Remarks with Students at Max Planck School

AMBASSADOR COATS: Mr. Secretary, this is part of our school outreach program. We have put Americans into hundreds of classrooms throughout East Germany where there hasn’t been nearly the association and exchange between Americans and Germans that there has been in the former West Germany. We selected this school because it has an outstanding reputation, and we want to thank you for taking your time to spend time with these students. It is a great pleasure for me to introduce to all of you a distinguished American who has had a distinguished career in public service. He is here in Berlin on very important business, and yesterday I kept having to tell people, “the Secretary doesn’t have time to meet with you.” He wanted to come here and spend time and meet with you. So we are really pleased to have him. Mr. Secretary.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. Are the introductions over?

Thank you. It’s a great pleasure to be with you all this morning, and it is pretty exciting coming down Unter den Linden with lights flashing and all kinds of people here. And I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. But, I really did want to have an opportunity to come and meet and talk with you for a little while. I’ll just give a small opening set of remarks, and then we get right into the questions and answers.

It’s a special treat for me to be in what used to be East Berlin, but in an entirely different context. As I think most of you know, most of my life was spent as a soldier, not as a diplomat. In fact, when I was just a few years older than you, about 21 years of age, I came to Germany for the first time, some 43 years ago. I was a young second lieutenant, and my job was to serve in the American Army as part of NATO to guard the west against the east, the Warsaw Pact. And East Berlin was firmly on the other side of that dividing line. And it’s hard to imagine now, especially for young people who have no experience with that period, what a dangerous period we all thought it was. We truly were worried about World War III, we truly were worried about the possibility of thermonuclear war. And it dominated a good part of my life for the next roughly thirty years of my military career in one way or the other. That great contest between east and west in Europe was affecting international relations around the world.

And then I was privileged to still be serving in the Army when it all came to an end on that November evening in 1989 when the wall came down, and this marvelous, historic, beautiful city was once again unified, became one, and then became part of one Germany again. And I tell you what a thrill it was for those of us who are friends of Germany in the United States to see all that happen, to see it happen so quickly. People said it would take a long time before East and West Germany would come together, but it didn’t take a long time, because you truly are one people who wanted to be together.

And a lot has happened in the past ten years since the end of the Cold War. A lot has happened, but what has not changed is that the United States remains as interested in NATO, as interested in Germany, as we were during those long days of the Cold War. The United States and Germany are bound together by many things, and not just our common experience during the Cold War. We have a common value system. We are two nations that believe firmly in democracy, believe firmly in market economic systems, believe firmly in the individual rights of men and women, in the dignity of the individual. And these kinds of value systems and shared experiences and shared sacrifices over the last 50 years will keep our two nations closely bound together. Even though there will be disagreements that come along from time to time, and I’ve seen a number of disagreements in the course of my adult life in both my military and diplomatic career, whether it was the introduction of American missiles back in the mid-80s or whether it was the disagreement of the kind we had last year over whether or not it was the appropriate thing for the United States and other willing members of the coalition to go into Iraq. But even though there was a major disagreement with German political leaders over that issue, we realize that that what holds us together is so much more important. And so we have been doing everything we can to remind the world of how important this relationship between the United States and Germany.

Now you are the inheritors of all of this history. I’m getting to be a pretty old man, and you are the new leaders of Germany, the new leaders…don’t smile, I really am. But you are the ones who are training yourselves, educating yourselves, preparing yourselves to become the new leaders of Berlin, the new leaders of Germany and the new leaders of the international community. It will be up to you to build on this relationship between our two countries. And that’s why I wanted to have an opportunity to talk to you about what might be on your mind.

Why am I in Berlin, and have I come to Berlin often? I’ve come to Berlin many times. I have been here when there was the wall, I’ve been here when there was no wall. I have always admired the courage, the fortitude of the people of Berlin. America knows about Berlin; all Americans know about Berlin and about the importance of this city. I’m here on this particular occasion because 65 nations [and organizations] have sent delegations here to your city to pledge funds for the support of the people of Afghanistan, the Afghan people who have suffered so much over the last several decades. And as you know, in the fall of 2001 after 9/11, the United States felt that it was necessary with a willing coalition of partners to go into Afghanistan to deal with the Taliban because they would not deal with a terrorist organization called Al Qaida, which essentially had kidnapped a country. Afghanistan was using it for its own evil purposes. It is now two and a half years later, and we are working hard to rebuild Afghanistan. And it looks like $8 billion have been raised over the last few days for Afghanistan as a result of this conference.

We are pleased with what is happening in Afghanistan. Schools are being built, hospitals are being built, we are in the process of registering the people of Afghanistan so that they can vote in an election in September in a manner they never cold before. They’ll be able to vote for their own President, vote for their own parliament. I was in Afghanistan just two and a half weeks ago, and I could see people who see hope in their lives again. Three million Afghan refugees who had been driven out of the country because of the deprivations and the degradations they were exposed to by the previous regime, the Taliban, and those who came before the Taliban, three million refugees have come back to Afghanistan just in the last two and the half years. So the work that we are engaged in in Afghanistan is noble work, and Germany is playing a leading role. Your soldiers, your police trainers, your political leaders are involved and are committed to providing a better life for the Afghan people. And I hope that you are proud of what your nation is doing to make Afghanistan a better place, but more importantly to give these people a reason to believe, to give Afghans a reason to realize and understand that the international community is there for them. And Germany has played a key role in that, especially with this conference here in Berlin.

With respect to young people such as yourselves, perhaps in the course of our conversation I’ll hear a little bit more about exchange programs you are involved in, and I’ll hear a little bit more what you are doing with your lives. I may ask you questions just as you are asking me questions. You can ask about anything you want. I don’t care; you can ask anything you want. Just one rule: you pick the question, I pick the answer. And we’ll be okay.

Well, I’m looking forward to this conversion with you. And this is as much of a speech as I want to give, and I’d like to see what questions might be on your mind. So let’s get started with whoever is willing to stand up or raise your hand and go first.

