Speeches and Documents

Interview with the Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns
Interview by Barbara Kramžar
Delo, December 1, 2005

Q: Slovenia’s chairmanship of the OSCE is coming to the end, how would you, as a representative of an important member, rate it? Would you give it an A, or less? I can imagine Slovenian diplomacy is a little disappointed that Mrs.Rice is not coming. Does this mean something?

A: Oh, Slovenia has done a very very fine job as chairman in office, and we´ve been very happy to work with Slovenia. We think the Slovene government has made a tremendous effort to manage the different issues concerning the OSCE. We were very pleased to have worked with them and we are thankful to the prime minister as well as Minister Rupel, who of course has carried the most burden upon his shoulder and has done excellent job. And Secretary Rice is very sorry that she won´t be able to be in Ljubljana. It is purely a question of scheduling given all the competing demands on her time. And so she´s asked me to represent her and we will go there to support the Slovene government and to support the agenda the Slovene government has put together for the OSCE summit. We think it will be a successful meeting. But we want to thank and congratulate Slovene government for all it has done as chairman in office. It´s been a challenging year, Mr.Rupel had to deal with the Kyrgyz crisis last spring, he had to deal with the very difficult situations in Transdnistria and Georgia and elections in Aserbeidjan and of course to deal with all other challenges the OSCE does. We will give our thanks in person but we want to convey through your newspaper how happy we´ve been working with Slovenia.

Q: I´m sure they are happy that you´re coming!

A: I completely understand my role here, it would have been far more preferable for Secretary Rice to be there. She would have been there if she could.

Q:  But she will go to Ukraine and Romania....

A: She will be visiting some other countries before she gets to the Nato ministerial.

Q: So what will be the message in visiting those “new” European countries?

A: She´s going to Ukraine to support the reform efforts of President Juschenko and to assert the very important relationship that we have strategically with Ukraine, and Romania, of course we have very close partnership with Romania and she´s going to discuss those issues. She´ll be in Berlin to meet Chancellor Merkel, it will be the first meeting that they have had since Chancellor Merkel took office and then she´ll be going to Brussels as well.

Q: Do you have the feeling that messages she is sending while visiting those countries clash sometimes with interests of other European countries, for example with Russia?

A: Do our interests clash?

Q: Yes, by going to Ukraine and Romania.

A: It shouldn´t, it shouldn´t. Romania is a member of Nato and Ukraine is a friend of the United States. We don´t look upon our relations with countries in Central Europe to be a zero-sum game. We have a very good relationship with Russia, we value that relationship, it is a partnership between our countries. We don´t agree on all issues and the Russians would say the same, but we do agree on a lot. I think the Russians will fully understand we conduct relations independently with Ukraine as well with other countries.

Q: What about the EU considering questioning the countries who supposedly  hosted CIA prisons on their grounds. How would you comment that?

A: I think I will refer you to what Secretary Rice has been saying publicly over the last couple of days and what our spokesman Sean Mccormack said yesterday. They’ve both spoken at length on this issue and I would obviously support what was said on this issue. Secretary Rice said that we´ll be responsive to any media allegations that has been made, and they have been made mainly in the media. I know she intends to do that during her trip.

Q: But the United States and you personally did move at least a part of European problematic areas, I mean Bosnia and Kosovo.  Do you expect that Bosnian parties will do what they promised in Washington. And for Kosovo: what could United States actually accept? I know you said you would agree with a negotiated result but would that cover also a partition advocated by Serbia, or independent Kosovo.

A: Well on Bosnia we had a successful conference here last week in Washington where the tri-presidency and the political party leaders agreed to commit themselves to the constitutional reform. That would change the structure of the Bosnian state, it would modernize them and allow the Bosnian state to look and be more European, more like a normal European country -- like Slovenia, for instance. In fact Slovenia is a very good role model, having been part of the former Yugoslavia. Slovenia is a real success story in a way in the way that it structured itself, in the way that it’s performed economically and as a key member of both NATO and the European Union. So if anything, we would hope that the politicians in Sarajevo might look at Ljubljana and see what a country can do if a country is firmly facing forward and leaving the history behind and becoming fully modern. And we have a hope that they will meet the deadline in Bosnia of March 2006 to consolidate these democratic reforms.

