QUESTION: Madame Secretary, nice to see you.

SECRETARY RICE: Nice to see you, Greta.

QUESTION: What a beautiful environment, the Reagan Library.

SECRETARY RICE: It's fantastic; great history, great person. It's wonderful to be here.

QUESTION: What brings you here?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I am such an admirer of Ronald Reagan and of course, of Nancy Reagan as well, and she had been a friend. And when I decided that I wanted to take my counterpart from Australia out of Washington, I thought the Reagan Library would be a perfect place to come and talk about the freedom agenda, talk about what we're doing to defend freedom. It seemed like the perfect place to do that.

QUESTION: While you're out here giving speeches and showing the Ambassador around, I assume you're watching the hot spots in the world?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm, of course, keeping my eye on all of the hot spots around the world, yes.

QUESTION: Lebanon -- is there any rule for us in Lebanon? The Palestinians are now trying to leave the area, trying to find safety. Is there anything we can do to help?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we've been very supportive of the government of Fouad Siniora. It's the elected Government of Lebanon. It's a democratic government. It's a government that is trying to do the right things to establish sovereignty and democracy for Lebanon. And so we have been supportive of their efforts to deal with this very extreme terrorist group that is operating in these camps. We've helped with a number of other international actors to reform and strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces and hopefully, they will prevail. I think it's very important that the Lebanese Government be able to deal with the situation.

QUESTION: When you say we're helping, what are we doing? I mean, as a practical matter, how do we help? We just receive phone calls and say, "Yes, we're with you?" Or what do we actually do?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, some of it is political support, because this is a government that is very much under fire from extremist forces, and also from some of their terrible neighbors, like Syria and Iran. Syria occupied Lebanon with its forces for 30 years. And thanks to work by the United States, France, the Security Council, Syria was essentially expelled from Lebanon a couple of years ago and Lebanon now has sovereignty. So we've helped in that way.

We've also helped economically. I went to a conference in Paris that raised over $7 billion for this Lebanese Government and the United States has given generously to Lebanon. We have a $770 million package for Lebanon in this latest supplemental. So we really are great supporters of the Lebanese people, because the Lebanese Government is making the right choices for democracy.

QUESTION: Is Syria behind this? Are they stirring up the current trouble? I mean, we have 100 percent level of confidence that they're the ones that are helping to fund this?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we can't be certain who's behind it, but these are clearly parties that do not want to see the Lebanese Government succeed and that want to cause trouble in these very desperate Palestinian refugee camps, where people don't live very well, and where there is extremism. But whether there are foreign influences involved here, I can't say. But Syria has been a source of conflict and a source of trouble for Lebanon for decades.

QUESTION: It seems that most of the trouble in the Middle East sort of winds itself back to one sort of core issue, which is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Agree with me? I mean, that's sort of the genesis of a lot of the trouble.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it is a core issue. But I think we're seeing that what we really have going on, even in that case now, is a real struggle between extremism on the one hand and those would use political means and a more moderate responsible course on the other hand. And that's really what we're seeing. We're seeing it, Greta, in Lebanon. We're seeing it in Iraq. We're seeing it in places like Afghanistan. We're seeing it in Pakistan. And we see, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that there is someone like Mahmoud Abbas, who has renounced violence, who believes in a political course, and he fights on a daily basis militants from Hamas and other organizations that want to use violence rather than politics to resolve differences.

QUESTION: If we were to have a magic wand, though, and to solve the Palestinian issue really from it, at least that sort of takes away one of their arguments for a lot of the violence, you know, in these other hot spots.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it clearly ought to be resolved, ought to be resolved on its own terms. It would help in helping to create a Middle East in which the people who want politics, not extremism, would have the upper hand. There's no doubt about it. But it also ought to be resolved because the Palestinian people have waited long enough for their state and the Israeli people have waited long enough for the security that will come from having a democratic and stable neighbor.

QUESTION: All right, so pretty much everybody agrees on that. So let me ask you a question not as the Secretary of State, but as a historian. Going back the last 40 years, is there any strategy the United States hasn't attempted? Is there anything sort of left for us to try to do to help resolve this?

SECRETARY RICE: I know very much that a lot of people, and myself included, when you think, how could it be that this conflict could not get resolved by this time --

QUESTION: Or that we haven't even tried. Is there anything else to try? That's my point.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, exactly. And people have tried and tried. But I think we do have one different set of circumstances now. And that is that a lot of the responsible parties in the region are beginning to see that their great threat comes from extremism, not from the Israel-Palestinian conflict. And they want to resolve it in that context.