QUESTION: Well, first of all I would like to talk about the political issue, like about NATO enlargement. On Monday, seven countries of Eastern Europe became official members to NATO. And as we all know, these countries are located in Eastern Europe, and they used to be greatly influenced by the communist rule of the Soviet Union, like 15 years ago. And as a reasonable consequence, these countries used to be Cold War enemies of nearly all NATO members up to autumn 1990. Here comes my question. What do you think, what are the reasons for the enlargement of NATO? Could you give an answer for that?

SECRETARY: Yeah, I’ll try. When the Cold War ended, a lot of people said to me—I was the Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff—and people said to me: “Well, fine, if the Cold War is over, the Warsaw Pact will go away. There will be no more Warsaw Pact, the alliance of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European nations.” And they said to me: “Well, if there is no more Warsaw Pact, then why do you need a NATO? Because NATO was created to deal with this. With the Warsaw Pact gone, Soviet Union gone, the Eastern nations as part of the military alliance gone, then you don’t need NATO.” Well, I thought about it and said, “Okay, let’s see what happens.” And a lot of people (inaudible), “Why do we need NATO?”

It turned out that more and more countries wanted to join NATO rather than leave NATO. The Eastern European nations found that if they belonged to NATO, even though there was no Cold War anymore, and even though there might no longer be a threat from the Russian Federation, they wanted to be part of a Euro-Atlantic alliance. They still wanted to be linked to the other nations of Europe and to the United States and to Canada, to the great North American members of NATO. And they found that their security would be enhanced as a European nation if they are a part of a broader community, Euro-Atlantic community which extended across the Atlantic to the North American continent. And so we have found that over the last ten years, more and more nations that used to be behind the Iron Curtain now want to be part of that broader Euro-Atlantic alliance.

And so in 1997 we added the first three, and it was my great honor this past Monday as the American Secretary of State to receive the instruments of accession from the seven new members. And you cannot imagine how proud these seven Prime Ministers were, how pleased they were, how happy they were, to come to Washington and to present to me the instruments of accession which made them a member of this great alliance.

Is it an alliance that is expected to go to war somewhere? No. It is an alliance that is going to have to fight across the central plains of Germany and Poland? No. It’s an alliance that continues to be drawn together in the hope (inaudible) by shared values in democracy, believing in mutual security, collective security, believing in market economic systems, believing in the individual rights of men - all of those things that I talked about at the beginning. And it is an alliance that, rather than looking for trouble here in Europe, is seeing if it could help nations elsewhere in the world deal with its problems. So now NATO, instead of looking across an Iron Curtain at Russia, is in Afghanistan providing security for elections, providing security for people as they rebuild their homes and rebuild their communities. NATO, for the first time in its history, has undertaken that kind of mission which used to be called “out of area”, something strange—No longer strange. This great alliance has the capacity to do things in other parts of the world and to bring peace to other parts of the world. And so it is an alliance that will continue to grow.

There were also three other nations in Washington earlier this week: Romania, Croatia and Macedonia, who are not yet NATO members, but want to become NATO members. And so the short answer I use when people ask me: “Why don’t you close down NATO? The Warsaw Pact is gone,” is: “How do you close down a club when everybody keeps wanting to join the club?” So, the club is alive and well and thriving. And I think NATO will continue to thrive for many, many years to come.

QUESTION: Mr. Powell, if Bush wins the elections in November, will you run for Secretary of State again?

SECRETARY: We have a saying in the American government for senior officials like myself, and that is: “You serve at the pleasure of the President.” So you never say whether you will stay on or whether you will go, because it is the choice the President makes, and of course you consult with the President about it. And so we are confident, I am confident, that the President will be reelected, but I will serve at his pleasure. So we don’t answer this at this point. One doesn’t know. I serve at his pleasure.

That’s called a “slide away.”

(Laughter)

QUESTION: What I want to ask is, we were all very happy when the wall came down, but what we had to recognize after it was that the situation in the world didn’t grow calmer, safer. How you explain such tension all over the world? There are too many wars.

SECRETARY: History did not end when the wall came down. Nobody would have expected that we would see the kind of conflict in the Balkans, in Europe. After the wall came down, people thought those days were over. So new challenges faced the international community, and in Europe we saw the Balkans break up, and slowly we are trying to work our way through. The situation in the Balkans, Macedonia, Croatia is stable, but they have a problem in Kosovo, tensions with Serbia and Montenegro. But in general, Europe is far more at peace and more stable, and it is less likely that there is any major conflict between the European nations than we have seen in the last several hundred years. So there is stability there.

We have seen a sweep of democracy in Latin America, where every country with the exception of Cuba is a democracy. Not all of them are solid democracies. They all have challenges, and they are all learning how democracy works, how market economic systems work. We are trying to do more with respect to Africa. The United States is putting a great deal of money into Africa for that purpose, to fight HIV/AIDS and to help them with development.

The biggest problems we have really are in the Middle East, where we have not been able to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we are working hard on it, and there are some new initiatives that are coming forward that we may be able to build on to see if we can get the peace process and the Road Map moving forward. And then, of course, we have the situation in Afghanistan, and people say: “Well, this terrible war.” Well, any war is a terrible war. No one likes war. But in Afghanistan, we have to take a look at what we have been able to accomplish, and that is removing a terrible regime and freeing the people, so they can build a nation for themselves.

That’s what we are trying to do in Iraq. Iraq was a very very contentious issue, as we all know. Germany disagreed with the decision of President Bush, and Prime Minister Blair and Prime Minister Berlusconi and Prime Minister Aznar and others going into Iraq and we did. And in Iraq, we removed a terrible regime, a regime that oppressed its people, a regime that was developing weapons of mass destruction, a regime that had invaded its neighbors, had gassed its own people. Particularly in Berlin and in Germany, people should sensitive to that kind of issue. A regime that killed 5,000 of its own people using poison gas. And that regime is gone.

