In Turkey Hillary Clinton Talks No Fly Zones Over Syria

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If she manages to get another NFZ, remember that you heard it first here. 

US, Turkey explore no-fly zones over Syria

By NBC News staff and wire services

ALEPPO, Syria -- The United States and Turkey indicated on Saturday they might impose no-fly zones in Syria as battles between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces shook Aleppo and fighting erupted in the heart of Damascus.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after meeting her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul that Washington and Ankara should develop detailed operational planning on ways to assist the rebels fighting to topple Assad.
"Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that," she said.
Read more >>>>

State Department Background Briefing on NATO Takeover of Libyan Operations

This just came in from the State Department, and given the high level of interest in our participation in the No-Fly Zone and protection of Libyan civilians, I thought I would make it available to those who have concerns. NATO has taken command. We are no longer in command. (That was fast, wasn't it?) Just for good measure, here is a picture of the incomparable Hillary Rodham Clinton who probably is the one person in the administration who understands every side of this operation and is best suited to answer any question about it.

(Mark Toner is still carrying the press responsibilities. Still no sign of Michael Hammer. I wonder if he is real?)

Background Briefing on the North Atlantic Council's Meeting on Libya

Special Briefing

Senior Administration Official

Via Teleconference

March 27, 2011

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OPERATOR: Thank you all for standing by. Welcome to our conference. At this time, your lines have been placed on listen-only for today’s conference. During the question-and-answer portion of our call, you will be prompted to press *1 on your touchtone phone. Please be sure to record your name plus affiliation to ask your question. The conference is also being recorded and if you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Toner. Sir, you may proceed.

MR. TONER: Thank you and thanks to everyone for joining us on a Sunday afternoon. As many of you already know, NATO allies decided to take on the civilian protection piece of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, in addition to providing command and control to the no-fly zone, and enforcing the arms embargo.

And here to walk us through today’s decision and some of the aspects moving forward to give us perspective is [Senior Administration Official]. And just going forward, this call is on background and he will, from here on out, be known as Senior Administration Official.

So without further ado, [Senior Administration Official], do you want to go ahead and --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Absolutely. Thanks, Mark and thanks all for joining us. As those of you who were on the call on Thursday may remember, at that point I mentioned that we had a political agreement to put the entire military aspects of UNSCR 1973 under NATO command and control to make it a NATO mission. That’s what we now did formally this evening here in Brussels.

From this moment on forward, NATO will be in command not only of the no-fly zone, not only of enforcing the arms embargo, but now also of the civilian protection mission. When you think about it, for an organization of 28 states, getting to consensus given where we were just a few days and weeks ago, we moved with extraordinary speed. Ten days ago is when the UN enacted its Security Council resolution that provided for the no-fly zone and the enforcement of the arms embargo and the civilian protection. And it’s just eight days ago that military operations started.

But today, we did – the President said we wanted – he wanted to do when we were going to do it. We were going to take the lead in the initial period, providing our unique capabilities to shape the battlefield, but then within days, we would hand over control of that operation to others. And that’s what we accomplished today in NATO with all 28 allies now agreeing that not only the no-fly zone, not only the arms embargo, but also the civilian protection mission would come under NATO – under NATO command, under NATO control, and on NATO political guidance.

So that’s the important message of what we did today, and I think at this point, I’d be happy to take some questions.

MR. TONER: Great. Operator, we’re ready to take questions.

OPERATOR: Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your touchtone phone. Please be sure to record your name and affiliation to ask your question. Once again, it is *1 and please record your name and affiliation at this time.

Our first question comes from Elise Labott with CNN. Your line is open.

QUESTION: Thank you for doing this, [Senior Administration Official]. Can you talk about the rules of engagement in terms of when it goes beyond the no-fly zone and protecting the civilians? Is that done by the commander of NATO who – and will there be separate commanders for the no-fly zone and the kind of no-fly plus aspects of this?

And we’ve been hearing a little bit about caveats that some nations will have to participate in some operations or all operations. Can you talk a little bit about that? Thanks.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Absolutely. Thanks, Elise. The rules of engagement were agreed today first by the military committee and then by the North Atlantic Council. So we have a set of rules of engagements. They have been agreed. And now it’s over to the commanders to implement the mission within those rules of engagement as best as they can agree.

The fact is that every country agreed to these rules of engagement, as you have in every military operation. We’re not going to come back to the NAC or to any political decisions about how and when we’re going to implement the mission. This is now over to the commanders within the rules. Those rules allow for the continuation of the mission as it has been conducted, which is the implementation of UNSCR 1973 – no more, no less. And I must say we had no debates, frankly, about the rules of engagement.

In terms of the commanders, the – this mission will come under the same command structure and the same command arrangements as the no-fly zone. Indeed, what we did is we changed and amended the existing no-fly zone plan to include the mission for civilian protection. So we’re still operating under the same plan with the same commander (inaudible). The Supreme Allied Commander Europe General – Admiral Jim Stavridis is in charge and the – as he is of all NATO operations. And the joint task force commander is a three-star from – general from Canada, General Charles Bouchard. He is in charge of all aspects of the NATO operation, including the arms embargo.

With respect to caveats, I think the way to look at it is that not every country within NATO will contribute to every part of the mission. Some countries don’t have air forces. In fact, some countries don’t have militaries, like Iceland, so it is impossible for them to participate in the civilian protection mission. And a variety of countries have decided that they will contribute in different ways. Some will contribute in the arms embargo, some with the no-fly zone, some in the civilian protection mission. And that’s the way alliances operate. It’s why you want to do this in an alliance so you can bring together the collective capacity of the alliance in order to fulfill the entire mission across the spectrum of operations.

QUESTION: But just – a quick follow-up, just to put the finest point on it possible, there’s no nation that can object to these kind of additional measures in terms of air strikes on troops? And basically, just not every country has to participate in that; is that --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Correct.

QUESTION: -- a good way of looking at it?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah. I mean, the way to put it is that we have made a decision that this is a mission that NATO is taking on. It is now over to the commanders and the individual troops to fulfill that mission in – within the agreement that we reached at 28. And some countries have decided that they may not participate in all aspects of the mission, but NATO as a whole, working with partners from around the world, including from the region, will fulfill the entire mission and will do so in a coordinated and single command-and-control manner.

QUESTION: Okay. Thanks.

MR. TONER: Next question.

OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Ilhan Tanir with Turkish Press. Your line is open.

QUESTION: [Senior Administration Official], I had a quick follow-up on the same question, actually. We know that there were strong Turkish objections to the aerial bombing under Qadhafi’s forces. How did you overcome these objections at this moment?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We frankly didn’t hear of any objections; what we – from Turkey or anybody – any other ally. What we heard was a strong preference, one that was shared by Turkey, to have the entire operation – the no-fly zone and the civilian protection, as well as the arms embargo and support for humanitarian assistance – to have all of that conducted by NATO. That was Turkey’s position, it was the position of a lot of countries, and that is, in fact, the position that the North Atlantic Council took today.

