Interview by Greta Van Susteren

(10:00 p.m. EST)

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Thank you, sir, for joining us this evening.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, thanks for having me.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  How is Secretary Powell? 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, he's, I guess, fine after prostate surgery.  He was in surgery for about two hours.  The doctor says there are no complications and a full recovery is expected.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Boy, you don't get any privacy in this business, do you?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No, you don't get much.  I won't go through the graphic details for you.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  But it was kept a secret for a long time.  This was scheduled surgery, right?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Yeah, it was scheduled and he's worked towards this, thought it would be a quiet time of the year and a good time to do it without or little disruption to the business of the Department of State.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  So are you in charge now that, for a short term, while Secretary Powell is out, are you in charge, sir?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, yes, I am in charge, but as a practical matter, Secretary Powell was kind enough in the first week of this Administration to sign to me a delegation of authority, which gives me the ability to act with the same authority as the Secretary of State when I sign documents or when I speak publicly, whether he's down the hall in his office or whether he's on international travel, or, in this case, if he's in the hospital for a short stay.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Out of curiosity, what's the difference between your two jobs?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, he would be the boss, and I would be the ExO, chief enforcer, chief cook and bottlewasher.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  In terms of his return, that will be pretty quick, right?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Yeah, several days.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Let's talk about the big news over the weekend.  There was some big news, wasn't there?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  There was some.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  And when did you first hear that Saddam Hussein was in custody?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Secretary Powell told me Saturday afternoon.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  What was your thought when you first heard that, that this was a done deal, or were you sort of suspicious that maybe we might not be sure this time?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No, I think it was a relief, but I noticed that after the killing of Uday and Qusay that violence actually spiked for a time in Iraq.  So I think it's another day at the office for me, looking for, I think, a slight increase in violence, at least in the short term.  And I think it will take some time for 35 years of despotic rule to be -- for the end of it, the real end of it to really be intellectualized both in the minds of Iraqis and in the region.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  You know, we see so much about the impact on the Secretary of Defense and on the President, but from a diplomatic standpoint, how does this change or have an impact on what we're doing diplomatically?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think we would hope to use it to increase the international support we have.  The President was saying today we've got 60-some nations in our coalition and this is a perfect opportunity to pivot a bit and try to garner even more international support.  I've noticed almost all countries in the world have spoken out very positively and in a congratulatory way to the coalition forces and I think it's something we can make use of, hopefully for the betterment of all Iraqis.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  And a trial of Saddam -- who should do that?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, the President said today that we'll want to work with the Iraqis.  I think in the main there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who cry out from the grave for justice.  There are thousands of Kuwaitis who cry out as well.  And I think it's something basically run by the Iraqis, such as their tribunal which they set up last week, probably would be a pretty good way to go, as long as it's fair and it's transparent.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  You have a long history in the region.  What's their justice system?  I mean, none of us has any idea how they do justice there.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, under the Saddam era there was only injustice and relatively arbitrary for crimes against the state.  My understanding is, for petty crimes, run of the mill crimes, they had actually a functioning system.  The tribunal they've set up is one that was done with the assistance of international lawyers, including our own, and it's one that much  more closely conforms to international standards.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Does it make a difference when this happens?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I'm not sure it makes so much of a difference when it happens as long as it's fair and transparent.  We'll want to exploit the capture of Saddam Hussein for intelligence value for as long as necessary, so I don't think we're in a big hurry.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  In terms of intelligence, what would you want to ask him?  Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  That would be an obvious one.  I think you'll want to ask him who was associated with him, how he made illegal purchases, how he evaded sanctions, what motivated him, really motivated him, in the attempt to make Kuwait the 19th province.  There are unlimited questions.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Were you surprised that he was in Iraq, that he didn't flee to Syria or go someplace else?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No, I actually wasn't.  I was surprised that he was hiding in a so-called "spider hole," but I wasn't surprised that he was in Iraq.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Why?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I didn't feel that a fellow who had spent almost his entire life, and I think had only traveled out of the country once or twice, would feel comfortable in other than Iraqi culture and Iraqi society.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  When you think of before the war started he was -- many things were offered to him, and then he ends up in a hole.  Pathetic?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think that's only the latest in a string of misjudgments that he made in 35 years of rule. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  What's the impact, big picture, in that part of the world towards the United States, do you think, as a result of the capture?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think clearly this shows sort of the inevitability of having to bow to the international community, led by the United States, and I think over time if we handle the reconstruction of Iraq correctly, if we're able to keep communal violence down, as it has been, then there will be a great deal of respect for the United States. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  He gave an awful lot of money to families of suicide/homicide bombers, Palestinians.  What can we expect in terms of the reaction from that community?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I think there will be -- no one seemed to me to rejoice at his living, so I don't think too many will be too upset at his being in captivity.  You remember the Iranians are still providing money to Hezbollah and Hamas and, as I understand it, the families of people who will engage in suicide activities against Israel.