With the generous contributions of the United States and many other nations, we are trying now to reconstruct Iraq just as we are doing in Afghanistan. It’s a difficult situation, because we still have elements of the former regime and terrorists who are causing trouble, trouble of the kind you saw yesterday with the loss of five brave American servicemen as well as the four American contractors who were there delivering food. That’s what they were doing; they were helping to protect food deliveries to the Iraqi people. But the United States and its coalition partners are going to stay the course; we are going to stay the course because we believe what we are doing is right, and we believe that the Iraqi people are as deserving of freedom and the right to chose their own leaders and the right to become a responsible member of the international community -- they are as deserving of that right as any other nation.

In other parts of the world, we are seeing positive developments. The Libyans decided to give up all of their weapons of mass destruction and join…take a more responsible attitude with respect to being a member of the international community. We are working with friends and partners in Asia to bring pressure on the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons programs. So, 2004 is like so many other years in history. There are many good things that are happening, there are also dangers and troubles in the world that have to be dealt with. And the way to deal with those troubles is through partnerships, through coalitions that come together to achieve great purposes, and to put down those who are causing trouble.

When you look at the troubles in the world that you made reference to, and there are troubles, these are not people who are causing trouble because they want to make life better for people. These are not people who have the best interests of their countries at heart: these are terrorists who are killing innocent people. These are the remnants of dictatorial regimes who don’t want to give up their dictatorial approach to governments. And it is incumbent upon those of us who believe in the rights of people, who believe that people should have representative forms of government, who do not believe that one should develop weapons to destroy other people -- it is incumbent on those of us who believe in these values to try to help those who are trying to obtain these values for their own society and to defeat terrorists, to defeat those who would blow up innocent people going to work in Madrid on a beautiful morning. They didn’t blow up the elite, they blew up commuters, they blew up people who were going to work, they blew up Muslims, they blew up Christians, they blew up young people. There can be no justification for this. So those of us who believe in the values that I’ve talked about, the values you are learning about in this wonderful school, need to stand steady, stand strong and fight against this kind of terrorism if we want to make this a better world in 2004 and 2005.

Okay, you look like you want to say something.

(cross-talk)

QUESTION: Personal, but is there a person that you really admire, sir, and why?

SECRETARY: There are so many people that I admire. I’m always reluctant to single out one individual, because you would be doing a disservice to someone else. In the course of my life, I’ve benefited from many impressive people who have come through my life. My parents, first and foremost. My parents were immigrants. They came from the Caribbean, the island of Jamaica, with nothing. They came to the United States because they couldn’t find any work in Jamaica. They needed to find a place to go and they came to the United States, just as so many Germans over the years have come to the United States, and they were the most impressive people in my life.

Over the course of my military career, I met many leaders who meant a lot to my career and to who I am today. What they had in common was that they believed in themselves; they worked hard and they taught me the virtue of hard work and always being optimistic about the future and optimistic about what I was doing. And then, when I became more senior in the Army and now moved over to the diplomatic world, I have had the privilege of working with so many wonderful leaders and Foreign Ministers, and here’s where I have to be very political and not single out any one, because I’ll get a phone call ten minutes later after I leave here saying, “why didn’t you mention so and so, and just that person.”

But I’m deeply impressed by the leaders that I do work with—Prime Ministers, Presidents, and Foreign Ministers—because even though we may differ politically and we may have disagreements over particular issues, I find that the leaders of the nations of the democratic world I work with increasingly have a belief in democracy, increasingly are trying to use the resources of their nations for improvements in the lives of their citizens as opposed to using the resources of the nation for the wrong kinds of purposes: the kinds of purposes we saw 50, 60, 70 years ago which led to wars and led to invasions. And so many people have impressed me.

And what I would say to you is as you go through life, and you are just starting, so many people will touch your life, and when you get my age, you will find it very hard to single out any one person because you really are a product of your experience. You are a product of all the people who touch you in one way or the other. Some people will touch you for good and make you better. Some people you will not like later. But they nevertheless were part of your experience. They influence you in some way. And I always say to young people: learn from the bad experiences as much as you learn from the good experiences. Very often you learn more from the bad experiences about yourself then the good experiences. And when you have one of those bad experiences—and I’ve had lots of them in my life, both as somebody your age and as an adult—and you have things that go wrong and you just wonder: “Oh, my heavens, that’s terrible, how am I going to get through this, how will I face tomorrow?” You will face tomorrow. Tomorrow comes; be ready for it. When you have one of these failures, when you have one of these bad experiences, learn from it, and once you have figured out what you did wrong and you’ve learned from it, then throw it away. Forget about it. You don’t have a rewind button in life. You can only go forward. You can’t go backwards and fix anything. So forget it. Learn, forget it, take that experience. Make yourself a better person as a result of that experience, good or bad, and just keep moving on.

QUESTION: Concerning the Iraqi war, how do you value the current opinion of the U.S. Americans towards the development of the war, for the troops haven’t found any WMDs yet?

SECRETARY: The American people still are supportive of what we did. They understood why we went into Iraq. When we made the decision to go into Iraq last year, it was in the belief that we had from our intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies of other countries and a whole body of opinion, and the body of information and fact that had been accumulated over twelve years from the end of the last war, that Saddam Hussein was still in possession of weapons of mass destruction. That he had never lost the intent and desire to have such weapons; that he was maintaining the infrastructure to develop such weapons in his chemical industry and in other aspects of his industrial base. And so we also believed that he had stockpiles of these weapons. That was the evidence that was available to us. It was the best judgment we made. Since going into Iraq, we have found evidence of his continued intention to have such weapons. Remember, he used them twice against his own people and against Iran, so why should we assume that he no longer had an interest in having those kinds of weapons. So his intention was still there and we found evidence of the capability to produce such weapons.

Now, what we have not found are actual stockpiles of the weapons. We don’t know why we haven’t found stockpiles. We thought there would be stockpiles. We have not found those stockpiles. But the work continues. There is a great deal of documentation to look at and there are a number of people to be interviewed still who will have knowledge of this subject and there are a lot of places that are still waiting to be examined and looked at. But the solid basis of evidence that we had was that the stockpiles existed. One thing that there is no doubt in my mind about is that if he had not been dealt with, if he had just been allowed to ignore the international community yet again and the sanctions went away and nobody was paying attention to him again, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have tried to rebuild whatever capability he had lost over the years and continue to be a threat to his neighbors, continue to be a threat to his people.