So for instance, the Arab states -- like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan -- who really have to be a part of helping resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because no Palestinian leader can make the necessary compromises without the support of the Arab world. And I think you saw in the Arabs reissuing their proposal for an initiative on a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, that they may be now willing to give the kind of backing to a Palestinian leader and the kind of political horizon to Israel that says, when you resolve the Palestinian conflict, you will have resolved the conflict with all of your Arab neighbors.

QUESTION: But when you look at the map of the Middle East, it's almost like if -- if you fix something here, there's an outbreak here of another problem. And so I'm trying to get a sense of like, is a solution ever -- as a practical matter, do you ever expect that this will be resolved? Because every time you move a piece, you've got six more problems.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there's a reason that these are all interconnected. And it is because the extremists, who know that if there's a different kind of Middle East, a Middle East in which people are resolving their differences politically, then their cause is going to be irrevocably hurt. It's the reason, Greta, that they're fighting so hard in Iraq. They know, these extremists know, that if the Iraqis manage to resolve their differences by political means, democracy takes hold there, then their backward-looking, extreme version of how politics ought to progress in the Middle East will be defeated.

And it's why, for the United States and for the free world, a success in Iraq is so critical. And it's why, if we were to precipitously leave Iraq and leave behind a government unable to defend itself, the extremists would have won a major battle in the war on terrorism, and you would start to see chaos throughout this whole region, because you're right; these issues are all linked. They're all a part of the same puzzle.

QUESTION: One of the thoughts, though, is that the extremism begets extremism, in the sense that the popular opinion -- I haven't been to Iraq, so I don't know if this is true or not -- is that things are getting worse, and that it's a breeding ground, it's almost a recruitment program in terms of our military effort to fight extremism. Is diplomacy ever a possibility in terms of talking with our enemies?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there is no doubt that the extremists have decided to make a stand in Iraq -- al-Qaida in Iraq, for instance, trying to use the difficult circumstances there. But I think it's fair to say that if they were not fighting in Iraq, they would be fighting someplace else.

QUESTION: Yes, but that is -- I mean, that goes back to the whole sort of -- you know, the mushroom cloud statement, which of course -- you know, that was a statement you made, is that -- you know, we hear that and we get scared as Americans. I mean -- and you know, that was a terrifying when we heard our Secretary of State say it or our National Security Adviser. You know, is it time -- I mean, are we really, like, scaring ourselves more than we should or we should sort of look at it -- other ways to do this?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, unfortunately, we live in a world in which every day, the extremists get up trying to figure out how to deliver a decisive blow, as they would call it, against the United States. That is simply the world in which we live. I was really struck when Prime Minister Blair said in the Rose Garden that every day we get up and we make a choice about what kind of world we are going to live in.

And that is absolutely the case because every day, the terrorists and the extremists get up and they have made their choice. And their choice is to try to destroy the basis of the civilization that we have. Their choice is to have a world in which tolerance is not possible, in which difference of opinion is not possible, in which women are repressed. That is their choice.

And our choice every day is whether or not we are going to fight them. I know that it is not a soothing statement to make. But on September 11th, I think we learned in a very devastating way what happens if you are not always focused on the choice that you are making every day. And our country was not mobilized to fight the terrorists on September -- before September 11th. We now are mobilized. They are fighting back. I think it was entirely predictable that when we started to go after them, they would start to fight back.

But we only have a choice to fight them. We also have a choice to use diplomacy, to use our great values, to begin to change the circumstances in which this extremism exists. It is why, Greta, I'm spending so much time on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is why we are spending so much time on education and on democratization in the Middle East, because ultimately, the answer to terrorism is to change the circumstances in which it arose.

QUESTION: And I think that probably every American is totally with you. No one wants terrorism. No one wants extremism. Nobody wants that. I think that probably -- and not to rehash old things, is whether or not, you know, Iraq was the answer or it was simply Afghanistan, going after bin Laden. And I don't mean to rehash that now. But I think --

SECRETARY RICE: No, it is a good question.

QUESTION: -- it is a whole sort of question of like -- you know, strategy and -- you know, what options we have.

SECRETARY RICE: Right. And I think it is a fair question; would we have been able to deal with the terrorist threat by simply dealing with al-Qaida and their base in Afghanistan. There are people who believe that that was the course to take. But the President and his advisers believed that what happened on September 11th was not just that al-Qaida, an organization, attacked the United States, but that they were attacking from a base that was not just Afghanistan, but a broad base of the conditions for extremism in the Middle East.

And that meant that threats, where you might have a marrying of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction; it meant that a place like Saddam Hussein's Iraq that had been a major source, if not the major source of instability in the Middle East; that we finally had to deal with that threat and I think we would do that again.

