Rice Talks To CBS News, Part II

Wide-Ranging Discussion Covers Iran, Iraq, Gaza And The Meaning Of "Shrink Hour"

(CBS)  On Sept. 28, 2007, the CBS News editorial board interviewed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Below is a transcript of the second part of the interview:

Click here for part I.

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QUESTION: There's some news today, I think, about Blackwater. There's -- I think the State Department has discovered there's a number of incidents where they've been involved in kind of sketchy situations. Is there any plan to either reduce their role vis-à-vis what they do now in guarding the State Department people and others in Iraq or giving them different marching orders?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't want to comment on any specific stories that are coming out about that during the period of investigation because that investigation needs to maintain its integrity. And when it's done, we'll look at the outcomes of it and see where we are. But what I have done because I am concerned about the overall picture of contract security, how we use it -- we obviously have to be able to protect our people and our people have to be able to move and they have to be able to move in extremely complex security circumstances. And these people have protected us and they've even lost many of their own people protecting us.

But I am concerned about the overall picture. And John Negroponte is on point for me at State, particularly since I've been here, but I went back to Washington yesterday -- I'm losing track of the days -- and I had a meeting with everybody. We are sending a team out to take a look at the full operation. I said I wanted a full 360-degree look, I wanted it to be probing, I want to know what concerns there may be.

I am looking also to a more senior -- to an outside panel of senior people. I don't think we've named the names yet.

MR. MCCORMACK: I can actually go out and check to see if we've done that yet - if we’ve done that quite yet.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, okay. Sometime later today, we're going to name these -- the people. And so this team that's going out would then do the groundwork to inform the deliberations of this senior outside panel which would then report recommendations back to me on what we -- how the structure looks and what we need to do to improve it. Because we don't have any desire to have incidents of that kind. It's harmful to what we're trying to do and so we need to make sure that we know exactly how this is done.

I have also directed in the interim that there be a reaffirmation of the rules and authorities and reporting that is necessary under which we're currently operating while we look at the procedures more generally. And the Director of Diplomatic Security sent out that requirement not just to Baghdad but also to Kabul, where we use contract security, and to places where there's a significant chance of use of force, several of our embassies around the world that have that profile, that security profile.

So we're going to look at this and look at it very, very carefully. We're going to look at it 360. I want to do that and have to keep that separate from the investigation of this specific incident because we need to preserve the integrity of that so that we are in a position to take whatever next steps may need to be taken on the specifics of this incident.

QUESTION: You want to talk about the Israel-Palestinian issue and whether Olmert and Abbas are strong enough to make it happen on your time clock?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, what's my time clock? You mean while we're still in office (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Not the next 20 minutes?

SECRETARY RICE: Right, right. I'm -- here, guardedly optimistic that a couple of things are coming together. I think that the bilateral track, meaning the discussions between Olmert and Abbas, are gathering a certain momentum and showing a certain maturity. Now, you know, I would not have given you any bet back in February when we had that very difficult trilateral where they were barely ready to speak to each other, let alone speak about anything of importance, that we would be where we are. So that track has matured, I think, more rapidly than we might have thought.

The prospect of an international meeting has focused them also on wanting to be able to memorialize some of the understandings that they may come to between themselves and they've now got the negotiating teams, so they're going to try to do that. So that's one piece of it.

The second piece of it is that I think that the Arab states -- and we had very good meetings during this whole period of time. I think you probably saw that Prince Saud said that he was encouraged, which was a step forward. The Arab states want this to work because I think they believe that the -- if the bilateral track gets support and if they do have some understandings that they want to put forward, it will be very helpful to Abbas if he's got the support of the Arabs.

No Palestinian leader can make some of the decisions that a Palestinian leader will have to make in order to get a state without the support of the Arabs. And so this time, we very carefully had the Arabs as a part of the process moving forward. So I do think we're -- it's moving along. There is a certain momentum to it. The Blair mission has also helped people focus on the institutions of statehood, the building of capacity to govern. You're not going to build -- you're not going to decide to have a Palestinian state and have no ability to govern it on the other side.

And so having that come the -- the piece that I think we need to work more on is the kind of day-to-day life of the Palestinians, which is still a very hard thing because of the security issues. But yeah, I think it's moving together in those three tracks and moving together rather well.

[mkgreen3]

We''re lucky to have her.
But I must admit, I''m infatuated.