And that is not a problem any longer. He is sitting in a jail. That regime is crushed. Remaining elements of that regime are causing us trouble. They will be dealt with. But now the Iraqi people have a new constitution that is emerging. It is called an administrative law, which will become a constitution. We are getting ready to turn sovereignty back over to the Iraqi people and we are getting the Iraqi people ready for elections. It is costing us lives, it is costing us money, but it is the right thing to be doing. It is a noble cause because when we are through, when the coalition has finished its work, there will be a country there by the name of Iraq that will be democratic and will not be a threat to anybody.

QUESTION: I think her question was more about the controversy in America with people towards the Iraqi war, so my question would be do you think that the U.S. people might maybe turn to a third party and this could become more dominant than now there are two? I mean in Germany there are certainly more parties that are a bit more influential.

SECRETARY: The American political scene is interesting, in that every effort there has been over the last 40 or 50 years to develop a third political party has not worked. It seems that, unlike our European friends who have lots of parties in any one country, Americans generally can put all their political differences and disagreements and perspectives and points of view into two major parties. From time to time, another individual will come along, somebody like a Mr. Ross Perot and others -- there is a third candidate now, Mr. Ralph Nader -- will come along and suggest that perhaps a third party is necessary. But the American political spectrum isn’t broad enough, in my judgment, to handle a major third party. So for most of our history and our modern political history it’s been the Republican Party and the Democratic Party battling it out with some fringe parties to come in from time to time. But our political spectrum can pretty much be accommodated by the two big parties that we have.

In Germany it is three and a few more. In some other countries it is, you know, two dozen. And you form coalitions. But we don’t have that history; we don’t have that tradition of forming political coalitions to get a government in place. We kind of are like -- Americans, you know, we play baseball; you either win or you lose. And so either the Republicans win or Democrats win. But they don’t then try to find a coalition between Republicans and Democrats to form a government. The beauty, I think, of our system…others would say it is a disadvantage of our system, but it is our system and each nation picks a system that best suits its history, tradition, and political aspirations. So I don’t think there will be a third party rising up.

Would you like to see a third party in the United States?

STUDENT : Yes.

SECRETARY: Why not?

STUDENT: After all, in a baseball game it might get even so…

SECRETARY: There is nothing that prevents it from happening. I mean, be my guest. Well, no, don’t be my guest.

(Laughter)

QUESTION: Why not?

SECRETARY: There is nothing that prevents it from happening. There have been third party movements over the course of our history. They have tended not to be successful because the American people generally believe that the Democrats and the Republicans, that’s enough. We had a communist party for a quite a period, it never became very large, in the 30’s and 40’s. And it may still exist on paper, but nobody pays a lot of attention to it. But to each his own political system.

Are you thinking of forming another party here in Germany?

STUDENT: Now you mention it. I really don’t know but I just wanted to know. So I’d take…

STUDENT: Good morning.

SECRETARY: Please, ladies first.

QUESTION: Since 9/11 the safety precautions and relations have become more and more important, and, well, you’re always in the center of attention, and I’m interested in how you handle that situation. Are you still able to enjoy private life? Could you possibly tell us a story about it?

SECRETARY: Since 9/11 things have changed. The world has changed. We in the United States found that we were very vulnerable. And we had to take action to protect ourselves, we’ve had to do some things with visas and how easy it is to get into the United States to make it a little more difficult, because we simply had to know who’s coming into our country. But we have tried very hard to also restore a sense of normalcy. We want to remain an open country. So we have to protect ourselves and know who’s coming, but at the same time do it in a way that doesn’t deter anybody from coming to visit the United States. We want you to come and go to our concerts, and go to Disneyland and go to Disney World and just do anything you want, and so we want people to come to our country.

Now with respect to my personal life and the personal life of officials, obviously some precautions are necessary. But I try to live as normal a life as I can in my position. I live not too far outside of Washington, in the suburbs, in Virginia, and I get to work very early in the morning, I get up earlier than I suspect most of you do. I also suspect –

QUESTION: At what time do you get up in the morning?

SECRETARY: Five.

(Laughter)
What time do you get up?

STUDENT: Six-thirty.

SECRETARY: Okay, and what time are you here?

STUDENT: Almost 8 o’clock.

SECRETARY: By the time you get here, I’ve been at work for one and a half, two hours. What time do you go home?

STUDENT: Two o’clock.

SECRETARY: I go home at seven to eight, with two bags of homework.

(Laughter)

I do have classes the next morning, and I have to know -- you know, when I went to bed last night at midnight, I had to read all about this school. That was my homework.

STUDENT: (inaudible)

SECRETARY: But I try to protect my weekends. So when the weekend comes, I’ll try to stay home as much as I can, with my wife, and we’re married for 41 years, and my wife is very active in public life too, and for the most part, my children will come over, my children are all adults: my son is a prominent government official and my two daughters live in New York, one is an actress and one is a television producer. And they’re always running in and out, and my two grandsons are always running in and out. And I’ll go play in my garage and work on my cars. For me, that’s very relaxing, to work on my cars, because unlike political problems, which sometimes are very difficult to solve, when my car doesn’t start, I know what I have to do. I can figure it out quickly. It’s either an electrical problem or a fuel problem or something that I can analyze, know the answer to, and fix like that. It’s not always that easy in politics. So I use my weekends to relax, go to church, spend time with my family and kind of get away a little bit.

You can never, in this job, you can never get away totally, because the phones ring all day long, on the weekends even when I’m home. And you have to remember that the American Secretary of State has responsibilities that cover the world. So when I get up on Sunday morning, a little bit later, say 6:30 or 7:00 – it’s not that bad – you, you (inaudible), but it’s 12 hours to China or to Japan, so I will talk to people, my colleagues in Japan or Tokyo, Korea, and it’s the evening for them already, so I do that. And then I turn my attention to Europe, which is seeing the afternoon, six to seven to eight hours ahead, or the Middle East, which is eight hours ahead. And so even though I’m at home and I’m relaxing and maybe reading a book or watching television, I still have to use my telephones to cover the whole world. I follow the sun all the way around the world with phone calls. And I watch a lot of movies – I like television and movies. What’s the favorite television show here? What’s the favorite American television show here?