In Kosovo it’s not our position and our responsibility to announce ahead of the negotiations what the result of the negotiations should be. President Ahtisaari, the United Nations envoy, has just made a trip to the region. The United States fully supports what he’s doing. We also believe that the only people who can make a decision about the future of Kosovo are the people who live there – the Kosovar Albanians, the Kosovar Serbs as well as the Serb government, of course. And the negotiation has to include that, has to focus on them, and they have to make that decision. We don’t believe partition can be a solution. We are opposed to that. We oppose any change of borders to Kosovo. We oppose changes of borders in the Balkans in general. But we do believe that the status quo cannot be maintained. The status quo has been in existence now for 6 ½ years and it has to be changed. Because you have a situation where 90 percent of the people are Kosovar Albanians, and their views have to be listened to and respected

Q: Do you expect that the European Union will also do their part of the homework. Do you expect that Balkan states – not only Croatia – will get some preferential treatment?

A: I expect that the European Union... has already been very active in Bosnia with the agreement that was signed with the Bosnian govenrment. And the EU is very much involved in the Kosovo talks as well. I think that the countriesin the Balkans need to know that there is a future if they reform and meet the conditions of future membership in the European Union and they need to know that that is true with NATO as well. So that has been the message we’ve been trying to impart to all those countries: that if you reform, if you modernize, if you become fully democratic, if you respect your neighbors, if you respect the minorities and treat them well in your own country – then you have a chance to become fully reformed and fully modern and therefore part of these two institutions, the EU and NATO.

Q: Did American diplomacy pay attention to the little quarrels that Croatia and Slovenia have about borders, or do you think this dealt with?

A: Well, we would assume that both countries would be able to work out that problem. To my knowledge, we have not been asked to comment or intervene, and we certainly wouldn’t do that without being asked. Questions like this are sensitive, so I think it’s best to leave it to the Slovene and Croat governments to work out.

Q: What about broader American-European relations. Secretary Rice is going now to Germany, which has for the first time in many years a conservative government. They have declared that improvement with relations with America will be very important for them.Do you think these little quarrels or misunderstandings of recent years will be improving? Especially public opinion – do you expect it will improve about America?

A: I think we’re ending 2006 on a better note than we started it, beginning with President Bush’s trip in February. It was a fence-mending trip. It was a trip to bring us together, Europe and America, and it succeeded in doing that. And throughout the course of this year, we’ve worked well together. In Lebanon and Syria, France and the United States have worked together. The U.S. has been fully supportive of the EU’s negotiations with Iran. We, I think, have taken steps to strengthen NATO. We have made progress in both Bosnia and Kosovo together. So we think this has been a good year. And the tensions that we saw in the U.S. relationship with Europe – they were evident in 2002 and 2003 – those tensions have largely evaporated. It’s always a good time to take stock of where you are in December, and we think we’re in a good position.

Q: President Bush has an important speech today about Iraq, which is offering questions in Europe about the American position. So how do you think this will develop: Do you think that American strategy in Iraq will succeed and that Iran could commit their ... their commitment.

A: Well, I would hope that you would write an article about President Bush’s speech on Iraq.

Q: This I will.

A: And I’ll let President Bush speak for the United States today on Iraq. On Iran, we are very much supportive of a negotiated solution to the nuclear problem. And we hope that it can be accomplished. We think it’s very important that the Iranians come back to negotiations  and not walk away from them as they have done, and they sit down and work out their problems with the Europeans. So our support for the Europeans is strong. And there has to be a result where Iran does not end up with nuclear weapons. That would be intolerable.

Q: What if the Iranians won’t do that, won’t obey?

A: I don’t want to answer a hypothetical question. I prefer to think that by diplomacy – an active and tough diplomacy that Europe can follow – that we can have some success.

Q: Thank you very much.