Rice: Security Council 'Reasonable Next Step' For Iran

Joel Brinkley and Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday offered sympathy for the Israeli settlers who are being removed from their homes in Gaza but also made it clear that she expected Israel and the Palestinians to take further steps in short order toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

"Everyone empathizes with what the Israelis are facing," Ms. Rice said in an interview. But she added, "It cannot be Gaza only."

Israel began the forcible eviction of thousands of Gaza settlers on Wednesday, and Ms. Rice called it "really quite a dramatic moment in the history of the Middle East." Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, she added, had shown himself to be "enormously courageous."

Ms. Rice has visited the region twice recently to ensure that the Gaza withdrawal proceeds smoothly. While she noted that the withdrawal would take several weeks to play out, soon after that, she insisted, Israel must take further steps, including loosening travel restrictions in the West Bank and withdrawing from more Palestinian cities.

At the same, she added, the Palestinian Authority must take its own steps, moving quickly to disarm Palestinian factions intent on breaking the cease-fire.

Her remarks came during an interview with reporters and an editor of The New York Times at the State Department. She discussed the major issues facing her in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere, but she also talked about what she considered her major accomplishments in her first seven months in office. She came to the State Department in January after serving as President Bush's national security adviser.

"This is a very remarkable time," she said. This fall, she noted, there will be "the Iraqi referendum followed by Iraqi elections; Afghan elections for the Parliament; Egyptian contested elections for the first time.

"You've also had the withdrawal of the Syrians from Lebanon and the elections in Lebanon," she went on. "We've got reform efforts that we are tracking in Jordan. And of course women have the right to vote for the first time in Kuwait."

"Something very dramatic is changing in the Middle East," she said. "And it is changing in the direction of - and I only say in the direction of - more open, more pluralistic, contested political environment." Mr. Bush's efforts, and hers, in "pressing the case" for democratic change, she said, "I think has had a tremendous effect."

In Israel on Wednesday, officials expressed anxiety over what they said was a determination by the militant organization Hamas to exploit the withdrawal to commit further violence against Israel. Israeli officials say they have evidence that Hamas is using the cease-fire to build up and train its own army in Gaza, preparing for more suicide bombings in Israel while also stockpiling rockets to be fired into Israel from Gaza.

Ms. Rice said she did not know "how extensive" such a buildup had been. "But I know there has been some," she said. "I don't doubt that Hamas is training and increasing its capacity to cause trouble as a terrorist organization."

Israel has used a lull in the violence to focus on the Gaza pullout. But Israeli officials say they will not make further concessions unless the Palestinian Authority makes parallel moves to go beyond the negotiated calm and begin dismantling and disarming Palestinian militant groups. Ms. Rice agreed, saying confidence-building steps needed to be taken by both sides simultaneously. She also made it clear that she expected the Palestinian Authority to take responsibility for disarming Hamas.

"That is their obligation under the road map," she said, referring to the peace plan that the United States and its allies proposed in 2003.

In the interview, Ms. Rice touched on other contentious issues, notably Iran and North Korea. The United States is involved in negotiations to persuade both countries to give up their nuclear programs.

In Vienna last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency criticized Iran for restarting its uranium conversion program but did not recommend sending the case to the United Nations Security Council, as European diplomats had said they wanted to do. Ms. Rice insisted that there had never been an intention to ask the agency to recommend sending Iran's case to the Council.

"We had agreed in advance with the Europeans that we would seek a strong statement," she said. "This would be a two-step process." READ MORE

Early this month, three European nations, with American concurrence, presented Iran with a sweeping proposal of incentives, including agreement that Iran could have a peaceful nuclear power program sometime in the future - if it gave up its plans to resume uranium enrichment now.

Iran rejected the proposal, tore the United Nations seals off its stores of nuclear materials in a uranium conversion plant in Isfahan and began processing them again, insisting that it had no intention of ceasing its nuclear program permanently. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes, while the United States has expressed concerns that it may be trying to produce nuclear arms.

Ms. Rice insisted, too, that the United States remained determined to persuade Iran to change its mind.

"There seems to be very strong international consensus that an Iran that has behaved the way that it has over the last couple of years really should not have a fuel cycle," she said. "We expect that the next step will be to work with others to make certain that there are consequences for that behavior, and we believe that the Security Council is the reasonable next step."

American officials acknowledge that they may face difficulty in persuading all of the permanent members of the Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Iran. China, for one, buys fuel from Iran. But a senior administration official said China had been helpful in the atomic agency's debate last week.

On North Korea, the United States faces a similar problem. In six-nation talks, now recessed for several weeks, the North Koreans insisted that they had the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear power program. Ms. Rice disagreed.

"There are still legs to the six-party process that may indeed bring about exactly the outcome that we are looking for," she said. She would not say what the administration might do if the talks failed but added that she took comfort in the fact that the United States was not negotiating with North Korea alone.