From this one moment on forward, the entire operation with respect to military – the use of military force will be under NATO command. That is Turkey’s position. It is now the position of all 28 nations in NATO.

QUESTION: I’m going to do one more quick follow-up and please forgive me for my ignorance. Does it mean that in an event that NATO commanders decide to take a target on Qadhafi forces, all the members, the NATO members, have to agree on every single attack?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, it doesn’t mean that. It – what it means is that NATO has agreed to take on the mission of protecting civilians, and that mission will be executed in the – by the commanders in the best way they judge possible. It means, in practice, that NATO will conduct the military operation in a way that is very similar to the way the coalition has conducted it up to this point, and no more but also no less.

And we – all 28 allies, every single one, agreed that that should be the case. And if it is judged by the commanders that there’s a need to bomb forces of the Libyan regime, then the forces of the Libyan regime will be bombed, and no one is going to be able or in a position to challenge that. That is a military judgment to be made by the military authorities, and we, as an alliance, agreed today to give the supreme allied commander of Europe that authority.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. TONER: The next question.

OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Mary Beth Sheridan with The Washington Post. Your line is open.

QUESTION: Thanks. Thanks a lot, [Senior Administration Official]. I just wanted to make sure I understood when you talk about the civilian protection mission – we’ve obviously seen this in action in terms of troops – regime troops and tanks and so on being targeted outside of, I think, Misrata, Ajdabiyah and so on. But how far does it go? In other words, were the rebels – if the rebels arrive at (inaudible), if they arrive at the outskirts of Tripoli, would all those places also be covered in this civilian protection mandate?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, the mandate is very simple. It is to protect civilian and civilian-populated areas from attack. And any forces that are attacking or threatening to attack civilians will be subject to targeting by NATO in exactly the same way they’re subject to targeting by the coalition today, or up to this point.

So the mission is clear. It’s about protecting civilians and civilian-populated areas against the threat of actual attack. And that mission, which was the same mission that existed from last Saturday until this point, is the mission that NATO now takes on. It will do so with the same means – no more, no less. The specific question of where, how, when military forces may be engaged are operational questions that the military commanders will have to decide on a case-by-case basis, and certainly not something that some – a political person or a diplomat like me is going to get involved in.

MR. TONER: Great, next question.

OPERATOR: It comes from Courtney Kube with NBC News. Your line is open.

QUESTION: Hi, thank you for doing this. I’m sorry, I’m still unclear on two things – the command structure and also the – protecting the civilian population. So in the command structure, is it fair to say that Admiral Stavridis is now taking essentially the role that General Ham has been playing?

And then also, specifically on the protecting civilian population, you’ve said several times now that there will be no more and no less as far as who is involved. As far as assets, I’m assuming you mean enforcing these – the no-fly zone and whatnot. But does that mean the U.S. is still going to be participating, actively participating, in both air strikes and enforcement of the no-fly zone flying missions over Libya?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, Courtney, for your question because that allows me to clarify something that’s important.

First on command and control, you’re exactly right. We’re moving from Admiral – from General Ham to Admiral Stavridis. General Ham was the coordinator of the coalition. As the President said, we want to hand off that responsibility to others. Today, we agreed to hand it off to NATO, and the NATO – commander of NATO is the supreme allied commander, and he is now tasking his Joint Task Force Commander, General Bouchard, to take control of this mission. And it’s General Bouchard who’s going to run this operation from here on forward.

On the protection of civilians and when I say “No more, no less,” what I mean is not – has no relationship to who will do it, but what we will do. So it was not meant to be in any way a comment on who would do it. When I say under NATO we’re going to do no more and no less than we did under the coalition, it’s with respect to which targets to hit, how to hit them, and what the mission is.

In terms of the assets, one of the reasons you want to put this into NATO is that you will be able to rely on a great deal, a great number of allies who, up to this point, while wanting to participate in the operation, were unwilling to do so until it came under NATO. And there are a number of allies who have made very clear that they will participate, but they wouldn’t participate as part of the coalition. And indeed, there were a number of coalition partners who said this has to come under NATO and it has to come under NATO quickly.

So what we will see now is more countries participating, and that will allow the United States to be part of a much larger effort rather than having to take the lead. That’s why we wanted to hand it off in a matter of days, and we have now done that.

QUESTION: Will those more countries participating include more Arab participation?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We will seek as many Arab and regional partners to participate, and we’re continuing the process of engaging with Arab countries to bring them into this operation. One of the advantages of using NATO is that NATO has established procedures, established practices of working with non-NATO countries, including many in the Arab world, in order to bring them into established operations. So they have a political visibility on what’s happening as well as military participation. And I would expect that in the coming days and weeks, we will see more and more non-NATO members joining this effort.

QUESTION: Thank you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You’re welcome.

MR. TONER: Our next question, and I think we’ve got time for just a couple more.

OPERATOR: It comes from Margaret Warner with PBS NewsHour. Your line is open.

QUESTION: Hi, [Senior Administration Official]. Thank you for doing this. I want to go back to Mary Beth’s question because it seems to me there is a difference between whether the rebels are on defense, which is where they have been, say, in Ajdabiyah, and if they go on offense. Say if they go to Sirte, we’re there, the government forces are the ones who hold the civilian-populated area and the attackers, if you will, will be the rebels, or if they were to get to Tripoli. In that situation where rebels are on offense against civilian-populated areas held by the government, will they get an assist from NATO bombing?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’ll answer, Margaret, the same way as I did for Mary Beth, which is our mission is to protect civilians against the threat or actual use of military force. So when civilians are being attacked or threatened to be attacked, those who are doing the attacking or threatening are the ones who are going to be subject to military action.

It’s been very clear up to this point that it is the regime of Colonel Qadhafi that is engaged in horrendous acts against civilians, and therefore, it is those forces that are being targeted. But the mission is clear. It’s about the protection of civilians and civilian-populated areas. It is not anything more or anything less than that. And as long as civilians are being threatened, as long as civilians are being attacked, there is a very legitimate military mission, which is to make sure that those who are doing the attacking or those who are doing the threatening are being – are unable to continue their actions.

QUESTION: But if I can follow up, I mean, that still doesn’t really answer my question. If you’re in a situation in which it is really the rebel army against Qadhafi forces and civilians are not directly involved or targeted at that moment, are you assisting the rebels?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I’ll answer the same way, and I think that will explain it. When civilians are attacked, those doing the – those attacking the civilians are a legitimate target and will be targeted by NATO. If there is a threat to attack civilians and civilian-populated areas, that is what we will go after. So civilians need to be threatened or attacked for NATO to take military action, as indeed the coalition has done so up to this point. That’s the mission we have had up to this point, and that’s the mission that NATO is now taking on. It’s the same mission in the same way.

