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Excerpt
Washington Times
January 9, 2002
Powell highlights challenges of 2001, goals for 2002
Following are excerpts from an interview with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at the State Department by reporters and editors of The Washington Times yesterday:
Question: The first year of this administration is now over. What are the three most important things that you see as the best achievements of this administration, foreign policywise?
Answer: I think we have structured a very strong relationship with Russia. I think that the meetings that President Bush has had with President [Vladimir] Putin and the dialogue that has taken place between me and my colleague, [Defense Secretary] Don Rumsfeld and his colleague, and at a variety of levels, have positioned us for a very positive continuing relationship with Russia.
The way that Russia responded to the events of September 11th I think is reflective of that. The way in which we agreed to disagree on the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty after spending 11 months telling them where we were going, making clear to them that we were going there and nothing would deter us; is there a way we can do it together and is there a way that you can accept what we have to do? And at the end of the day, we agreed to disagree and the United States notified Russia that we were going to be withdrawing from the treaty. I notified Foreign Minister [Igor] Ivanov. He and I talked about it for two days. The president then called President Putin, and President Putin and I arranged the manner in which we would make all of these announcements. And guess what? The world did not end, an arms race did not break out, and there is no crisis in U.S.-Russia relations. I think that is reflective of the way in which we will be working together with Russia in the future.
And then the last piece of evidence I would give you for my assertion is the way in which we have worked through NATO-Russia working at 20 — a lot of discussion, a lot of debate of what that was all about. But the fact of the matter is we came to an agreement with the Russians as to how we can pursue this dialogue at 20, and we are on a track to see if we can have it in place at the time of the Reykjavik [Iceland] ministerial [meeting]. I think that's a success.
I think another success is the way we have ended the year with China.
Remember also, we came through the spy crisis. Hard to believe that we had a spy crisis with Russia. These things come and go. You get 48 hours and that's it. It's over. It's gone. You have a big spy crisis and everybody was writing, "That's it. It's over. We can't do anything with the Russians."....
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