STUDENT: “24.”

SECRETARY: “24?” Yeah, you, everybody like “24?” I don’t like it. (Laughter) No, no, my children love it, I’ve never been able to get into it. My kids love it. I watched it a few times but I couldn’t get into it. My daughter is “you don’t understand “24?” Dad, what’s wrong with you? It’s a great show.” Okay, who’s next?

QUESTION: What do you, the U.S.A., as the leading country in the war against terrorism and for democracy, intend to do to preserve freedom of speech in Russia and to stop killing of innocent people in Chechnya?

SECRETARY: What’s the first part of your question – the leading country?

QUESTION: The leading country in the struggle against terrorism and for democracy. What do you intend to do?

SECRETARY: Yes, which country is the biggest problem?

QUESTION: What do you intend to do to preserve freedom of speech in Russia and to stop the killing of innocent people in Chechnya?

SECRETARY: Okay. Russia has come a very long way in the last ten years from the days when it was the Soviet Union, an empire of 250 million people with so many republics that didn’t wish to be a part of the Soviet Union and countries that didn’t want to be a part of the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire and the Warsaw Pact. And they…in one brief moment in history, the Soviet Union lost its territorial stretch, they’re losing the Warsaw Pact nations, they’re losing the Baltics as well, as part of that. It lost its philosophy, its political philosophy, lost its military superpower status, so it became the Russian Federation only, say, 150 million as opposed to 250 million, so it went through a very traumatic period…for 50 years believing that it was the way of the future, to discover it was a way of the past. And it went through a difficult time, through Mr. Yeltsin’s period and then a few years ago, Mr. Putin came in and began to bring a sense of order back to the country and put in place a level of confidence of the people in the country again, confidence in the people and its leaders. And he just won a resounding election.

At the same time, we have noticed in Russia there are certain steps that have been taken by the government with respect to have the media, the freedom of the media. And we have spoken to the Russians, and I have had conversations with President Putin and some of his colleagues, about the need for having complete openness in the media and allowing the media to cover everything, to allow the media to participate fully in political campaigns. This is the hallmark of a democratic system; a democratic system in our judgment needs a free and open media to watch everything and to report on everything. It isn’t pleasant all the time, but it is an essential feature of democracy to have this other element of society – free media – commenting on everything that’s going on. And we’ve been very candid with Mr. Putin about this. He recognizes it, he understands it. He thinks they are doing well to meet the standard; we think there’s more they can do and we said so.

With respect to Chechnya, they consider that part of Russia and not something that can be separated from Russia, and we believe it’s a very, very difficult campaign for them (inaudible). We recognize Chechnya as being part of Russia, but we have suggested to them repeatedly that they have to be very careful about the language they use, force to maintain control, they have to be very careful about the political actions they take to put in place a government that reflects the people of Chechnya, not just the desires of Moscow, and we have been very straightforward and candid with them about the need to obey basic standards of human rights with respect to their activities and the activities of their military and other personnel in Chechnya. We hope that they can find a solution with the Chechens that will bring peace to that very troubled area and handle the difficulties that we have seen there over the years.

Okay. What are you studying, what do you want to be? What do you study, what do you want to learn, are you going to go to college, you’re going to go somewhere else? Where?

STUDENT: Business administration.

SECRETARY: Business administration. Good. What do you want to be, a banker?

STUDENT: No.

SECRETARY: Want to own a Starbucks?

(Laughter)

What do you want to do?

QUESTION: You emphasized that you talked about the strong connection of the democratic countries all over the world, but why do you exclude yourself from this international dialogue? I’m thinking about the canceling of the Kyoto protocol.

SECRETARY: I don’t think we exclude ourselves from international dialogue. We believe that we are active members and leading members of all the international organizations. We want to…the U.N., NATO, Organization of American States and so many others…and we try to be a good partner in all of these organizations. At the same time, when an issue comes along that we have a disagreement over and we don’t believe a particular position will serve our interest and in fact we think it might be detrimental to our interest and the interest of others, we believe that it is our role to speak out in a principled way and to tell people why we don’t agree with a particular position. And if we can’t find consensus, then we can’t find consensus, then we move on.

That was the case with the Kyoto protocol, in that as we examined the protocol and saw what impact our adherence to that protocol would have on our own economy, and to what extent it would actually solve the problem that was identified by those who have worked on this for so many years, we felt that this protocol was not the way to go. And so we came up with an energy plan, we’re doing other things to reduce these kind of emissions, but we just didn’t think Kyoto was the way to go, and rather than pretend that we thought it was the way to go, we said so. We don’t believe Kyoto is the right way to go and therefore we did not enter into the protocol.

There have been other issues like that, very contentious. The International Criminal Court is a case in point, where most of the nations of the world have signed on to the Rome statute that created the International Criminal Court and enough nations have ratified it so that it is now in effect. We had a problem with that court because of the nature of our constitutional system and the obligations that we believe we have to bring American servicemen and women and other officials in our government who have done something that people believe is wrong, to bring them before our system and not an international system that is not represented by a parliament in any way, it’s just a free standing international body. We just felt that it was inconsistent with our constitutional responsibilities to our men and women in uniform.

It’s also the case that we have more men and women in uniform than anybody serving around the world, and therefore the court had a greater impact on us than it might have on other nations. So we respect the views of those who decided to sign the Rome statue and to ratify it. We signed it and then took away the basis of that signature. And we respect the rights of other nations to do that, and hope that they will respect our rights not to. And we’re working on what we call Article 98 agreements with nations around the world so that we can station our forces and continue to do what we’re doing, but at the same time not subject them to the jurisdiction of the court. So it’s a case where we want to be with our partners and agree on every issue, but when we don’t agree on an issue then we think it is proper for us to take a principled position, tell you why we don’t agree, and why we will be doing something that is different. Consensus is great, but not if it is consensus at the expense of what you believe your principles are.

