No, no, no. It's a fascinating subject. (Laughter.) Matter of fact, I would be endlessly fascinated if I were back at Stanford. (Laughter.) But to try to do something about it is --

QUESTION: So when you're chatting with Nouri al-Maliki and you're talking about Iran, the impression we have is they have a very good relationship, they're in bed with each other, these horrible IEDs that are coming in and killing our soldiers are coming from this Iranian special forces. Is al-Maliki -- do you have his ear in terms of that's not a relationship that we're crazy about?

SECRETARY RICE: Let me put it this way. The Iraqis are Iran's neighbor, but there is no love lost between Iraqis and Iranians, first. And secondly, there is absolutely no desire of the Iraqi Government to be thought of to be Iran's agent in any way, most especially the Shia members of that government want to be known as Iraqi patriots and they have gone out of their way to make clear that they expect and want to have correct relations with their neighbors, indeed friendly relations with their neighbors, but that when it comes to the interference of any of their neighbors in their internal affairs, that's where they draw the line.

I do believe Maliki when he says he's made that point when he has been in Tehran. I know that when we are at the neighbors conferences those points are made very strongly. And one has to remember that what Iraq is trying to assert, both Shia and Sunni, is its Arab identity at this point, which is why the Arab League has been important to them, why Saudi Arabia's decision to put a mission in Iraq is important to them. They -- the most -- very often, if there's any suggestion that there's undue influence of their neighbors, particularly their Iranian neighbors, you get a very unified response from the government that they do not want to be seen in that light.

QUESTION: Well, what about the people? You know, are national interests -- are they subservient, do you think, to religious fervor in some cases among the population?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. I don't -- I think the population wants largely what populations everywhere want. They want in this case, first and foremost, security, which is why where you're getting security you're starting to get people engaged in the second issue, which is reconstruction and development and jobs. Obviously, for -- that's the engagement in politics is not something that every citizen cares about in Iraq or in the United States, but there are any number of political figures in Iraq who care about engagement politically, particularly if you look at where we were in Anbar, where now that security is improving and they have turned on al-Qaida, you see that their interests have turned for the population as a whole to development and reconstruction, and for the leadership to political recognition and connection to the politics in Baghdad.

So yes, there are people who have strong connection to religious views and perhaps even want to see a connection between religion and politics. But I don't think it would be true of the great bulk of the Iraqi population and not even of the great bulk of its leadership.

All right?

QUESTION: There's some news today, I think, about Blackwater. There's -- I think the State Department has discovered there's a number of incidents where they've been involved in kind of sketchy situations. Is there any plan to either reduce their role vis-�-vis what they do now in guarding the State Department people and others in Iraq or giving them different marching orders?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't want to comment on any specific stories that are coming out about that during the period of investigation because that investigation needs to maintain its integrity. And when it's done, we'll look at the outcomes of it and see where we are. But what I have done because I am concerned about the overall picture of contract security, how we use it -- we obviously have to be able to protect our people and our people have to be able to move and they have to be able to move in extremely complex security circumstances. And these people have protected us and they've even lost many of their own people protecting us.

But I am concerned about the overall picture. And John Negroponte is on point for me at State, particularly since I've been here, but I went back to Washington yesterday -- I'm losing track of the days -- and I had a meeting with everybody. We are sending a team out to take a look at the full operation. I said I wanted a full 360-degree look, I wanted it to be probing, I want to know what concerns there may be.

I am looking also to a more senior -- to an outside panel of senior people. I don't think we've named the names yet.

MR. MCCORMACK: I can actually go out and check to see if we've done that yet - if we've done that quite yet.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, okay. Sometime later today, we're going to name these -- the people. And so this team that's going out would then do the groundwork to inform the deliberations of this senior outside panel which would then report recommendations back to me on what we -- how the structure looks and what we need to do to improve it. Because we don't have any desire to have incidents of that kind. It's harmful to what we're trying to do and so we need to make sure that we know exactly how this is done.

I have also directed in the interim that there be a reaffirmation of the rules and authorities and reporting that is necessary under which we're currently operating while we look at the procedures more generally. And the Director of Diplomatic Security sent out that requirement not just to Baghdad but also to Kabul, where we use contract security, and to places where there's a significant chance of use of force, several of our embassies around the world that have that profile, that security profile.