So I think in the long run it's another bad guy down, done away with, and perhaps it will make some of the terrorists rethink their position.  But I don't think it will be something that we see overnight.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  All right.  The Iranians went to war with Iraq during the 1980s.  What's the reaction out of Iran after the capture?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I've seen some tickers.  They say such is what happens to despotic rulers.  But they've got their own difficulties and I think they want to be careful in their public statements because they have a populace that has some real questions about the legitimacy of their governing officials.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Has the State Department, you or Secretary Powell, heard from Germany, France or Russia in the last 36 hours?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Yes, Secretary Powell has spoken to his colleagues yesterday and I continued the calls today -- the foreign ministers we've not been able to reach.  He reached 21 of them yesterday.  And to a person they congratulated him on the coalition's success and he, likewise, said we hope to move on now and all of them get together in the reconstruction of Iraq.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Now, let's turn to Afghanistan.  What's the update on how we're doing in Afghanistan?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, we've had about a day and a half of the constitutional Loya Jirga, 502 delegates from all around Afghanistan ready to assemble in Kabul, including 89 women.  They are working their way through procedural issues right now.  They haven't got down to the hard bargaining over the substantive issues such as the role of religion and the role of women in the government, but thus far it was good.  So far, so good.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  What do you predict with religion and women in government? 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think the fact that there are, as I say, 89 out of the 502 delegates are women, and the fact that historically women have had roles in governance in Afghanistan bodes well for the role of women.  And the question of religion I think will be the most hard fought.  I note that of the countries in the Middle East, the majority of them do have comments about the role of Islam in their constitutions.  So it depends on exactly what is said whether it's a problem or not.  Thus far, what we've heard we think the international community can live with.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Intelligence was key to find Saddam Hussein.  Is there something we can learn about the intelligence gathering in Iraq in trying to find Usama bin Laden in Afghanistan?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, as I understand it, it was the intelligence they gained from people that had been picked up and interrogated, and sort of cross-referencing and cross-referencing till we came down to one of a couple of areas near the place where Saddam Hussein was found.  So I think the real lesson is there is no shortcut.  You can get lucky, but it's hard.  It's much better to be thorough and that's what happened. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  I suppose because it may have been a family member or friend in Iraq, and geographically they're very different countries, makes it much harder in Afghanistan. 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I think there is also in Afghanistan the remoteness.  Iraq is a big country but the roads, the infrastructure, are actually quite good.  In Afghanistan, the very remoteness, particularly in the tribal areas, makes it a much more difficult and problematic problem.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Were we close to Saddam before?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  My understanding is we were close to him on several occasions.  I have nothing concrete that I can point to you right now, but that's what I've heard around town as I've talked to my colleagues. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Do you hear the same thing about Usama bin Laden?  Do you have a sense of optimism that sometimes we get close?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I don't think I've heard quite the same.  Early on, there were times when he was on the move, and if we'd have been a little bit more timely, perhaps we would have gotten him.  But I have no knowledge of (inaudible). 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Symbolically, it seems very important that we got Saddam Hussein; the mystery is off for the Iraqi people.  Is that same importance with Usama bin Laden, or more so, less?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think in a different way.  Usama bin Laden is the one more recently reaching out and harming our interests and harming our citizens, so we have immediate need, I think, to repay that.  So, for me, Usama bin Laden is top of the chart. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Are we making the progress that you hoped for in Afghanistan at the rate you hoped for?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Two years since the Bonn process, and here we have the constitutional Loya Jirga taking place at the time the UN process said it should.  There is violence, to be sure, but there is also great success.  Tomorrow we're opening the Kandahar-to-Kabul Road, which is an enormous undertaking and enormous success for President Karzai.  And it has changed dramatically the fortunes of the southern part of Afghanistan's people by linking it up to Pakistan (inaudible) around the area.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Does the media cover Afghanistan enough?  I mean, it seems that it doesn't quite get the ink or the sound that Iraq gets.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, if Saddam Hussein hadn't been captured on Saturday it would be getting plenty of ink, particularly tomorrow as we open this road.  I think you will find it's a rather major media event, and my understanding, there were hundreds of press asked for credentials to cover it.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  All right.  So the Taliban -- have they -- they're pretty much out of Afghanistan, but have they moved into Pakistan?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No, I don't think I'd say they're in Pakistan, though there are some allegations they are in Quetta.  They're in the Federally Administered Tribal Area, which is sort of the so-called no man's land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they travel back and forth, particularly to the south and the southeast of Afghanistan.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  What worries you the most about that region? 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I think what worries me the most is you have President Musharraf, who has been absolutely terrific on the global war on terrorism, and yet we saw yesterday he only narrowly escaped death at the hands of extremists.  And had we not had Pervez Musharraf at the helm of Pakistan, then we could have quite a different equation in South Asia and I think quite a detrimental one.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  And you talk about the fact that the Pakistanis have nuclear weapons, for instance?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I was speaking of the fact that the Pakistanis have 100 and almost 50 million people who need good, solid leadership, and who could be influenced the wrong way by extremists.  And I think it takes a steady hand at the helm to keep guiding Pakistan back to democracy.