And what are your going to do when you…?

STUDENT: I want to be a diplomat.

SECRETARY: You want to be a diplomat. You want to be, you want Joschka Fischer’s job?

QUESTION: Not really, no, thank you.

(Laughter)

So my question is, even though we do share the same values and tradition of democracy, I think from our point of view we have drifted apart, Europe and America, not only over the question of Iraq but also over economy. The Euro and the U.S. dollar are competing, so what do you think that way is leading, the whole development?

SECRETARY: I think things are changing, but I don’t know about drifting apart. It’s not like the days of the Cold War. The European Union is now growing, there’s greater financial and economic integration within the European Union, but if we’re drifting that far apart, why did I stand up there last Monday and receive seven Prime Ministers who came forward to say, “hey, we want to be part of this club, be part of NATO?” Why do I spend so much of my time talking to European Union leaders? High Representative Javier Solana or Commissioner Chris Patten…I spend an enormous amount of time with my European Union colleagues. So do my other colleagues in the American cabinet, the Commerce Secretary, the Trade Representative.

So things are changing and shifting, and we had a major disagreement with some of our European friends and most of the European public over Iraq, but when you look at who is standing with us in Iraq, most of the NATO nations are in Iraq, even if NATO as an alliance is not in Iraq. So I think there is more shared interest in common values linking us together than pulling us apart, but history is always continuing and history always causes changes to take place; and so even though it isn’t like the days of NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, and Europeans are integrating in the European Union more, and getting closer together with respect to common currencies and common economic policies, I don’t see this as necessarily something that causes you to drift apart from your North American friends. In fact, I think it’s quite the contrary: as Europe becomes more integrated economically, the world is becoming more integrated economically. No block, the European Union, the United States, is separated from any other block, because of the power of the Internet, because of the power to move products and capital around the world so fast now, because of the World Trade Organization, the reduction of trade barriers, the reduction of tariffs. Rather then being separated, I think we’re becoming more and more integrated. Speed of travel -- one of the big issues in America right now is outsourcing. We are call centers for, you know, our computers, you need to fix your computer. And you go online there, you pick up a telephone to call somebody. You don’t know where you’re calling, it’s probably India. Only modern telecommunications allows you to do this. So rather than drifting apart, things are changing, things are shifting.

But I think the world is becoming more integrated with respect to economic integration, with respect to political integration, for that matter. Increasingly we are integrating because you all can see everything that’s going on in the world instantaneously, through CNN, through MTV, you watch television programs that come in from everywhere in the world now, and so we’re no longer separated by time and space, we’re no longer separated by political boundaries, there are no more political walls that keep you from knowing about what’s going on somewhere else in the world or me from knowing what’s going on somewhere else in the world. So I would submit that as we go down this path into history we’ll become more integrated. And the blocks that we see now will remain blocks; there will always be a European Union with a huge economic potential, there will always be NAFTA, the United States, Mexico and Canada increasingly with the other nations of the western hemisphere may look like a block, they need each other. You will see that China is a powerful economic player, but it needs American markets, it needs western capital. And so what I see is as much integration taking place as separation taking place.

What are you going to be? Doesn’t anybody know what they’re going to be, besides a diplomat?

STUDENT: No, I still don’t know.

SECRETARY: I didn’t know until I was in the Army.

STUDENT: Yes. First of all I want to say that I’m an Afghan, I’m from Afghanistan, but I’ve grown up…

SECRETARY: Where, where in Afghanistan?

QUESTION: From Kabul, but I’ve grown up here in Germany, I’m living here for 13 years and I want to say that I’m very happy about and very grateful to Europe’s and America’s help for Afghanistan, to rebuild Afghanistan, especially the humanitarian and the financial aid. And I want to say that I really appreciate that because after so many years of wars and so many years of suffering, I think they just (inaudible). Yes, and I’ve got a question too, could you imagine that democracy as we know it here in the western world, I want to say, will work especially in for instance Afghanistan or Iraq, too, in the future too, or do you think, no, democracy and Islam do not fit together?

SECRETARY: I think it’ll work. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work. It’s clear in Afghanistan that it will work. The people came together twice now for a Loya Jirga, grand assembly of leaders, and out of that Loya Jirga process, the Afghanistan form of representation and democracy, they picked a leader to take them into the future, Hamid Karzai, and they approved a constitution, just a few months ago. And so they came together and they did it peacefully. And now they are busy registering people for election. I was in Kabul two and a half weeks ago and went to a school, not terribly different from this school, much smaller, but a school, where women were registering, filling out the papers, getting the stamps, getting the laminated registration cards and proudly walking out with a registration card that’s going to let them vote this fall for their own leaders. So there is no reason that a place like Afghanistan should not have full free, open, fair elections and a democratic form of government that can be changed by another election. No reason that is beyond the capacity of the Afghans to create.

And why should it be beyond the capacity of the Iraqis to do likewise? They’re educated, they are now watching the whole world, they’re learning about democracy from television, there are satellite dishes all over Baghdad, they’re busy debating with each other, arguing with each other. The process we went through a few months ago to…a few weeks ago to get the administrative law written was a good example. The Shias are arguing with the Kurds, the Sunnis were wondering about their situation, and they worked it all out within the Governing Council, not perfectly, but with compromises. But that’s what democracies are all about, compromises.

And so I see no reason why the system can’t work in Iraq or in Afghanistan. It doesn’t have to be an American system, a direct clone of the way we do it in the United States. Each nation has to take its own history, its own culture, its own experience, its own desires, its own aspirations and dreams, and create a representative form of government that will capture all of these elements of desires, aspirations and history. And America has some experience, Germany has a great deal of experience with the democratic process. So those of us who have gone through this historic development can provide guidance and assistance to new nations, but not for the purpose of imposing on these nations and saying this is the way it must be done, but giving them guidance and showing them how it can be done and how it can be adapted to their particular culture and history. (inaudible) Are you in touch with your family in Kabul? Are you in communications with your family, those who are still in Kabul?