So we're going to look at this and look at it very, very carefully. We're going to look at it 360. I want to do that and have to keep that separate from the investigation of this specific incident because we need to preserve the integrity of that so that we are in a position to take whatever next steps may need to be taken on the specifics of this incident.

QUESTION: You want to talk about the Israel-Palestinian issue and whether Olmert and Abbas are strong enough to make it happen on your time clock?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, what's my time clock? You mean while we're still in office (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Not the next 20 minutes?

SECRETARY RICE: Right, right. I'm -- here, guardedly optimistic that a couple of things are coming together. I think that the bilateral track, meaning the discussions between Olmert and Abbas, are gathering a certain momentum and showing a certain maturity. Now, you know, I would not have given you any bet back in February when we had that very difficult trilateral where they were barely ready to speak to each other, let alone speak about anything of importance, that we would be where we are. So that track has matured, I think, more rapidly than we might have thought.

The prospect of an international meeting has focused them also on wanting to be able to memorialize some of the understandings that they may come to between themselves and they've now got the negotiating teams, so they're going to try to do that. So that's one piece of it.

The second piece of it is that I think that the Arab states -- and we had very good meetings during this whole period of time. I think you probably saw that Prince Saud said that he was encouraged, which was a step forward. The Arab states want this to work because I think they believe that the -- if the bilateral track gets support and if they do have some understandings that they want to put forward, it will be very helpful to Abbas if he's got the support of the Arabs.

No Palestinian leader can make some of the decisions that a Palestinian leader will have to make in order to get a state without the support of the Arabs. And so this time, we very carefully had the Arabs as a part of the process moving forward. So I do think we're -- it's moving along. There is a certain momentum to it. The Blair mission has also helped people focus on the institutions of statehood, the building of capacity to govern. You're not going to build -- you're not going to decide to have a Palestinian state and have no ability to govern it on the other side.

And so having that come the -- the piece that I think we need to work more on is the kind of day-to-day life of the Palestinians, which is still a very hard thing because of the security issues. But yeah, I think it's moving together in those three tracks and moving together rather well.

QUESTION: Well, the elephant in the room, then, is Gaza.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: Assume for a second all of that stuff works out and --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- you know, and you get a Palestinian state. So then there's a bastard Palestinian child or, you know, whose responsibility and --

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. Well, the first point is that we've continued to talk about the integral nature of Gaza to the Palestinian territories. In other words, there aren't two Palestinian -- there is West Bank and Gaza and there's also going to be the Palestinian state. And Abbas and Fayyad are actually the authorities with responsibility. Now this isn't the first circumstance in which a legitimate authority doesn't fully control its territory, right? So this is -- happens all the time in international politics. The Hamas overthrew legitimate security and political institutions and took control of territory that they didn't have the authority to take. So the framework is that this is a single entity, Gaza and the West Bank, that will ultimately be a Palestinian state.

I think the strategy going forward is that you will see what momentum we can create in the establishment of the state, what momentum can be created in improvements in the lives of the Palestinians, what momentum can be created in economic and political institution-building. And the Palestinian people, as a whole, will need to make a choice about their acceptance of that program.

It will be, at some point, a choice that Hamas will have to make; is it prepared to be outside that consensus or not; is it prepared to be outside the Arab consensus or not? And you know, we'll see, but I think today's issue is to create as much positive momentum as an alternative vision to what Hamas is doing in Gaza and what Hamas is doing in Gaza is pretty ugly and probably not in line with the wishes of most Palestinians in terms of what kind of life they'd like to lead.

QUESTION: How worried -- on a slightly different topic.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: How worried are you about what's going on in Pakistan and do you believe that al-Qaida is stronger now than it's been in years?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, Pakistan is playing out its own internal processes. There was a ruling today, I gather, on the Supreme Court and our role has been just to keep reminding people that the only political stability in Pakistan is going to come from a set of free and fair elections, particularly parliamentary elections that are going to form the basis for moving forward. And that's all working its way through.

Al-Qaida is different than it was before. It does not, I think, have some of the most important assets that it once had, including essentially not being pursued while they sat on the territory of Afghanistan and trained people and plotted and planned. And the most important change, the most important difference from '01 or even '02 is that they are really under pursuit all the time in every country. And that makes for a different kind of organization, sometimes more distributed, which is -- you have to have other strategies to deal with the fact that they're more distributed than they probably once were.

