Sec'y Rice: Eventually Have To Disarm Palestinian Terrorists, Ultimately Can't Participate In Politics

2005-09-30

[IMRA: While official Israel celebrates this response, interpreting it as a clear and straightforward stand requiring Hamas to be immediately disarmed and otherwise barred from the PLC elections, Secretary Rice's statement is the absolute opposite.

1. Instead of calling on the PA to immediately disarm the terrorists, she shows understanding for this taking an open-ended period of time - "eventually" they have to be disarmed.

2. Instead of calling to bar Hamas from running in the PLC unless it first disarms, she says that "you cannot have armed groups ultimately participating in politics with no expectation that they're going to isarm" - a requirement that could just as easily be met by Hamas saying that they "expect" to "ultimately" disarm.

It is doubtful that Ms. Rice's Good Friday Agreement was intended to add irony to her response. The Good Friday Agreement, a poorly written text (a critical phrase made it possible for the IRA to claim it didn't have to disarm until the very end of the process), was prepared by the same Senator Mitchell who went on to prepare the "Mitchell Report" - a similarly botched job.]

Questions Taken at Princeton University's Celebration of the 75th Anniversary Of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Secretary Condoleezza Rice

Princeton University New Jersey

www.state.gov/secretary/ rm/2005/54178.htm

DEAN SLAUGHTER: Secretary Rice has agreed to take questions. Please raise your hand and then wait for the microphone.

QUESTION: I'd like to thank you for coming, first off. I've just been curious -- seems to me that there's been some sort of disconnect with a lot of the rhetoric that you've been presenting here today and with a lot of our actions in the Middle East. One example is that it seems that we've started to take a lot of a softer line with Hamas in Palestine, which is an organization that I think really doesn't fare with the ideals that you've been promoting here. I was wondering if you could try and explain that disconnect we've been seeing.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. It's a very good question. We've been very clear that Hamas is a terrorist group and it has to be disbanded, both for peace and security and in the Middle East and for the proper functioning of the Palestinian Authority. After all, it is a roadmap obligation of the Palestinian Authority to disband militias and armed resistance groups.

There are periods of time of transition in which one has to give some space to the participants, in this case the Palestinians, to begin to come to a new national compact. But I cannot imagine, in the final analysis, a new national compact that leaves an armed resistance group within the political space. You cannot simultaneously keep an option on politics and an option on violence. There simply isn't a case that I can think of internationally where that's been permitted to happen.

For instance, in the Good Friday Agreement it was understood that when Sinn Fein came into politics and eventually the IRA would disarm and perhaps, hopefully, that process is now underway. We did not permit the Afghan warlords to keep their weapons and participate as candidates in politics. They had to make a choice. And so it is absolutely the case that you cannot have armed groups ultimately participating in politics with no expectation that they're going to disarm. But we are very clearheaded about Hamas.

Hamas stands for one-state solution, not a two-state solution. Hamas, therefore, stands for the destruction of Israel. Hamas is an organization that asks Palestinian mothers and fathers to give their children up to make themselves suicide bombers. And it is a real detriment and block to further peace in the Middle East, so we're not at all confused by this. We do, I think, need to give the Palestinians some space to try and reconcile their national politics, but they're going to eventually have to disarm these groups. They can't have it both ways.

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Source: IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis