Condoleezza Rice: “We Want an Immediate Cease-fire Too”

TIME: DO YOU HAVE A COMMITMENT FROM ISRAEL THAT IT WON’T EXPAND THE WAR INTO SYRIA OR IRAN?

RICE: The Israelis have said publicly that they do not want to widen this war. And I take them at their word.

TIME: IS THERE A PLAN TO PURSUE A COMPROMISE ON EXCHANGING PRISONERS?

RICE: The release of the abducted prisoner [by Hamas] unconditionally has been called for by many international bodies, including the G-8. And everybody recognizes there is an issue with Lebanese prisoners. But in the diplomacy, there isn’t contemplation of suggesting a prisoner exchange.

TIME: MANY COMMENTATORS BELIEVE THE U.S. AND ISRAEL WERE SURPRISED AT HIZBALLAH’S CAPABILITIES. DOES THAT SUGGEST AN INTELLIGENCE FAILURE?

RICE: The capabilities of Hizballah were more extensive than people realized because they have used the last 10 years since the cease-fire to build those capabilities. And the enhanced relationship that they have had with Iran and Syria for financing and for technology, clearly, has improved their capabilities. It’s very hard to know the capabilities of a terrorist organization when it burrows into a population, when it has free rein and free run of southern Lebanon because there’s a vacuum there.

TIME: IT SEEMS AS IF THE GOAL OF DIMINISHING HIZBALLAH’S CAPABILITY MAY BE UNATTAINABLE OR IS NOT WORKING. DO YOU THINK THAT ISRAEL’S OFFENSIVE WILL BE ENOUGH?

RICE: I’m certain that Hizballah has lots of rockets that it can fire. [But] ultimately Hizballah has to be, under several obligations of the Lebanese government, disarmed. And I would think you would want to deal with its heavy weapons, its missiles and so forth, its rockets early on. The Lebanese armed forces have to be the only armed authority in the country.

TIME: ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT LEBANON WILL BE ABLE TO DISARM HIZBALLAH AFTER THE CESSATION OF FIGHTING?

RICE: I am confident that the Lebanese government understands its obligation to do that. I know that the Lebanese government doesn’t want a circumstance again where you have militias running around that can bring this kind of destruction on the country. Now it’s up to the international community to help them achieve that. And that means creating a stable environment.

TIME: HAS THE U.S. APPROACH–NOT DEMANDING AN IMMEDIATE CEASE-FIRE–UNDERMINED ITS CREDIBILITY IN THE ARAB WORLD?

RICE: I think what would undermine American credibility is if we said something we didn’t believe. We want an immediate cease-fire too. We just want one that isn’t going to give way in a few days or weeks or months to more violence.

TIME: YOUR CRITICS SAY U.S. POLICY IS FAILING IN THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, IRAN, LEBANON, IRAQ. WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT THE MIDDLE EAST IS BECOMING LESS DANGEROUS AS A RESULT OF THIS ADMINISTRATION’S POLICIES?

RICE: Well, I would not say that it’s become less dangerous. I would say that it was never stable. And the sense that things were going along just fine when this Administration began a new set of policies in the Middle East is shortsighted and ahistorical … A failure in Lebanon? Compared to what? The false stability of Syrian troops occupying the country for 30 years?

I find it a very odd way of looking at things that because it’s hard and turbulent, that we should wish for the good old days of the false stability of Saddam Hussein and his 300,000 people in mass graves and his chemical-weapons use and his two wars started in a period of 20 years. Or Yasser Arafat stealing the Palestinian people blind, watching the second intifadeh, the Passover Massacre. What Middle East are we talking about?

We are in transition to a different kind of Middle East. And it is very turbulent. It is even violent. But it has a chance, at least, of being a Middle East in which there is a democratic, multiethnic Iraq where people solve their differences by politics, not by repression. It has a chance of having Israel and Palestine live side by side in peace. It has a chance of having a Lebanon that can control its own territory without Syrian forces.