But we and practically everybody else in the world -- constantly after their operatives, constantly after their finances, constantly after their safe havens. And I find it hard to argue that that puts them in a stronger position than they were. Are they defeated? No. Have they tried to adapt? Yes. Has some of that adaptation probably been successful? Probably. But they are constantly on the run now and constantly under pressure and constantly having to reconstitute leadership because their leadership is constantly being captured and killed. And when you think from it -- think about it from that perspective, I find the argument that they're somehow stronger to be a little hard to fathom.

QUESTION: Do you accept, though, that Iraq has been our big recruiting tool for them?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't know. I know that they certainly tried to make Iraq not just a recruiting tool, but an epicenter of -- you know, it was their stand for their particular version of the Middle East. They were going to do it in Iraq. In Anbar and Diyala, that strategy hasn't worked. In fact, you know, Anbar, a year ago, people were saying was lost to al-Qaida, they hoisted their flag of the Islamic Republic of Iraq and so on and so on.

So it's an interesting question as to whether or not the attempt to establish in Iraq might have had just the opposite effect. Because it turns out that the local people, when encountering them up close and personal, don't care much for them. And you know, a group of terrorists that do things like show up at somebody's home with the severed heads of children in a cooler turn out to have a PR problem, who want to marry off the daughters of these powerful sheikhs to their foreign fighters turn out to have a problem.

So they're not -- I'm not suggesting they're defeated, but I'm suggesting that this argument, "Well, Iraq turned out to be a boon for them," maybe we ought to reevaluate that and see what really happened to them in Iraq, because they tried to establish themselves in Iraq and have failed to do so. In fact, not just failed to do so, but then rejected -- has consequences for Iraq to --

QUESTION: I don't think that was exactly the question. Is --

SECRETARY RICE: You mean recruiting around the world?

QUESTION: Yeah, I think -- yeah, sort of galvanizing jihadists, you know, worldwide and -- because of ginning up anti-American sentiment and I think -- is that what you want to look at --

SECRETARY RICE: Look at the --

QUESTION: Absolutely.

QUESTION: No, but I mean -- I think -- again, that's a very separate issue.

SECRETARY RICE: Look at the -- I'm not one who believes in opinion polls, but look at the popularity of al-Qaida, terrorism, suicide bombings, Usama bin Laden. Look at what's been happening. I would --

QUESTION: According to what polls?

SECRETARY RICE: Look, Karen Hughes did a little op-ed on this just very recently. Now I don't doubt that there are those who use the American presence in Iraq as an argument about the need to fight the jihad. My point to you is that I'm not so sure that they're succeeding. And if you look at the increasing unpopularity of Iraq -- of al-Qaida anywhere that people encounter them, you would have a different story. I would just examine the premise that somehow, Iraq has been a good thing for them.

QUESTION: That's according to the National Intelligence Estimate.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you know, it's an estimate, right. It is. It's an estimate.

QUESTION: What about the gut feeling, "They're coming, they're coming here?"

SECRETARY RICE: You mean al-Qaida?

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, as you well know, unfortunately, they've been here and at least -- well, at least twice that we know of, '93 and 2001. I don't -- I'm the first to say they have to -- we have to be right 100 percent of time; they have to be right once. That's not a fair fight.

And we have done a lot to harden the country. You see the effects all around, especially here in a place like New York. We have done a lot to improve our ability to track them and surveil them and surveil their finances and know what they're up to. And it helps that every country in the world watches them and picks up people when there are plots and you've seen how many times we've now, just very recently, said the Germans have done this, the Danes have done this. You see what's going on out there.

So they're constantly plotting and trying and I think we've got a better net to catch them when they're doing it, but we don't have a perfect net. And that's why you have to have an offensive posture as well. It can't just be all defense. You can't win this on the defense. It's why you have to defeat them in Afghanistan and you have to defeat them in -- when you find them in Pakistan and you have to defeat them in Iraq, you have to defeat them in Southeast Asia and et cetera, you know, all over the place. Because there isn't a strategy that is a defensive strategy that's leak proof. That's the problem; there isn't one.

QUESTION: It's mission impossible.