QUESTION: All right.

MR. TONER: Thank you. This is --

QUESTION: Would you say civilians in Sirte are being threatened or attacked?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sorry, Margaret, I didn’t hear it.

QUESTION: Would you say civilians in Sirte currently are being threatened or attacked?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t follow the operational details, so I don't know exactly where we are on this, and I’d leave that open to the commanders. They’ve got a clear mission and they need – now need to execute it.

MR. TONER: Thank you. This will be our last question.

OPERATOR: It comes from Adam Levine with CNN. Your line is open.

QUESTION: Hi, thank you for doing this. If I could follow up, so are you saying that if rebels are advancing and they (inaudible) an activity that threatens or endangers civilians by starting fighting, rebels are fair targets for the alliance?

And my – just another question also: How will NATO coordinate or interact with the rebel groups?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right now, all the threatening and striking of civilians is being done by Qadhafi forces, and that’s the focus. But our mission is clear. It’s about protecting civilians first and civilian areas. That – first and foremost, and that’s what it’s about. And NATO has just taken on that mission.

In terms of coordinating with rebel forces, no, our mission is to protect civilians. It’s not about the rebels. It’s about the protection of civilians and civilian populations. That’s what UNSCR 1973 mandated and that’s the mandate that NATO is now taking on.

MR. TONER: Great. Well, thank you all so much and especially to our Senior Administration Official for walking us through this decision today. Everybody have a good remainder of their Sunday and thank you again.

OPERATOR: That does conclude today’s conference call. We thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect and have a great rest of your day.

Secretaries Clinton and Gates on Face The Nation

Interview With Bob Schieffer of CBS's Face the Nation

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Washington, DC

March 27, 2011

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QUESTION: Good morning again. And we are joined in the studio by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense.

Madam Secretary, let me start with you. Tens of thousands of people have turned out protesting in Syria, which has been under the iron grip of the Asad for so many years now, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, I suppose. And when the demonstrators turned out, the regime opened fire and killed a number of civilians. Can we expect the United States to enter the conflict in the way we have entered the conflict in Libya?

SECRETARY CLINTON: No. Each of these situations is unique, Bob. Certainly, we deplore the violence in Syria. We call, as we have on all of these governments during this period of the Arab Awakening, as some have called it, to be responding to their people’s needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests, and begin a process of economic and political reform.

The situation in Libya, which engendered so much concern from around the international community, had a leader who used military force against the protestors from one end of his country to the other, who publically said things like, “We’ll show no mercy. We’ll go house to house.” And the international community moved with great speed, in part because there’s a history here. This is someone who has behaved in a way that caused grave concern in the past 40 plus years in the Arab world, the African world, Europe, and the United States.

QUESTION: But, I mean, how can that be worse than what has happened in Syria over the years, where Bashar Asad’s father killed 25,000 people at a lick? I mean, they open fire with live ammunition on these civilians. Why is that different from Libya?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I --

QUESTION: This is a friend of Iran, an enemy of Israel.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, if there were a coalition of the international community, if there were the passage of Security Council resolution, if there were a call by the Arab League, if there was a condemnation that was universal – but that is not going to happen, because I don't think that it’s yet clear what will occur, what will unfold.

There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer. What’s been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning, but there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities and then police actions, which, frankly, have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.

QUESTION: Secretary Gates, you have strongly condemned Bashar Asad and said he must learn from Egypt. I think it’s fair to say he didn’t pay much attention to you.

SECRETARY GATES: Well, that’s not a surprise. (Laughter.) No, what I --

QUESTION: Should he step down?

SECRETARY GATES: What I said in – when I was in the Middle East was that the lesson should be – that should be taken from Egypt was where a military stood aside and allowed peaceful protests and allowed political events to take their course. That’s basically the lesson that I was talking about with respect to Asad. In terms of whether he should stand down or not, these kinds of things are up to the Syrians, up to the Libyans themselves.

QUESTION: This whole region is in turmoil now, trouble in Bahrain, in Yemen, whose governments have been allies of ours in the fight against terrorism. Now there are demonstrations in Jordan, one of our closest allies in the Arab world. How do we decide which of these countries we’re going to help and which ones we’re not?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Bob, we’re trying to help them all. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways of helping. We have certainly offered advice and counsel. I think the role that the United States played in Egypt, for example, particularly between our military, between Secretary Gates, Field Marshal Tantawi, between Admiral Mullen and his counterpart, was only possibly because of 30 years of close cooperation.

So we have to look at each situation as we find it. We don’t have that kind of relationship with a country like Syria. We just sent back an ambassador for the first time after some years. And as you recall, the Administration decided we needed to do that because we wanted somebody on the inside. The Congress was not so convinced that it would make a difference. Each of these we are looking at and analyzing carefully. But we can’t draw some general sweeping conclusions about the entire region.

QUESTION: Well, let’s talk about Libya a little then. We have – the UN resolution is in place. It’s established the no-fly zone. NATO is going to take over the operations there. But it does not call for regime change, and the President has said that Mr. Qadhafi has to go. That seems a bit contradictory.

SECRETARY GATES: I don't think so. I think what you’re seeing is the difference between a military mission and a policy objective. The military mission is very limited and restricted to the establishment of the no-fly zone and for humanitarian purposes, to prevent Qadhafi from being able to use his armed forces to slaughter his own people. That’s it. And one of the things that I think is central is you don’t in a military campaign set as a mission or a goal something you’re not sure you can achieve. And if we’ve learned anything over the past number of years, regime change is very complicated and can be very expensive and can take a long time. And so I think the key here was establishing a military mission that was achievable. It was achievable on a limited period of time and it could be sustained.

QUESTION: There are some people in the Pentagon quoted in various newspapers as saying this no-fly zone may last for three months or so. How long do you think this is going to be in place?

SECRETARY GATES: I don't think anybody has any idea.

SECRETARY CLINTON: But Bob, I think it’s important to take a step back and put this into context. When the Libyan people rose up, as their neighbors across the region were doing, and said look, we want to see a transition, it was after 42 years of erratic and brutal rule. Qadhafi’s response was to basically not just ignore but to threaten and then to act on those threats. Our country, along with many other countries, were watching this unfold.

The United States Senate passed a resolution calling for a no-fly zone on March the 1^st. As Bob reminded everybody, there’s a difference between calling for it and actually enforcing it. When the Security Council, in a really stunning vote of 10 to 5, 10-4, 5 abstentions, said look, take all necessary measures to fulfill this mission of protecting the Libyan people, it was a mission that the United States, of course, was going to be in the forefront of because of our unique capabilities. But look at the coalition of European, Canadian, Arab countries that have come together to say we’re going to make sure that we protect these civilians.