TIME: BUT IF THE SITUATION IN IRAQ CONTINUES TO GET WORSE, IF THERE IS A RAGING CIVIL WAR FOR YEARS, IS THERE A POINT AT WHICH THIS EFFORT HAS CREATED A WORSE ALTERNATIVE THAN WHAT WE HAD BEFORE?

RICE: Well, I guess I would ask the 300,000 people who ended up in mass graves what they think.

TIME: BUT THERE ARE PEOPLE ENDING UP IN GRAVES NOW.

RICE: I don’t think that we are anywhere near able to make those kinds of judgments. I don’t think Iraq is going to slide into civil war. They have a problem with sectarian violence. [But] I don’t think that you’re looking at the breakdown of the institutions; people haven’t opted out of a unified Iraq. So on your question of what’s better, let’s be realistic: Where was the military threat? It was from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I don’t think you’re going to see that from this new Iraq.

TIME: THOUSANDS OF SHI’AS TODAY DEMONSTRATED IN BAGHDAD, SHOUTING “DEATH TO ISRAEL! DEATH TO AMERICA!”

RICE: In these new democratic states, people are going to say a lot of things that we don’t like. That’s the nature of democracy.

TIME: IS THE U.S. GETTING TO THE POINT WHERE ITS PRESENCE IN IRAQ IS PART OF THE PROBLEM AND NOT THE SOLUTION?

RICE: Well, I do think there are some people who take our presence as an excuse to propagate violence or to stir passions. But I’ve heard no Iraqi leaders calling for us to leave. And I’m told that in many neighborhoods, the most reassuring sign is, in fact, the American or coalition forces.

TIME: ON IRAN, IS IT POSSIBLE TO BYPASS PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD AND REACH OUT TO A MORE PRAGMATIC FACTION?

RICE: I don’t know how to read internal politics in Iran. And I’m probably more cautious about trying to do this than most people because I used to try to read the politics of a totalitarian state [the U.S.S.R.], and we almost always had it wrong.

We have to treat Iran as a whole. Rather than trying to play to one side or another, which I can assure you we don’t understand, I think it’s preferable to continue to lay out the strategic choices for Iran as to their nuclear program, support for terrorism, support for democratic change. And if there are indeed voices in Iran who are susceptible to the argument that Iran’s deepening isolation is a problem, then they will emerge.

TIME: THIS ADMINISTRATION TALKS TO PEOPLE LIKE THE CHINESE, WHO DO THINGS THE U.S. DOESN’T LIKE. SO WHY NOT TALK TO SYRIA, HAMAS, HIZBALLAH?

RICE: Well, Hamas and Hizballah are terrorist organizations …

TIME: THEY ALSO HAVE POLITICAL ARMS. I KNOW THIS IS SOMEWHAT APPLES AND ORANGES, BUT THE U.S. SPOKE TO SINN FEIN WHEN THE I.R.A. WAS BLOWING PLACES UP.

RICE: People are asking Hamas to make a choice. You can’t have one foot in politics and one foot in terror. If you want to be in politics, then give up the terror, give up the violence. Has Hamas made a commitment to renunciation of violence and to the existence of the state of Israel? No. Have they been given an opportunity to make that commitment? Yes.

We have a Palestinian partner, by the way [President Mahmoud Abbas], who has made those commitments. And I for one am not prepared to undercut him by assuming that the future of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian state rests with Hamas.

When it comes to Syria, it’s not as if we haven’t talked. We have a chargé [d’affaires] in Syria. Colin Powell went to Syria. Bill Burns went to Syria multiple times. It’s not a problem that people don’t talk to Syria. It’s that Syria doesn’t appear to listen or respond. In the case of Lebanon, inviting Syria back into Lebanese affairs–as if Syria is some kind of broker of peace when it occupied the country brutally for 30 years–is grotesque. •