Remarks following a breakfast meeting with the Vice President and an exchange with reporters

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 25, 2002

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.

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.