The military mission is not the only part of what we’re doing. We have very tough sanctions that are ferreting out and freezing Qadhafi and Qadhafi family assets. We have a lot of diplomats and military leaders in Libya who are flipping, changing sides, defecting because they see the handwriting on the wall. We have an ongoing political effort that is really picking up steam to see if we can’t persuade --

QUESTION: So --

SECRETARY CLINTON: -- others to convince Qadhafi to leave. So, we see the planes going up, but that is just a piece of an overall strategy.

QUESTION: Well, do you think it’s going well then? I mean, would you give it good marks so far?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, I think it’s going very well.

SECRETARY GATES: I think the military mission has gone quite well. I think we have been successful a lot. There was never any doubt in my mind that we could quickly establish the no-fly zone and suppress his air defenses. But I think what has been extraordinary is seeing a number of different countries using their combat aircraft in a way to destroy some of his ground forces. That really involves and extraordinary discrimination of targets.

And I pushed back when I was in Russia last week against the comments that both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev had made about civilian casualties. The truth of the matter is we have trouble coming up with proof of any civilian casualties that we have been responsible for, but we do have a lot of intelligence reporting about Qadhafi taking the bodies of people he’s killed and putting them at the sites where we’ve attacked. We have been extremely careful in this military effort. And not just our pilots but the pilots of the other coalition air forces have really done and extraordinary job.

QUESTION: He is taking bodies and putting them in places --

SECRETARY GATES: We have a number of reports of that.

QUESTION: In more than one place, or --

SECRETARY GATES: Yes.

QUESTION: How many places?

SECRETARY GATES: We just get various reports on that.

QUESTION: Well, let me ask you this. There are reports that we may arm the rebels. Is that, in fact, going to happen?

SECRETARY CLINTON: There’s been no decision about that. We are in contact with the rebels. I’ve met with one of the leaders. We have ongoing discussions with them. We’ve sent both the ambassador that was assigned to Libya plus a young diplomat to have this ongoing dialogue with the opposition. But there’s a lot of ways that we can assist them, and we’re trying to discuss that with our allies in this effort. And we will be when I go to London on Tuesday.

QUESTION: Let me just ask you this. Under this arms embargo and the resolution and so forth, could you, if you decided you needed to do that and wanted to do it, could you do it under the current --

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.

QUESTION: -- resolution?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.

QUESTION: You believe you could?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, and the reason is because there is an arms embargo against the Qadhafi regime that was established in the first resolution, Resolution 1970, which applied to the entire country. In the follow-on resolution, 1973, there is an exception if countries or organizations were to choose to use that.

QUESTION: Let me ask you this, Mr. Secretary. We say it's time for Qadhafi to go. You say that the military part of this, the no-fly zone, is going well. But I don't think anybody really believes that this rag-tag group of resistance fighters, as brave as they are, could actually topple this man, who has these tanks and artillery and that.

SECRETARY CLINTON: He has a lot fewer now than he did a week ago.

QUESTION: Well, exactly. But how’s the thing going on the ground? And do you really think that these people could topple him without some kind of help from the outside?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, first of all, we prevented him from moving on toward Benghazi. Those forces were destroyed. We have evidence that he is withdrawing from Ajdabiyah and back further to the west. Because we’re not only striking his armor, we’re striking his logistics and supplies and things like that.

And just to Secretary Clinton's point, we have things in our toolbox in addition to hammers. And so there are a lot of things that can go on here. His military can turn. We can see – we could see elements of his military turning, deciding this is a no-win proposition. The family is splitting. Any number of possibilities are out there, particularly as long as the international pressure continues and those around him see no future in staying with him.

QUESTION: Well, having said all of that, do you think that's what is going to happen here? I mean can he – can these people really do this with just some help from up in the sky?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Bob, I know how concerned people are. And obviously, the President will speak to the country Monday night, answer, I think, a lot of those concerns. This -- the Security Council acted a week ago Thursday. The effort to enforce a Security Council resolution is barely a week old. We’ve already seen quite significant progress on the ground. And Bob just said, we believe, based on the intelligence and what our military is seeing, the Qadhafi forces are withdrawing, moving to the west.

Yes, this is not a well-organized fighting force that the opposition has. But they are getting more support from defectors, from the former Libyan Government military, and they are, as Bob said, very brave, moving forward, and beginning to regain --

QUESTION: Well --

SECRETARY CLINTON: -- ground that they lost when Qadhafi was brutalizing them by moving toward Benghazi.

So, this is a really short period of time in any kind of military effort, but I think the results on the ground are pretty significant.

SECRETARY GATES: I would just underscore the military attacks began, essentially, a week ago, last Saturday night. And don't underestimate the potential for elements of the regime themselves to crack.

QUESTION: All right.

SECRETARY GATES: And to turn. I mean it isn't just the opposition in Benghazi --

QUESTION: So you think his days are limited?

SECRETARY GATES: I wouldn't be hanging any new pictures if I were him. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: What would be an acceptable outcome? You want him out, but would you be satisfied if the country wound up partitioned or something of that nature?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think it's too soon to predict that. One of the reasons why we are forming a political contact group in London this coming week is because we want to get a unified political approach, just as we have forged a unified military approach.

And as both Bob and I have said, there are many ways that this could move toward the end state. If you think about what happened in the 90s, it took a while for Milosevic to leave, but you could see his days were numbered, even though he wasn't yet out of office. And so there is a lot of ways that this could unfold.

What is clear is that Qadhafi himself is losing ground. He has already lost legitimacy. And the people around him, based on all of the intelligence and all of the outreach that we ourselves are getting from some of those very same people, demonstrate an enormous amount of anxiety. And that will play itself out over time.

SECRETARY GATES: Could I just make a broader point, Bob? We get so focused on these individual countries. I think we have lost sight of the extraordinary story that is going on in the Middle East. In the space of about two months, we’ve probably seen the most widespread dramatic change in the tectonic plates, if you will, politically, in that region since, certainly, the drive for independence in the 50s, and perhaps since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago. In virtually every country in the region there is turbulence. And we are in dark territory.

I mean, even the changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 took place from a period from February to December – to November. And so when you think back of what has happened in just two months, this is really an extraordinary challenge for the Administration and, frankly, for other governments around the world in terms of how do we react to this, how do we deal with this. And I think the key, and where the President has tried to establish the principle, is here are our principles, here’s what we believe in, but then we’ll deal with each country one at a time, because we have to deal with the specific circumstances. But we can't lose sight of the historic and dramatic nature of what's going on and the fact there are no predetermined outcomes.

SECRETARY CLINTON: And there are no perfect options. We are choosing among competing imperfect options. I mean if we were sitting here, and Benghazi had been taken, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, and hundreds of thousands had fled, some of them over the border to Egypt, destabilizing Egypt during its particularly delicate transition, we would be sitting here, and people in the Congress and elsewhere would be saying, "Well, why didn't we do something?"

