[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 12 (Monday, March 25, 2002)]
[Pages 476-478]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Following a Breakfast Meeting With the Vice President and an 
Exchange With Reporters

March 21, 2002

    The President. Good morning. Thank you all for coming. I just had a 
breakfast with Vice President Cheney, and as you all know, he's returned 
from a lengthy and successful trip to the Middle East, the first trip I 
asked him to go on. I sent him to the region because this is an 
incredibly important part of the world, and it's a turbulent part of the 
world. And the Vice President took a lot of messages on behalf of our 
administration and made some really good progress. I'm really proud of 
how he handled himself and how he delivered the message.
    As a result of this trip, and as a result of working with General 
Zinni, there is some progress being made in the Middle East. And I want 
to thank the Vice President for being very firm and deliberate and 
convincing both parties that the Tenet plan and ultimately the Mitchell 
plan is a way to achieve what we all want in the world, which is a 
peaceful resolution to this longstanding conflict.
    But Mr. Vice President, welcome back. Thanks, you did a great job.
    The Vice President. Well thank you, Mr. President. It was a good 
trip. And as you say, there are a lot of issues on the agenda right now 
that are important in that part of the world.
    I talked extensively with our friends about the ongoing campaign in 
Afghanistan and the war against terror that affects all of us. And 
everybody in the region spent a lot of time on the Israeli peace 
problems and propositions--the conflict between Israelis and the 
Palestinians--obviously, a lot of time on the Iraqi situation and Saddam 
Hussein's development of weapons of mass destruction. But I found at 
virtually every stop that the United States has great friends and allies 
in that part of the world. I also had the opportunity to visit with a 
number of our military personnel conducting active operations or 
supporting those operations in Afghanistan and the region. So all in 
all, it was a great trip. I'm ready to go back there.
    The President. Questions? Yes, John [John King, CNN].

Situation in the Middle East

    Q. Mr. President, interested in your own calculations when the Vice 
President called to discuss the possibility of the Arafat meeting, your 
calculations in making the decision to change slightly the 
administration's standard for opening the door to a meeting with him. 
And Mr. Vice President, do you believe now that meeting will happen? Is 
Mr. Arafat keeping his end of the bargain?
    The President. Well, first of all, I've always been one that trusts 
the judgment of the people I send on a mission. And the Vice President 
called me, with General Zinni by his side, and said, ``There's a chance 
that we can get into the Tenet security agreement. And if that were to 
happen, in my judgment, I think it would be best if I would then go see 
Mr. Arafat.''
    And I trust the Vice President's judgment. He's a man of enormous 
experience who's got a good feel for things, and we both trust General 
Zinni. And so the definition of whether or not he is going to see Mr. 
Arafat depends upon the feel for our negotiator, General Zinni. But I 
think it was the right thing to do, obviously.

[[Page 477]]

    We've set some strong conditions, and we expect Mr. Arafat to meet 
those conditions. I, frankly, have been disappointed in his performance. 
I'm hopeful, however, that he listens to what the Vice President told 
him and said that in order for us to have influence in terms of 
achieving any kind of peaceful resolution, he must--he, Mr. Arafat--must 
do everything in his power to stop the violence.
    The Vice President. Well, as I've said before, John, the key here 
will be General Zinni. And he'll make his judgment based on whether or 
not Arafat is in fact implementing Tenet, not just promising to 
implement but implementing Tenet. If he's doing that, if he's living up 
to those requirements, and General Zinni signs off on it, then I'm 
prepared to go back almost immediately for a meeting. But it will depend 
on whether or not Arafat is complying.

Iraq

    Q. Mr. Vice President, on Iraq, the other main item on your agenda, 
you said we have a lot of allies out there. But I haven't noticed any of 
the Arab States--maybe they say things privately that they don't 
publicly; we've long been told that--supporting strong action against 
Iraq. They seem to want diplomacy to be given a chance--Annan's efforts, 
sanctions, changes, et cetera. What kind of response did you get?
    The Vice President. Well, I think--I guess the way I would 
characterize it is, they are uniformly concerned about the situation in 
Iraq, in particular about Saddam Hussein's failure to live up to the 
U.N. Security Council resolutions, especially number 687, that he 
pledged to at the end of the war, that said he'd get rid of all of his 
weapons of mass destruction.
    And they are as concerned as we are when they see the work that he 
has done to develop chemical and biological weapons and his pursuit of 
nuclear weapons, the past history that we all know about, in terms of 
his having used chemicals. If you haven't seen it, there's a devastating 
piece in this week's New Yorker magazine on the 1988 use by Saddam 
Hussein of chemical weapons against the Kurds. If the article is 
accurate--and I've asked for verification, if we can find it--he ran a 
campaign against the Kurds for 17 months and bombed literally 200 
villages and killed thousands and thousands of Iraqis with chemical 
weapons.
    That's not the kind of man we want to see develop even more deadly 
capacity, for example nuclear weapons. And my experience is that our 
friends in the region are just as concerned about those developments as 
we are. And I went out there to consult with them, seek their advice and 
counsel, to be able to report back to the President on how we might best 
proceed to deal with that mutual problem, and that's exactly what I've 
done.
    The President. I think one other point that the Vice President made, 
which is a good point, is that this is an administration that when we 
say we're going to do something, we mean it; that we are resolved to 
fight the war on terror; this isn't a short-term strategy for us; that 
we understand history has called us into action; and we're not going to 
miss this opportunity to make the world more peaceful and more free.
    And the Vice President delivered that message. I was grateful that 
he was able to do so. It's very important for these leaders to 
understand the nature of this administration so there's no doubt in 
their mind that when we speak, we mean what we say, that we're not 
posturing. We don't take a bunch of polls and focus groups to tell us 
what--how to--to what we ought to do in the world. When we say we want 
to defend freedom, we mean it. And the Vice President did a fine job of 
delivering that message.
    Part of any foreign policy--good foreign policy--is to consult with 
our friends and allies. We've told our friends and allies we'll do so on 
all kinds of issues. And the Vice President did that in a really good 
way.

Terrorist Attack in Lima, Peru

    Q. Mr. President, different part of the world, a car bomb exploded 
in Lima last night killing nine people. Are you concerned about your 
safety?
    The President. No, I'm still going. I'm sure President Toledo will 
do everything he can to make Lima safe for our trip. Two-bit terrorists 
aren't going to prevent me from doing what we need to do, and that is to

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promote our friendship in the hemisphere. Our neighborhood is important 
to us; Peru is an important country. President Toledo has been a 
reformist, obviously worked within the democratic system. And you bet 
I'm going.

Note: The President spoke at 8:16 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle 
East Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.); Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority; and President Alejandro Toledo of Peru. The Vice 
President referred to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The President 
also referred to the Tenet plan, the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire and 
security plan of June 13, 2001, negotiated by Director of Central 
Intelligence George J. Tenet, and the Mitchell report, the Report of the 
Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, issued April 30, 2001.