QUESTION: All right. Well, I won't belabor that point and revisit that. I want to switch gears to Iran. The director of the IAEA has reported in the Spanish press -- I don't know if this is, you know, correct or not, I don't read Spanish, that it -- with Iran and its nuclear ambitions, it is now not a question of, you know, if, that they are so far ahead in their enrichment program, that it's really a question of how we contain them. First of all, are they as far ahead as the director seems to suggest in this nuclear enrichment program?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we're certainly not in the camp of believing that our goal is to contain Iran's nuclear program. Our goal is to convince the Iranians that their nuclear ambitions are going to be met only with international isolation and with resolve. Of course, they're continuing to improve their capabilities, but it's a matter of continuing to practice and getting better at it because this is actually a complicated thing to do.

QUESTION: It's enormously complicated.

SECRETARY RICE: It's very complicated.

QUESTION: I realize that. And to the extent that you snub them internationally, it requires support from others to do as well.

SECRETARY RICE: And others are beginning to really have -- beginning to have an impact on Iran. We are using the Security Council and its resolutions to demonstrate that Iran is isolated. Iran is beginning to have difficulty using the international financial system. It is having difficulty getting the level of investment in its oil and gas reserves that it needs. And so sooner or later, Iran is going to realize that the course that it's on is not going to lead to greater international power and authority, it's going to lead to greater isolation.

And so from our point of view, to say, well, all right, it's all over, we'll just now contain them; that's not where the international community is. It's not where we and our allies are. And I was frankly a little surprised that the director said that and, in effect, tried to be involved in the diplomacy here.

QUESTION: Immigration; huge problem -- not huge -- well, it is a huge problem. To what extent does the Secretary of State -- is immigration part of your job? What is your role in this in terms of diplomacy or how can you help them?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first, in terms of immigration, I can help in a couple of ways as Secretary of State. I have constant discussions with Mexicans, Central Americans, other countries about their obligation to help defend our laws, to send a very strong signal that illegal immigration is not all right. We also are working on the borders, on security on the borders, and of course, ultimately, as we improve the prosperity of places like Central America and Mexico, fewer of their ambitious citizens are going to want to leave to come across illegally.

Now that's as Secretary of State. But you know, as an American, I also see this as just an essentially important debate to find a way to have a balanced policy that defends our laws but also recognizes on the humanitarian side that these are people seeking a better life, many of them law-abiding and contributing to our economy. As an American, I want to see us have an immigration policy that is consistent with our law, that does not provide amnesty, but that also recognizes the role of immigrants in this country throughout our history.

QUESTION: Another one of those problems when you move one chess piece and you've got six more problems.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, no doubt about it. But it's a time, Greta, when the international system is in tremendous flux. It's changing dramatically and I'm enough of an historian to know that when the international system starts rearranging itself, partly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, partly after September 11th, when strategic objectives began to change, that the best thing the United States can do is to stay true to its values, to be tough enough to worry about the long term, not short term headlines, and that's what we're doing. That's what we do every day as we try to lay a foundation for a better world, even if it may be one, quite frankly, that we don't see in its full expression.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thank you very much. I know that you've got a busy day today. Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.

(Break)

QUESTION: We are at the spectacular Reagan Library.

SECRETARY RICE: Spectacular, yes.

QUESTION: You worked for the Reagan Administration?

SECRETARY RICE: I was a fellow at the Joint Chiefs of Staff working on strategic nuclear policy when Ronald Reagan was President. And it was great. I was on the Joint Staff when he and Gorbachev had the famous Reykjavik Summit. And I did some of the support work, to go back to the Joint Staff for that work on ballistic missiles, and possibly the axis of them.

QUESTION: Were you able to meet him?

SECRETARY RICE: I did meet him, and he was, as you might imagine, just an extraordinary man, tall, and I just remember thinking, just very strong. But he was also very funny. He was always telling -- he had great timing on the great joke and he was just a wonderful person to be around.

QUESTION: You were quite young at the time -- I mean, a bit back then, because you're still young, I don't mean that.

SECRETARY RICE: Thanks.

QUESTION: Whatever. But were you nervous meeting him?

SECRETARY RICE: Sure, I was nervous meeting him. But he was very kind, very nice, and there were several people there. He took a moment to speak to me, and I've always really appreciated that.

QUESTION: You know, when you look back at the presidency, it's fun to sort of pick out how they've changed the course of history. President Reagan really did change the direction dramatically.

SECRETARY RICE: President Reagan had just the strongest sense of values and what America could do if it was true to those values. He changed the way I thought about the Soviet Union. I was a young Soviet specialist. I had studied the Soviet Union, I knew Russian, I worked on it. I always assumed that we would be forever locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union. The thought that you could challenge the Soviet Union and ultimately, out of its internal weakness and American power, it would collapse, never occurred to me until I started to read Ronald Reagan. And he succeeded.