So the problem is we are trying to, within the broader context of this extraordinary movement toward aspirations that are universal that people in the Middle East and North Africa are demanding for themselves, to support the broader goals but to be very clear about how we deal with individual countries as we stand for our values and our principles but have to take each one as it stands and where it is headed.

QUESTION: Well, I want to thank both of you for your insights.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you.

QUESTION: We really appreciate it.

SECRETARY GATES: Thank you.

# # #

Secretaries Clinton and Gates on Meet The Press

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Interview With David Gregory of NBC's Meet the Press

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Washington, DC

March 27, 2011

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QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, welcome back to Meet the Press.

SECRETARY GATES: Thank you.

QUESTION: The President said this is an operation that would take days, not weeks. We are now into the second week. Has the mission been accomplished?

SECRETARY GATES: I think that the no-fly zone aspect of the mission has been accomplished. We have not seen any of his planes fly since the mission started. We have suppressed his air defenses. I think we’ve also been successful on the humanitarian side. We have prevented his forces from going to Benghazi and we have taken out a good bit of his armor. So I think we have, to a very large extent, completed the military mission in terms of getting it set up. Now, the no-fly zone and even the humanitarian side will have to be sustained for some period of time.

QUESTION: Is Qadhafi capable of routing the rebels?

SECRETARY CLINTON: At this point, it appears that his efforts have been stopped. I think if you were to look at where we were just a couple of weeks ago, he was clearly on his way to Benghazi. He was intending, by his own words, to show no mercy, to go house to house. I think we prevented a great humanitarian disaster, which is always hard to point to something that didn’t happen, but I believe we did. And now we’re beginning to see – because of the good work of the coalition – to see his troops begin to turn back towards the west and to see the opposition begin to reclaim ground they had lost.

QUESTION: That said, Secretary Gates, would the U.S. supply arms to the rebels?

SECRETARY GATES: No decision has been made about that at this point. The Security Council resolution would permit it. The second resolution, 1973, would permit it. But no decisions have been made by our government about it.

QUESTION: But does this Administration want to see the rebels prevail and overtake Qadhafi?

SECRETARY GATES: I think the President’s policy is that it’s time for Qadhafi to go. That’s not part of our military mission, which has been very limited and very strictly defined.

QUESTION: Well, so how is that going to happen? Secretary Clinton, you said this week that you thought you were picking up signals that he wanted to get out, of his own accord.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, David, there are many different aspects to the strategy that the international community is pursuing. As Bob has said, the military mission has gone very well. It only started just, like, eight days ago, so it has been remarkably well coordinated and focused, and now NATO will take command and control over it.

At the same time, we are pursuing really strict economic sanctions on him and people close to him. We have a political effort underway. The African Union just called for a transition to democracy. The Arab League, the others of us who are supporting this endeavor are going to be meeting in London on Tuesday to begin to focus on how we’re going to help facilitate such a transition of him leaving power.

QUESTION: All right. But you said this week you thought there were indications he was looking to get out. Is that true?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, people around him. We have a lot of evidence that people around him are reaching out. Now, so far what they’ve been doing is to say you’re misunderstanding us; you don’t appreciate what we’re doing; come and talk to us. Well, the Secretary General of the United Nations has appointed a former Jordanian foreign minister as a special envoy. He will be going to both Benghazi and Tripoli in the next few days so that we will provide a very clear message to Qadhafi.

But we’re also sending a message to people around him: Do you really want to be a pariah? Do you really want to end up in the International Criminal Court? Now is your time to get out of this and to help the change the direction.

QUESTION: Bottom line: The President wants him to go, but the President will not take him out himself.

SECRETARY GATES: Certainly not militarily.

QUESTION: So it would have to be other means?

SECRETARY GATES: Yes.

QUESTION: And --

SECRETARY GATES: And as I’ve said, we have things in our toolbox in addition to hammers. Secretary Clinton’s just talked about a number of them. And don’t underestimate what Hillary just said of the people around him looking at what’s happening and the international view of this place and when’s the time to turn and go to the other side.

QUESTION: Let me --

SECRETARY GATES: And so I think one should not underestimate the possibility of the regime itself cracking.

QUESTION: I want to talk about some of the Congressional criticisms. Speaker of the House Boehner issued a letter with questions, some of which were deemed illegitimate questions by the White House. Here’s a portion of it. I’ll put it up on the screen. “Because of the conflicting messages from the Administration and our coalition partners,” he wrote, “there’s a lack of clarity over the objectives of this mission, what our national security interests are, how it fits into our overarching policy for the Middle East.”

The American people deserve answers to these questions, and all of these concerns point to a fundamental question: What is your benchmark for success in Libya?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think it’s perfectly legitimate for members of Congress and the public to ask questions. The President is going to address the nation Monday night. A lot of these questions will be answered. But I would just make a couple of points.

First, on March 1^st, the United States Senate passed a resolution calling for a no-fly zone. That was a bipartisan resolution. There were a number of people in the House, including leadership in both the Republican and Democratic parties, who were demanding that action be taken. The international community came together, and in an unprecedented action, the Arab League called on the Security Council to do exactly what the Security Council ended up doing.

Now, the United States and other countries were in a position to be able to act to enforce it. If you look at the coverage on Al Jazeera, if you listen to the statements that are being put out by the opposition in Libya, there is a great deal of appreciation for what we and others have done in order to stop Qadhafi on his mission of merciless oppression.

So, this was an international effort that the United States was a part of. I certainly believe it was within the President’s constitutional authority to do so. It is going according to the plan that the President laid out. The United States will be transitioning to a NATO command and control. And then we will be joining with the rest of the international community.

And if you look at the region – can you imagine, David, if we were sitting here and Qadhafi had gotten to Benghazi, and in a city of 700,000 people, had massacred tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands had fled over the border, destabilizing Egypt? Everybody would be saying, “Why didn’t the President do something?”

QUESTION: Can I ask you about Boehner himself?

SECRETARY CLINTON: These are difficult choices.

QUESTION: Did Speaker Boehner raise any objections when he was briefed prior to the mission?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I know that there was a constant flow of information, both to members and staff. And of course, the President had a conference with some members in person, others – many others, including the Speaker, on the phone – but we have no objection to anybody asking questions. But I think it’s important to look at the context in which this is occurring, and the fact that we have moved so rapidly to have this kind of international action taken answers, in great measure, the legitimate concerns of the people of Libya.

And now, of course, we’re going to take it day by day. That’s what you do in a situation like this.

QUESTION: The military is stretched pretty thin. Look at this map to show what our commitments are around the globe. In Iraq, of course, we have 47,000 troops; in Afghanistan, a hundred thousand strong; and now this additional commitment of U.S. troops – I mean, not troops, but U.S. assets in Libya. How does the President, speaking to the nation Monday night, maintain a sense of national purpose here at a time when we’re so stretched?