STUDENT: They live, most of them live in Pakistan, refugees. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY: I hope they will get back, there are still a million refugees outside the country and we hope they all get back. Yes. And what are you going to be?

QUESTION: Journalist or talk master or something like that.

(Laughter).

My question is about the situation in the Middle East, too, so what do you think about the fact that Israel builds a wall around Palestine and do you think it can help the situation, the situation in the Middle East?

SECRETARY: We regret that Israel found it necessary to build a wall for its security, but Israel had a problem that it felt it had to deal with, and that was terrorists who are coming into Israel to blow up innocent people, people who are going about their daily life, who are riding buses to go to work and school. And they felt that one response to the security threat was to build a wall. The direction that the wall took -- and its mostly a fence, not a wall, very few sections of it are high walls, its mostly a fence -- and they found it necessary to build this fence with occasional wall sections to it, as a way of protecting themselves. They have a similar arrangement in Gaza.

We expressed some concerns about the direction that the fence was taking and how it was making significant inroads into Palestinian territory, and the Israelis made adjustments to the fence and in some places they have torn down and removed and put in other places sections of the fence. The Israelis say that this is necessary for their security and after we reach that day, hopefully, when there is an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians that will bring peace, then the fence can always be removed or changed or come down. But for the moment the Israelis felt that they needed this fence for their security, and that’s the judgment of a sovereign country. What we have said to them is, be careful that the route of the fence does not prejudge final settlement issues that have to be worked out between you and the Palestinians.

What are you going to do?

STUDENT: I want to be a musician.

SECRETARY: Musician? What do you play?

STUDENT: Yes. Guitar, electric guitar.

SECRETARY: Rock musician?

QUESTION: Yes, metal. My question towards you is you probably know the author Michael Moore. What do you think of his books and what do you think of his opinion? He is known to be a critic of the Bush government of America.

SECRETARY: Well, I’m not that familiar with his work, but I understand that it’s familiar work to all of you students. Criticism is a part of the democratic system and in our form of government, in the United States and in Germany, people are free to express the most negative opinions about our governments and there are those who are free to express the most positive opinions about our governments, and so criticism is an essential feature of democracy. Is there a specific aspect of Mr. Moore’s criticism that you want me to talk to or is it just general dislike?

STUDENT: The general aspect of his last book, he was talking about the connections of the Iraqi-owned oil, the interest of oil.

SECRETARY: The oil in Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. If the suggestion is that the United States went into Iraq to get control of the oil and use the oil for our own purposes or to exploit the oil of Iraq in a way that it benefits America but not Iraq, he’s wrong. They’re pumping roughly two billion barrels a day now and all of the money that comes from the oil coming out of Iraq goes into a fund that is used by the Iraqis to fund their own salaries, to fund the functioning of their government, and we are helping rebuild the oil infrastructure so that they can pump even more oil and get more revenue, and the revenue goes back to the Iraqis. The United States Congress has passed a supplemental, as you know, for $18 billion, that helps the Iraqis reconstruct their country, and we are not asking for any of that oil money to be used to repay us. The oil money is being used by the Iraqis for their own infrastructure purposes, their own operational cost. And we made clear from the beginning that this had nothing to do with trying to get control over Iraqi oil. And nobody can give any evidence -- they can charge you, but they can’t give any evidence -- that the United States in some way is taking advantage of this situation and, quote, “stealing Iraqi oil.” Quite the contrary: Iraqi oil is being used by the Iraqi people for their own purposes and to benefit their own society.

QUESTION: (inaudible) Can you promise me that?

SECRETARY: Yes, yes, I promise, I promise. Yes, sure I promise, but tell me, you’ve got to give me evidence other than somebody said in a book that we’re doing what is said in the book. We’re not, because the money goes into something that is called the Development Fund for Iraq, so the money goes to the Iraqis. We don’t want to steal their oil, we haven’t -- we pay a lot for oil, just as Germany does. It’s a commodity that belongs to other nations and when those other nations take this commodity out of the ground and sell it in the open market, we buy it in the open market. One of the big economic problems in the United States right now is the high price of oil, because that’s what it takes to…that’s the price we have to pay in the open market place. The United States does not have enough oil of its own, does not produce enough oil of its own, so we buy from Europe, we buy from Venezuela, we buy from the Middle East, and we pay for it. We don’t steal it, we pay for it. Okay?

You’re back!

STUDENT: Sorry? Yeah, I’m back.

SECRETARY: How come you get two?

STUDENT: Sorry?

SECRETARY: How come you get two questions?

QUESTION: I don’t know, I got the mike again.

(Laughter.)

Have you ever experienced any racial discrimination, particularly during the time you spent in the Army, or now as a Secretary of State?

SECRETARY: Not lately, no. But all black Americans, especially my age, were subject to racial discrimination at one point or another. I knew as a young man what I could do and could not do in certain parts of my country. When I went south for the first time at roughly age 18 -- having grown up in New York City, but went south for the first time -- this was in the days when we still had segregation, when there were no motels that I could stay at, and you had to behave a certain way if you didn’t want to get in trouble. And you had to behave that certain way simply because your skin was black. And so if you wanted to go from New York to Fort Benning, Georgia in the late 50s and early 60s – that late – you drove all the way through, and you didn’t stop anywhere. You stopped at a friend’s house. And there were two motels along that road where blacks could go, and of course only blacks went there. And that’s the way it was. A hundred years, almost a hundred years after a Civil War that said that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but that’s the way it was.

And then we had the great Civil Rights revolution of the early 60s and the work of Dr. Martin Luther King. And what Dr. King did that was so great was not just that he demonstrated and marched, he took a mirror and he held it up in front of the American people and he said, “look, is this what we want to be, is this who we are, aren’t we better than this?” And the American people took a deep look and said, yes, we are better than that. And so the civil rights law was passed in 1964. I was a young captain, I’d just come back from Vietnam, I had fought for a year for my country and was back in the south and still couldn’t go to these places. And then finally, we passed the civil rights law in July of 1964 and the next day I went back downtown, with the law, and went to a restaurant and got a hamburger. I thought that was a great achievement. Because if I had done it a week earlier they would have arrested me. And then the next year, 1965, the Voting Rights Act, which was so basic. How could we have a situation where people couldn’t vote in America in the 1960s?. But we did. That was changed. And so the legal basis of all discrimination was removed.