QUESTION: Do you have a favorite part of the library?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, well, I haven't seen the plane. I'm going to go look at that. That looks like it may be my favorite part of the library.

QUESTION: The 707?

SECRETARY RICE: The 707 here, which is great. But I love the exhibitions, of course, about the end of the Cold War, because for me, that's the most important contribution of Ronald Reagan. He knew that America's values and America's strengths could be put to good purpose. And look at those millions of people that are free today.

QUESTION: Outside is a section of the Berlin Wall, which is, I think, probably one of my favorites. I have different favorites here. Do you remember where you were when you watched the Wall come down?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, I sure do. I was in the White House. I was on the National Security Council working for President George H.W. Bush at the time. And we had known from the August period, September of 1989, that Eastern Europe was changing quite dramatically. But the idea that the Berlin Wall might actually come down; that just seemed fantasy.

QUESTION: Did you watch it on TV?

SECRETARY RICE: I watched it on TV. I had been in Germany just in October. And I remember coming back and telling President Bush that it seemed to me that Germany -- there was a kind of roiling in Germany, that I didn't know how long it was going to be before East and West were starting to move together. But I never dreamed it would -- that dramatic. It was really quite something.

QUESTION: And it's an extraordinary library. It's so interesting. One of your mentors in school was --

SECRETARY RICE: Josef Korbel.

QUESTION: And he is --

SECRETARY RICE: Madeleine Albright's father. That's right.

QUESTION: The first -- first, your predecessor, or a couple of (inaudible).

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Do you talk to the other former Secretaries of State?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, sure, I do.

QUESTION: Do you like, talk about -- talk shop or do you talk about the world?

SECRETARY RICE: Both.

QUESTION: Both?

SECRETARY RICE: Both. It's not that big of a club.

QUESTION: It is a very small club.

SECRETARY RICE: That's right. So, we do talk. And it's always good to get people's views. We don't agree about everything, of course, and Madeleine and I sure don't agree about a lot, but Madeleine's father was an extraordinary man. You know, he was himself a Czech refugee. He was ambassador to Yugoslavia for the last democratic Czechoslovak regime. And you talk about somebody who cared about freedom, he cared about freedom. And that's his -- he and Ronald Reagan were a lot alike from very different types -- but Ronald Reagan would never have believed that there was any human being who didn't deserve freedom. And that's a very special view for a President of the United States to have.

QUESTION: Now you're from Alabama.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: Went to Denver University, not a big football school.

SECRETARY RICE: No.

QUESTION: Not a big --

SECRETARY RICE: No football team. No football team.

QUESTION: Stanford is not University of Florida in terms of football.

SECRETARY RICE: They played well.

QUESTION: I mean --

SECRETARY RICE: It's been a good football team from time to time.

QUESTION: Okay, now I'm from near Green Bay, and so I never quite understood; where do you get your football interest?

SECRETARY RICE: My dad.

QUESTION: What was his team?

SECRETARY RICE: My dad -- Cleveland Browns, which is still my team, but my dad was a football coach and athletic director when I was born. And I was supposed to be his all-American linebacker and I'm an only child.

QUESTION: Well, you did pretty well. I mean, you have to admit, you did okay as a job. I mean, he can't complain.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, but he was -- bless his heart. You know, he already had the football bought. I was going to be named John like him. And so he had to teach me about the sport as (inaudible). And I just became from that high -- from, you know, two years old, I just loved football.

QUESTION: Well, you must have loved Johnny Unitas. He's from Alabama.

SECRETARY RICE: I loved Johnny Unitas. I loved the Colts in those days and loved Johnny Unitas. Bart Starr was OK.

QUESTION: Well, you know, he's OK. But we - I have a - my husband's from Baltimore, so it's --

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, you (inaudible) have a problem --

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, that is a problem.

QUESTION: But you really have - you do love football.

SECRETARY RICE: I do love football. I watch it - I will watch it at any time. I could save (inaudible) money (inaudible) actually watch pre-season football games. I love it.

QUESTION: Do you keep* a lot of games?

SECRETARY RICE: I do keep* most (inaudible).

QUESTION: And so you hate people who say, well, who won?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, I don't mind. I can even watch a football game if I knew who won. It's all right with me. But I love -- really, Greta, the truth of the matter is, I love anything with a score at the end. I love hockey. I love basketball. I love football. It's just a great sport. I love sports.

QUESTION: Well, it's awfully nice to see you. Thanks very much.

SECRETARY RICE: Good to see you, too.

QUESTION: Nice to see you. Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) Green Bay –

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