SECRETARY GATES: Actually, your list was incomplete. We have a substantial military commitment in humanitarian assistance disaster relief in Japan as well, largely using naval forces. The air forces that we are using, for the most part, and the air forces in particular that we are using in Libya are forces normally stationed in Europe in any event.

The reality is, though, beginning this week or within the next week or so, we will begin to diminish the commitment of resources that we have committed to this. We knew the President’s plan at the beginning was we would go in heavy at first, because we had the capacity to do it in terms of suppressing the air defenses and so on. But then the idea was that, over time, the coalition would assume a larger and larger proportion of the burden. This was the conversation he had with foreign leaders when this whole thing was coming together. And so we see our commitment of resources actually beginning to decline.

QUESTION: Well, how long does the no-fly zone last? Weeks or longer?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, once the air – first of all, nobody knows the answer to that question. But once the air defenses have been suppressed, what it takes to sustain the no-fly zone is substantially less than what it takes to establish it.

QUESTION: Let me ask this question, though, still on the military – and then I want your comment, as well: What if things don’t go as planned? What is our contingency planning? What is the U.S. commitment if things get worse in Libya, if Qadhafi stays, if there is an entrenched civil war, if it devolves into Somalia-like chaos? What then? What’s our commitment?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, the President has made very clear there will be no American troops on the ground in Libya. He’s made that quite definite. Our air power has significantly degraded his armor capabilities, his ability to use his armor against cities like Benghazi. We see them beginning to move back to the west, retreating.

So, this eventually is going to have to be settled by the Libyans themselves. Perhaps the UN can mediate or whatever. But in terms of the military commitment, the President has put some very strict limitations in terms of what we are prepared to do.

QUESTION: I want to ask you, Secretary Clinton, if I can, about the rest of the region, because there’s so much else that is happening, and I want to go to the map and go through these in turn.

First, as we look at the Broader Middle East, we look at Syria – deadly protests because of a government crackdown that have been occurring over the past few days. Is it the position of the government that we would like to see the Asad regime fall?

SECRETARY CLINTON: What we have said is what we’ve said throughout this extraordinary period of transformation in North Africa and the Middle East. We want to see no violence, we want to see peaceful protest that enables people to express their universal human rights, and we want to see economic and political reform. That’s what we’ve called on in Syria, that’s what we’ve called on other governments across the region to do.

QUESTION: What about Saudi Arabia? We go back to the map, as Secretary Gates – the King is quite upset with the President. The relationship has ruptured to the point that he has sent troops into Bahrain, he would not see both of you when you were in the region. What are we doing to fix a ruptured relationship with perhaps our most important partner in the region when it comes to oil as well as other matters?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, first of all, I don’t believe the relationship is ruptured. We have a very strong relationship with Saudi Arabia. I think that the Saudis see all of this turbulence in the region with some disquiet. They’re very concerned about Iran. They believe that Iran will be able to take advantage of the situation in various of these countries, and those are their concerns, and we share some of those concerns.

But I think it’s a great exaggeration to say this relationship’s ruptured. I intend to visit the region in the near term and hope and intend to see the King. So I think we have a very strong relationship, we have a very strong military-to-military relationship. As you know, the Saudis just made one of the largest purchases of American weapons in their history, so I think it’s overdrawn. Do we have some differences of view? Absolutely. But that’s – friends happen – that happens between friends all the time.

QUESTION: Back to the map. In addition to Yemen, I want to actually focus on Egypt, still the strategic cornerstone. Yemen, of course important, but it is in Egypt that is a strategic cornerstone of this region. What are we doing, Secretary Clinton, at this point, to try to assist the young secular movement that wants to find a way toward leadership that may be outmanned now by the Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak’s own party?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, David, first, we have historically done quite a bit in reaching out to the very young people you’re referring to. When I was just in Egypt, I met with a number of those who had been leaders of the activities in Tahrir Square and that were helping to translate that protest into political action. A lot of them had been in American Government-sponsored programs, they had been on visitation programs to the United States. And we are continuing to reach out and work with them and to try to provide support to them. It is hard moving from being in the forefront of a movement to being part of a political process. It’s hard in any country. But we’re going to stand with them and make sure that at least insofar as we’re able to, they get the support they need.

At the same time, though, we’re also working with the interim government in Egypt. Both Bob and I, when we were recently in Egypt, met with government officials and met with the military officials who are, for the time being, running the government. We want to assist them on the economic reform efforts that they’re undertaking. Now ultimately, this is up to the Egyptians. They’re going to have to make these decisions. But we’ve offered our advice and we’re offering aid where appropriate.

QUESTION: Secretary Gates, is Libya in our vital interest as a country?

SECRETARY GATES: No, I don’t think it’s a vital interest for the United States, but we clearly have interests there, and it’s a part of the region which is a vital interest for the United States.

QUESTION: I think a lot of people would hear that and say, “Well, that’s quite striking, not in our vital interests, and yet we’re committing military resources to it.”

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, but then it wouldn’t be fair as to what Bob just said. I mean, did Libya attack us? No, they did not attack us. Do they have a very critical role in this region and do they neighbor two countries? You just mentioned one, Egypt, the other Tunisia, that are going through these extraordinary transformations and cannot afford to be destabilized by conflict on their borders. Yes. Do they have a major influence on what goes on in Europe because of everything from oil to immigration?

And David, that raises a very important point because you showed on the map just a minute ago Afghanistan. We asked our allies, our NATO allies, to go into Afghanistan with us 10 years ago. They have been there and a lot of them have been there despite the fact they were not attacked; the attack came on us as we all tragically remember. They stuck with us. When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the UK, France, Italy, other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interests. The UK and France were the ones who went to the Security Council and said, “We have to act, because otherwise we’re seeing a really violent upheaval with a man who has a history of unpredictable violent acts right on our doorstep.”

So let’s be fair here. They didn’t attack us, but what they were doing and Qadhafi’s history and the potential for the disruption and instability was very much in our interests, as Bob said, and seen by our European friends and our Arab partners as very vital to their interests.

QUESTION: Before you go, Secretary Clinton, I want to change the topic. A dear friend and supporter of yours, Geraldine Ferraro, has passed away unfortunately. And she was on this program back in 1984 when she was named onto the ticket to the presidency with Walter Mondale, and – the first woman, of course. And she was asked a question by Marvin Kalb at the time, and I want to show you that exchange and get you to react to it.

MR. KALB: Ms. Ferraro, could you push the nuclear button?

MS. FERRARO: I can do whatever is necessary in order to protect the security of this country.

MR. KALB: Including that?

MS. FERRARO: Yeah, even if it’s politically improper.

MR. KALB: And if you weren’t a woman, do you think you’d have been selected?

MS. FERRARO: That’s a double-edged sword so that – I don’t know. I don’t know, if I were not a woman, if I would be judged in the same way on my candidacy, whether or not I would be asked questions like, “Are you strong enough to push the button,” or that type --

QUESTION: How times have changed. She changed them and you, of course, changed them too for women in politics. What’s your reaction to seeing that and your reaction to her death?