It doesn’t mean, though, that we are a perfect society yet. We are still a society that has discrimination in it, there is still too high a percentage of minorities who are not able to achieve what we would like all American to achieve. The good thing about our nation, which makes me so proud, is that we have the ability as a democracy to change, to adjust. When we see something wrong, we may be slow to react, we may be slow to deal with it, but we ultimately do deal with it, because we have a Constitution and we have a Declaration of Independence that said certain things about who we’re going to be as a nation as we went into the future. And that’s the beauty of a democratic system. It can adjust to the needs of the people, as the people determine those needs. And so America has come a long way.

When I came in the Army in 1958, I came to Germany for the first time in early 1959. For someone to have said, you know, this little black kid, this young black lieutenant Powell, he’s in Germany somewhere, he’s going to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Army, everybody would have laughed – it’s not possible. And not only was it impossible, it was unthinkable. Only five years, only eight years earlier, the Army was still segregated. Truman desegregated it. Up until the late 40s you had black people in black units and white people in white units, that was it. And I was in the first wave of integrated military units. And if anyone had said that I at that time could have become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would have said, no, you’re crazy, it can’t happen. In fact, people would look at you in a unit and say, well, is that black lieutenant good, I mean is he, or is he black, and couldn’t be good? That’s what I faced for many years, but now all of that is changed and the legal basis of discrimination is gone. Now we have to work on the reality of the situation and make sure that, while the legal basis is gone, we remove all of the social or cultural bases of discrimination. It takes time. But that’s the beauty of the democratic system: it can adjust and can always be seeking its democratic basis in the rights of people, in belief in openness and freedom and the belief that no one should be denied what they’re able to achieve as a result of their own dreams, their own aspirations, their own ambitions, their own willingness to work for that dream.

Now someone is crawling along behind me here, so let me just close with this. You all are very, very nice and wonderful young people and I thank you for giving me this opportunity and I just hope that as you continue your education here and get ready for whatever the future holds for you…I don’t know, the next great jazz, rock guitar player of the world or the next most successful businessman in the world, or the next surgeon, or the next Nobel laureate, the next Max Planck…I hope you apply yourself, I hope you work hard, I hope you’re all successful and I hope above all that you truly believe in your country, and you truly believe in this democratic system that you have. Germany has come so far in the last 50 years, to put in place from the end of World War II this solid democracy where people argue, where your parties debate, where everybody looks at the poll numbers going up and down, it’s a noisy system. Democracy is not intended to be an easy system. Dictatorships are easy systems. Democracies are difficult systems because people fight, people argue, people are trying to struggle to find the right answer and to do it in an open way. And that’s what happens in Germany, that’s what happens in the United States, it’s what happens in those nations in the world that call themselves democracies. And it was never intended to be an easy system. It was intended to be a system that at the end of the day reflected, not the world of a politician, not the desires of a king, but the will of the people. And so all this noise of politics and accusations and the media all mixed up, it has a name, it’s called democracy, and the only thing I’m absolutely sure about is that it works. It works in the United States, it works in Germany and soon, real soon, it’s going to be entrusted to you guys to build it and make it even better and I hope and I’m sure, that you’re preparing yourself for that day. Do you have one last question?

QUESTION: I and a couple of others among us went to the United States to go to school there and I found that a lot of American kids don’t have a clue what’s going on in the rest of the world besides the U.S. They don’t know anything about foreign affairs, and I would like to know if you know why this is and what do you think should be changed?

SECRETARY: We don’t do a good enough job teaching our young students about foreign affairs and international relations. I think they are so concerned about their own lives and what’s happening in their community that they don’t focus on what might be happening in Germany, what might be happening in Asia, they don’t know geography as well as they should, they don’t know foreign languages as well as I would like them to. To some extent it reflects the fact that in the post-Cold War period, the danger that used to be so readily apparent, the likelihood of a nuclear war, the likelihood of a great war in Europe or a war in Asia, the backdrop of a Vietnam which focuses your attention and causes you to be concerned about what’s going on elsewhere in the world to some extent, those dangers are not there, and they are not as real and present to young people. So young people tend to concern themselves with what’s happening in their community and what’s happening at home and don’t focus as much attention on the outside world.

The other side of that coin, though, is that in my department, in the State Department, every year we offer tests for people to come in to the department and become diplomats, foreign service officers, and over the last three years the number of young Americans who want to take that test and become diplomats or foreign service officers has shot up. So I’m giving the test roughly to 50,000, 60,000 people every year. So even though you did have that experience in the United States I hope that the young people you were with – was this in Salt Lake in Utah, your exchange? Somewhere else? North Carolina? – I hope that as they come to high school and go into college, that they may become more attuned to the need to pay more attention to the rest of the world. Because if they want to be business people, or even guitar players, the best guitar players in the world, they will discover that you can’t just think about America, you just can’t be worried about your own community; that you’re increasingly in a world that is totally interconnected and you better learn about other places in the world. You better learn about what people are thinking in other parts of the world. And we still have tens of thousands of young American students and young people who do think like that and want to become at least part of the Foreign Service.

AMBASSADOR COATS: I hate to interrupt this. The Secretary is scheduled to speak to the Afghan Conference delegates in just a few moments. He obviously is enjoying his time here because we have gone way over what we were supposed to do.

SECRETARY: I’d rather stay here.

AMBASSADOR COATS: I want to thank the Max Planck school, everybody involved in putting this together, and most particularly the students. It’s clear to me that these students are engaged, they know what’s going on in the world, and I think the best thing that you can contribute to America is to continue these exchanges back and forth, and that’s the way our students and your students learn more about each other. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for giving us your time.