And I am, I'm hopeful that we'll find a solution that will allow the United Nations to act with a strong consensus, and that's what we're working on, and we should see in the next several days, or I'd say in no more than a week, whether or not that is going to be possible.

But the President also believes that this problem has to be dealt with, and if the United Nations won't deal with it, then the United States, with other likeminded nations, may have to deal with it. We would prefer not to go that route, but the danger is so great, with respect to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps even terrorists getting hold of such weapons, that it is time for the international community to act, and if it doesn't act, the President is prepared to act with likeminded nations.

QUESTION: Recently, we took a bunch of talk show hosts to Saudi Arabia. We've done trips to Israel, we've done trips to many places, but (inaudible) we went to Saudi Arabia, and one of the questions that we asked and got is, why do people, some of them, not like the United States?

And they, you know, would say, oh, your culture, this, that, and the other.

And we would say to them, well, where are you getting our culture from?

Well, they watch our television, and they watch things like Friends and some of the other, you know, Lifestyles of -- well, I guess that's an old show -- Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but Sex and the City, and that kind of thing.

What can we do -- and I know you have a whole part that's dealing with this -- but what can we do to send a message about our culture that's perhaps different than what they see on television?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we work hard at this. We work hard at this through our public diplomacy efforts, through putting out literature about the United States, through people-to-people programs, bringing people to the United States, exposing them to our culture, getting them into our schools, getting them into our universities, especially, and at the same time, sending Americans to these lands so that they see that we are not all as they see us depicted on television.

But television, at the same time, even though it occasionally puts out some unpleasant images of life in America, it also puts out some very positive images of life in America, and even though there might be places where we are having some difficulties now, I'm still getting tens upon -- tens of thousands of people who want to come to America from Muslim countries and from countries all around the world, because they want to start a new life in America, just as my parents did, and at some point in your past your --

QUESTION: My father.

SECRETARY POWELL: -- your father did. That is still very much alive. They're beating on the doors to come in, and they're trying to get into the country. They want visas. They want to come to our schools. They want to go do Disneyland, they want to go to Disneyworld, and they want to go to these places they've seen on television.

And so America still has a residual of good feeling with respect to these people, even though right now, things are a bit difficult as a result of the situation in the Middle East, and as a result of concerns over Iraq.

QUESTION: Speaking of people coming to the United States, are you upset that 15 of those 19 hijackers were given visas, apparently based on illegal applications? There's been some talk with some of the counselors had been rewarded with some bonuses, and what -- one, are you upset about it; and two, what do you think should be done about it?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, the individuals who came in with visas, they may have had some errors on their applications, but even if their applications had been filled out perfectly, typewritten and proofed four times, there was nothing in their records, there was nothing in the intelligence files that we had, there was nothing in our law enforcement files that would have suggested we shouldn't have issued them visas.

We are a country that encourages people to travel here. There was nothing to suggest that they had anything like terrorism on their minds, and any errors in the application that might have been caught or should have been caught and should have been corrected, had they been corrected, would have given us no more information that would have suggested they were terrorists.

Nevertheless, we are reviewing all of our consular activities around the world, all of our visa applications processes, to make sure that we are guarding America, that we are doing everything we can to examine those individuals who are coming to our country.

We have integrated our intelligence and law enforcement databases in a more efficient way so that when we get a name that comes into the Department, we can check it against the FBI and intelligence agencies and everybody else to see if there's any reason to deny a visa to this individual, and even if we find no reason in our database, our consular officers are now instructed to determine, on a very tough standard, whether or not a person should be interviewed.

But the interview isn't going to produce somebody saying, "Yes, I'm a terrorist, I'm heading your way," but an interview to see whether there is anything that is inconsistent between the application and the individual who actually shows up for the interview.

QUESTION: We're getting ready to, or they're getting ready to celebrate the 200th independence of Haiti. Haitian people are, in our hemisphere, suffering more, economically, than any other country.

There is money in the IMF and World Bank that's supposed to be for Haiti. It's not being released. What can the State Department do to help that process and to make sure that there is enough aid for Haiti?

SECRETARY POWELL: The United States has given hundreds of millions of dollars to Haiti over the last five or six years, and we are anxious to get many of the funds that you described released to go to the Haitian people.

At the same time, we have to hold the Haitian government to appropriate standards of democracy and representative government, and we have held up some of the aid trying to achieve that purpose.

It's a desperately poor country. It is about to celebrate 200 years of non-colonial rule, but in those 200 years, they have not succeeded in putting together the kind of democracy that would create a better life for the people of Haiti.

So we're working with the government of Haiti, and we're trying to do everything we can to put in place the right sort of political circumstances that would ensure that the flow of additional money coming from the outside would be used properly, and be used in a way that would start to develop the economy.

QUESTION: I mean, there are other countries now, such as Egypt, et cetera, that are not exactly our ideal of democracy, yet we give them a lot of aid.

SECRETARY POWELL: We give Haiti a lot of aid. I don't have a number immediately at hand, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million over the last five or six years. The United States is the most generous nation on the face of the Earth, and we have been generous to Haiti.

We sent our military troops in to restore democracy to Haiti, and I, in a personal way, participated with President Carter and then former Senator Sam Nunn, back in 1994, to talk the generals out of power, and allow President Aristide to come back, which he did.

But I regret to say that, in the eight years since 1994, I have not seen the kind of progress that I would have expected to have seen, and we have got to keep pressing Haitian authorities, and one way of encouraging them to do the right thing is making sure that aid goes to help people, but it goes in a responsible, systematic way so that it is properly used.

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

SECRETARY POWELL: You're welcome.