SECRETARY CLINTON: It just makes me smile because she was an extraordinary pioneer, she was a path-breaker, she was everything that – now the commentators will say an icon, a legend. But she was down to earth, she was just as personal a friend as you could have, she was one of my fiercest defenders and most staunch supporters, she had a great family that she cherished and stood up for in every way.

And she went before many women to a political height that is very, very difficult still, and she navigated it with great grace and grit, and I think we owe her a lot. And I’ll certainly think about her every day, and thanks for asking me to reflect on it briefly, because she was a wonderful person.

QUESTION: Thank you both very much.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you.

SECRETARY GATES: Yeah.

QUESTION: Appreciate it.

Secretaries Clinton and Gates with Jake Tapper on ABC's This Week

The title is a live link to the video at ABC News. It is not embeddable.

Interview With Jake Tapper of ABC's This Week

Interview
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
Washington, DC
March 27, 2011

QUESTION: And joining me now in their first interview since the attacks on Libya began, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Madam and Mr. Secretary, thanks so much for joining us.

I’ll start with you, Secretary Gates. The mission is a no-fly zone and civilian protection, but does not include removing Qadhafi from power, even though regime change is stated U.S. policy. So why not have, as part of the mission, regime change, removing Qadhafi from power?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, first of all, I think you don’t want ever to set a set of goals or a mission – military mission where you can’t be confident of accomplishing your objectives. And as we have seen in the past, regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission.

QUESTION: NATO has assumed command and control for the no-fly zone, or is this weekend, but not yet for the civilian protection. When do we anticipate that happening?

SECRETARY GATES: I think Hillary’s been more engaged with that diplomacy than I have.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we hope, Jake, that NATO, which is making the military planning for the civilian protection mission, will meet in the next few days, make a decision, which we expect to be positive, to include that mission, and then just as the arms embargo and the no-fly zone has been transitioned to NATO command and control, the civilian protection mission will as well.

QUESTION: What do you say to the people in Ivory Coast or Syria who say, “Where’s our no-fly zone? We’re being killed by our government too.”

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, there’s not an aircraft – there’s not an air force being used. There is not the same level of force. The situation is significantly different enough that the world has not come together. However, in Ivory Coast, we have a UN peacekeeping force which we are supporting. We’re beginning to see the world coalesce around the very obvious fact that Mr. Gbagbo no longer is president. Mr. Ouattara is the president.

So each of these situations is different, but in Libya, when a leader says spare nothing, show no mercy and calls out air force attacks on his own people, that crosses a line that people in the world had decided they could not tolerate.

QUESTION: When do we know that the mission is done? The no-fly zone has succeeded, civilian protection has stopped. When do you – when --

SECRETARY GATES: I would say, for all practical purposes, the implementation of the no-fly zone is complete. Now it will need to be sustained, but it can be sustained with a lot less effort than what it took to set it up. As I indicated in my testimony on the Hill, you don’t establish a no-fly zone by just declaring it. You go in and suppress the air defenses, and that mission is largely complete.

I think we have made a lot of progress on the humanitarian side and his ability to move armor, to move toward a Benghazi or a place like that has pretty well been eliminated. Now we’ll have to keep our eye on it because he still has ground forces at his beck and call. But the reality is they’re under a lot of pressure. Their logistics – there are some signs that they’re moving back to the west away from Ajdabiyah and other places.

So I think that we have prevented the large-scale slaughter that was beginning to take place, has taken place in some places. And so I think that we are at a point where the establishment of the no-fly zone and the protection of cities from the kind of wholesale military assault that we have seen, certainly in the east, has been accomplished and now we can move to sustainment.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Jake, I would just add two points to what Secretary Gates said. The United States Senate called for a no-fly zone in a resolution that it passed, I think, on March the 1st, and that mission is on the brink of having been accomplished. And there was a lot of congressional support to do something.

There is no perfect option when one is looking at a situation like this. I think that the President ordered the best available option. The United States worked with the international community to make sure that there was authorization to do what we have helped to accomplish.

But what is quite remarkable here is that NATO assuming the responsibility for the entire mission means that the United States will move to a supporting role. Just as our allies are helping us in Afghanistan where we bear the disproportionate amount of the sacrifice and the cost, we are supporting a mission through NATO that was very much initiated by European requests joined by Arab requests.

I think this is a watershed moment in international decision making. We learned a lot in the 1990s. We saw what happened in Rwanda. It took a long time in the Balkans, in Kosovo to deal with a tyrant. But I think – and what has happened since March 1st – and we’re not even done with the month – demonstrates really remarkable leadership.

SECRETARY GATES: I would just add one other thing, in sort of a concrete manifestation where we are in this, and that is we and the Department of Defense are already beginning to do our planning in terms of beginning to draw down resources, first from support of the no-fly zone and then from the humanitarian mission. Now that may not start in the next day or two, but I certainly expect it to in the very near future.

QUESTION: Well, and I wanted to follow on that. How long are we going to be there in that support role?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, I think the – as I say, we will begin diminishing the level of our engagement, the level of resources we have involved in this, but as long as there is a no-fly zone and we have some unique capabilities to bring to bear – for example, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, some tanking ability – we will continue to have a presence. But a lot of these – a lot of the forces that we will have available other than the ISR – are forces that are already assigned to Europe or have been assigned to Italy or are at sea in the Mediterranean.

QUESTION: I’ve heard NATO say that this – that they anticipate – that some NATO officials say this could be three months, but people in the Pentagon think it could be far longer than that. Do you think we’ll be gone by the end of the year? Will the mission be over by the end of the year?

SECRETARY GATES: I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.

QUESTION: Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?

SECRETARY GATES: No, no. It was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about – the engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake. There was another piece of this, though, that certainly was a consideration. You’ve had revolutions on both the east and the west of Libya. They’re fragile.

QUESTION: Egypt and Tunisia.

SECRETARY GATES: Egypt and Tunisia. So you had a potentially significantly destabilizing event taking place in Libya that put at risk, potentially, the revolutions in both Tunisia and Egypt. And that was another consideration I think we took into account.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Jake, but --

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, how does –

SECRETARY CLINTON: Jake, I just want to add too, because I know that there’s been a lot of questions, and those questions deserve to be asked and answered. The President is going to address the nation on Monday night.

Imagine we were sitting here and Benghazi had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands had fled and, as Bob said, either with nowhere to go or overwhelming Egypt while it’s in its own difficult transition, and we were sitting here. The cries would be, “Why did the United States not do anything? Why – how could you stand by when France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans and the Arab League and your Arab partners were saying you’ve got to do something?” So every decision that we make is going to have plusses and minuses.