The fact that they have nuclear weapons, the so-called Islamabad bomb, certainly is a complicating factor.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  But when you look at Musharraf, General Musharraf, I mean, when he first came to power I didn't think he would be a good friend of ours, but he's been a terrific friend of the United States, hasn't he?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  He's been a terrific friend of ours.  He's also, I think, been a terrific friend to Pakistan.  He does what he does for the health and betterment of his nation, and secondarily to assist us.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  You've got the ISI, though, which is their intelligence agency.  We hear that they're not always loyal to him.  I mean, how does he manage to survive?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think the organization itself is certainly loyal to him, and he has put people into the organization over the last two or three years who are owing allegiance to him.  But there are graduates of the outfit of ISI who are very well known as having different sympathies and who have worked up to 10, 12 years of their lives alongside the Taliban, and they certainly are still rabble-rousing. 

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  All right.  And in Iraq, the Shiites, the Kurds and the Sunnis -- will they be able to, in your mind, live happily ever after together?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, one hopes, but that's where we have to spend the majority of our time.  The Sunni held sway for not just 35 years in Iraq, but literally for hundreds of years.  And now they're dispossessed and we have to find a way to bring the Sunni minority into an appropriate role, both in economic terms and in governance terms while maintaining a very low and hopefully (inaudible) communal violence.  Thus far, things have been okay.  And we've got to continue to work on that.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  How do you do that?  I mean, it almost seems like an impossible task, especially when it goes back so many, you know, so many, many years of bad blood.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, I think we have to rely on the countries in the area, whom the majority are Sunni, to try to use their influence with the Sunnis to persuade them they will be brought into an appropriate governing (inaudible).  We have to work rigorously with the Shia who have been put upon, particularly for the last 35 years in Iraq, to let them see the best way forward is to have an appropriate majority rule in governance of their country.  We've got to make sure that the fruits of any economic reconstruction are spread throughout the country.  So it's a tough task.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  In terms of Iran, what do you foreshadow is the next year, in terms of any relationship we have with Iran? 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, we've got a real bone to pick with the Iranians and that's the fact that they have in their possession al-Qaida and we want them.  And whether they are turned over to us or turned over to countries of their origin, it's the same to us.  We want them out of Iran and where they can be questioned so we can gain knowledge.  If the Iranians are not forthcoming, there cannot be an improvement in our relationship.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  And in terms of the nuclear facility, whether they're doing it for conventional use -- they've got an awful lot of oil -- or for weapons, what's the status of that?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, the IAEA, the decision was quite a good one.  The Iranians have said they'll sign the additional protocol, and of course, the test of this would be the verification to make sure they're not cheating on the agreement.  But at a minimum, I think you can say you've retarded, the international community has retarded the ability of the Iranians to develop illicit nuclear activities.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Do you trust the Iranians?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  The Syrians?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Do you trust -- but you trust General Musharraf? 

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  I trust General Musharraf because he sees very much that his interests and our interests are, at present, very compatible.  I don't think that President Assad of Syria has come to that conclusion, nor have the Iranians.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Who's the bigger problem for us in the immediate future?  Syria or Iran?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Oh, Iran, clearly.  Iran has a well-developed appetite for weapons of mass destruction and documented delivery systems.  They have an unrequited hatred for Israel and they have no overall trust.  And I think they're clearly (inaudible) a threat.  It doesn't have to be so, but they have to make some decisions if they want to change the equation.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  And how do they see their position now that Iraq is -- now that Saddam is gone and we're trying to build a democracy there?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Well, in the short term, I think they see that they have some small conformity of views, particularly in the south.  They don't need the southern part of Iraq to be heated up, so they're not using their influence in an overtly negative way, though clearly and privately and through the use of money, they're trying to buy clerics and buy influence. 

In the longer run, I think a democratic, a truly democratic nation on their borders will give them some cause for worry.  And they are nominally democratic in Iran, but of course, that nominal democracy has been hijacked by theocrats.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Do you think they're behind the insurgence, Iran is behind the insurgence or not in Iraq?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  No, I don't think so.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Who do you think is --

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  But I think that Iran certainly does not do what she needs to do to control her borders.  It allows particularly Ansar al-Islam, AI, to cross back and forth in the Iranian border, and therefore find some safe haven in Iran.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN:  Thank you, sir.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE:  Thank you.