SECRETARY RICE: That's why you have to go after them and keep disrupting and keep breaking up their networks and keep going after their finances and keep going after their safe havens and all of those things. But ultimately, you've got to deny them a place to be.

QUESTION: On that subject --

QUESTION: Translators and people (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: I would be the first -- I'm -- because I'm deeply involved in trying to improve our Arabic language capability and get people in and so forth, this country didn't invest for many, many years in Arabic languages, in Persian and hard languages, we just -- Farsi -- we didn't invest.

Look, I'm an example of what happens when the country invests. I was a -- I learned Russian, you know, and national defense languages. Fellowships helped me learn Russian. It was kind of the patriotic thing to do to learn Russian and you have a whole lot of us who can -- who were able to contribute on that basis. We didn't make the same investment and we're not going to change that overnight. That takes a -- that takes a long time. We're now making that investment, but that takes a long time.

QUESTION: Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, do you have any sense that her life might be in danger?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would hope that the international spotlight on this will provide some protection and some -- we -- I was just in a P-5 meeting and Gambari is going out on behalf of the Secretary General. There's very strong sentiment that, you know, the strongest message has to be to the people that if they don't cooperate with Gambari, then we're going to come back to the Council and look at other measures. But you know, we've already put further sanctions on them.

There's real international outrage about this. I found myself yesterday in the company of the Burmese Foreign Minister because I went to an ASEAN meeting and he actually did come. And I had an opportunity to tell him exactly what I thought of what they were doing and ASEAN, which, as an organization, has a principle of noninterference, had already issued an extremely strong statement about --

QUESTION: What did he say when you said --

SECRETARY RICE: Nothing.

QUESTION: Are we talking to China about this?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. China, India -- MPs in India today, made very strong statements that --

QUESTION: Anyone who can influence them.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, yes, anyone who can influence them. We're talking to everybody.

QUESTION: On the subject of pursuing an offensive against terrorism, do you think, in the final analysis, Americans would have been safer if we had spent more attention and more money and more effort in Afghanistan and less in Iraq or less (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: No, because there wasn't -- it isn't a matter of diversion. Afghanistan is a very different kind of war, where smaller footprint and the ability to fight in smaller configurations -- I mean, the Soviets learned this the hard way with, you know, their 130,000 men in Afghanistan who were almost picked off one at a time. It's a different war.

And the problem that we've got is that you have to deal with Afghanistan, absolutely. But you also have to deal with the Middle East as a whole because actually, al-Qaida didn't start in Afghanistan; al-Qaida went to Afghanistan. But al-Qaida came out of a set of circumstances in the Middle East in which authoritarian regimes really choked off any channels for legitimate peaceful political resolution. And as a result, there was politics going on, but it was going on in the radical mosques. And it was getting more and more radical and its kind of really virulent form was al-Qaida and it sprung forth.

So if you are going to deal with the root causes, in a sense -- and by the way, which, at some level, are -- hopelessness and all of those things. But these people are not destitute who lead al-Qaida. So if you've got to deal with the root cause here, you're going to have to find a way for all of the kinds of political tensions, differences that one finds in any society to be expressed through legitimate political means.

What you're seeing in Iraq right now, in a sense, is that you have had, buried underneath a dictatorial society, Kurds, Shia, and Sunnis and just suppression of those differences. You now have the potential for those differences to be resolved through democratic institutions, but it's very, very hard when those institutions are very new and very fragile. But unless the argument is, all right, in the Middle East, what we're going to do, then, is we're going to either suppress differences or oppress differences, you have really no choice but to open up political space for legitimate institutions in which these differences can get resolved.

I just want to make one other point about Iraq. If you think about this, then, as starting to change the nature, really, of Middle East politics, it's very hard to imagine a different Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it, with Saddam Hussein continuing to threaten his neighbors, continuing to threaten our forces, continuing to make mincemeat out of the sanctions that were put there to "contain him," and continuing with his appetite for weapons of mass destruction, it's very hard to imagine a change in the Middle East without that, without the removal of that threat.

And so it's all a part of a piece and I know there's this debate all of the time, you know, is Iraq a part of the war on terror. Well, just listen sometimes to bin Laden about Iraq. Look at what they tried to do in Iraq. I think they understood very well what Iraq could mean to them and if you deny them that, I think you've got a weaker -- a weaker organization.

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