QUESTION: You heard the Secretary of Defense say that Libya did not pose an actual or imminent threat to the nation, and bearing in mind what you just said, I’m still wondering how the Administration reconciles the attack without congressional approval with then-candidate Obama saying in 2007 the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation and, as a senator, you yourself in 2007 said this about President Bush.

SENATOR CLINTON: If the administration believes that any – any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority.

QUESTION: Why not go to Congress?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we would welcome congressional support, but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama were speaking of several years ago. I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission, which we are in the process of fulfilling.

QUESTION: I want to get to a couple other topics before you guys go, and one of them is in Yemen. President Saleh, a crucial ally in counterterrorism, seems quite on his way out. Secretary Gates, you said this week we have not done any post-Saleh planning. How dangerous is a post-Saleh world, a post-Saleh Yemen, to the United States?

SECRETARY GATES: Well, I think it is a real concern, because the most active and, at this point, perhaps the most aggressive branch of al-Qaida – al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula – operates out of Yemen. And we have had a lot of counterterrorism cooperation from President Saleh and Yemeni security services. So if that government collapses or is replaced by one that is dramatically more weak, then I think we’ll face some additional challenges out of Yemen. There’s no question about it. It’s a real problem.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, on Pakistan, Pakistan has been trying to block U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the FATA region, it continues to work with terrorists to attack India, it held a U.S. diplomat in its prisons for several weeks, as I don’t need to tell you. Has this relationship gotten worse in the last six months, U.S.-Pakistan?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Jake, it’s a very challenging relationship because there have been some problems. We were very appreciative of getting our diplomat out of Pakistan, and that took cooperation by the Government of Pakistan. We have cooperated very closely together in going after terrorists who pose a threat to both us and to the Pakistanis themselves. But it’s a very difficult relationship because Pakistan is in a hard position trying to figure out how it’s going to contend with its own internal extremist threat. But I think on the other hand, we’ve also developed good lines of communication, good opportunities for cooperation, but it’s something we have to work on every day.

QUESTION: And finally, we’ve talked a bit about the end of this operation, how it ends. I’m wondering if you can envision the United States supporting a plan where Qadhafi is exiled. Would the U.S. be willing to support safe haven, immunity from prosecution, and access to funds as a way to end this conflict?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Jake, we are nowhere near that kind of negotiation. I’ll be going to London on Tuesday for a conference that the British Government is hosting. There will be a number of countries, not only those participating in the enforcement of the resolution, but also those who are pursuing political and other interventions. And the United Nations has a special envoy who will also be actively working with Qadhafi and those around him.

We have sent a clear message that it is time for him to transition out of power. The African Union has now called for a democratic transition. We think that there will be developments along that line in the weeks and months ahead, but I can’t, sitting here today, predict to you exactly how it’s going to play out. But we believe that Libya will have a better shot in the future if he departs and leaves power.

QUESTION: All right. Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, thank you so much for joining us.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you.

# # #

Secretary Clinton To Travel to London, United Kingdom

As we knew. She announced this in the video in the previous post.

Press Statement

Mark C. Toner
Acting Deputy SpokesmanOffice of Press Relations

Washington, DC

March 24, 2011

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to London, United Kingdom, March 29 to attend an international conference to discuss the Libyan crisis, including ongoing implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 and the humanitarian needs of those affected by the conflict.

Video & Transcript: Secretary Clinton's Remarks on Transition of NFZ Command

Update on Implementing UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya

Remarks

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

March 24, 2011

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Good evening. I’m just returning from the White House, where I met with the President and the national security team, and I want to give you an update on the international community’s efforts to implement UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 and protect the civilians of Libya.

Events have moved very quickly, so let’s be clear about where we stand and how we got here. When the Libyan people sought to realize their democratic aspirations, they were met by extreme violence from their own government. The Libyan people appealed to the world to help stop the brutal attacks on them, and the world listened. The Arab League called for urgent action.

In response, the UN Security Council mandated all necessary measures to protect civilians, including a no-fly zone. But the regime’s forces continued their assaults, and last weekend they reached Benghazi itself. We faced the prospect of an imminent humanitarian disaster. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were in danger. So an international coalition was compelled to act. French planes were the first to reach the skies over Benghazi. Cruise missiles from the United States and the United Kingdom followed, striking the region – the regime’s air defenses and clearing the way for allied aircraft to implement the no-fly zone.

Many other nations have now joined this effort. After only five days, we have made significant progress. A massacre in Benghazi was prevented, Qadhafi’s air force and air defenses have been rendered largely ineffective, and the coalition is in control of the skies above Libya. Humanitarian relief is beginning to reach the people who need it. For example, just today, we learned that at least 18 doctors and nurses from an organization funded by the United States Agency for International Development had arrived in Benghazi and were beginning to provide support to the city’s main hospital.

Qadhafi’s troops have been pushed back, but they remain a serious threat to the safety of the people. From the start, President Obama has stressed that the role of the U.S. military would be limited in time and scope. Our mission has been to use America’s unique capabilities to create the conditions for the no-fly zone and to assist in meeting urgent humanitarian needs. And as expected, we’re already seeing a significant reduction in the number of U.S. planes involved in operations as the number of planes from other countries increase in numbers.

Today we are taking the next step. We have agreed, along with our NATO allies, to transition command and control for the no-fly zone over Libya to NATO. All 28 allies have also now authorized military authorities to develop an operations plan for NATO to take on the broader civilian protection mission under Resolution 1973.

NATO is well-suited to coordinating this international effort and ensuring that all participating nations are working effectively together toward our shared goals. This coalition includes countries beyond NATO, including Arab partners, and we expect all of them to be providing important political guidance going forward.

We have always said that Arab leadership and participation is crucial. The Arab League showed that leadership with its pivotal statement on Libya. They joined the discussions in Paris last weekend on implementation, and we are deeply appreciative of their continuing contributions, including aircrafts and pilots from Qatar.

This evening, the United Arab Emirates announced they are joining the coalition and sending planes to help protect Libyan civilians and enforce the no-fly zone. We welcome this important step. It underscores both the breadth of this international coalition and the depth of concern in the region for the plight of the Libyan people.

In the days ahead, as NATO assumes command and control responsibilities, the welfare of those civilians will be of paramount concern. This operation has already saved many lives, but the danger is far from over. As long as the Qadhafi regime threatens its people and defies the United Nations, we must remain vigilant and focused.

To continue coordinating with our partners and charting the way forward, I will travel to London to attend an international conference on Tuesday, convened by the United Kingdom. Our military will continue to provide support to our efforts to make sure that Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 will be enforced.

This is an important effort that has garnered the support and the active participation of nations who recognize the significance of coming together in the international community, through the United Nations, to set forth a clear statement of action to be taken in order to protect innocent civilians from their own government. It is an effort that we believe is very important, and we’ll look forward to coordinating closely with all those nations that are participating.

Thank you very much.