No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington
Page 83
That late-summer trip was my last to Iraq, and it was very emotional. For the first time, the security situation permitted me to travel into the Red Zone, the region outside the fortified Green Zone, to visit some of the Iraqi leaders who lived there. A year before, that would have been impossible; we’d only been able to get to this point because of the extraordinary efforts of General David Petraeus, then commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, one of our nation’s finest Foreign Service officers. I would later bestow the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor I could give, on both members of this highly effective civil-military team.
As we turned the corner onto the main street in Baghdad’s Red Zone, I spotted a little boy standing in a field where kids were playing soccer. That would have been impossible a year before as well. The child, maybe eight years old, put his hand to his head in a salute. He’d apparently gotten used to seeing U.S. military convoys and thought we were one of them. He seemed quite unafraid of his surroundings or us. I raised my hand and returned his salute—even though by then we’d already passed him.
BEFORE THE Russian invasion of Georgia, I’d given serious consideration to resigning my post in September. I would lead the official U.S. delegation at the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and that would be it. What a way to go out! I was really tired, and I also thought that it would be perfect to have my deputy, John Negroponte, become secretary of state for the remainder of the term. There had been few Foreign Service careers as distinguished as John’s; it would have been a fitting coda to his service. When I told Steve of the idea, he laughed. “The President will never go for it,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to try,” I said. But there never seemed to be a good time to bring up the idea, and once the Georgian war began, I knew I couldn’t leave.
Moreover, there were still a few loose ends, to put it mildly. I was especially concerned about completing the international components of the civil-nuclear deal with India. The historic accord announced by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh in July 2005 had actually been only the beginning. The U.S.-India deal took more than three years to finalize and demonstrates perfectly how difficult it can be to achieve a major foreign policy shift even if the heads of state of both countries are fully supportive and engaged. After the deal was announced in the summer of 2005, it had to go through several complex stages, including amendment of U.S. domestic law (the Atomic Energy Act of 1954) to permit civilian nuclear trade with India; negotiation of a bilateral “Section 123 Agreement” between the United States and India, which detailed India’s obligations and rights under the deal; an India-IAEA safeguards (or inspections) agreement; and the grant of an exemption for India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an export-control group of then forty-five countries. Finally, the U.S. Congress had to vote again to approve the “Section 123 Agreement.”
Each step was fraught with difficulty. Under secretary for political affairs Nick Burns served as my chief negotiator for the deal along with India expert Ashley Tellis. The pair moved mountains to negotiate the first detailed outline of the deal in early 2006. I personally testified before both houses of Congress in April of that year, and Nick, with his aide Anja Manuel, spent many hours explaining to skeptical senators and representatives why amending U.S. law to permit civilian nuclear trade with India made sense. The deal’s environmental friendliness was an advantage. One of the arguments that ended up having traction with Democrats in particular was that the deal would enable the United States—and American companies—to help India develop an emissionsfree energy source, and thus to rely less on its highly polluting domestic coal to generate electricity. In July and November of 2006 the House and then the Senate voted overwhelmingly, in bipartisan fashion, to amend U.S. law. Meanwhile, Anja and other State Department officials traveled to India a half-dozen times to hammer out the details of the “123 Agreement,” the implementing document, which was finally concluded on August 3, 2007.
But the marathon continued. Prime Minister Singh had to face down critics of the deal within India and would barely survive a no-confidence vote that almost brought down his unruly coalition government. After India finalized its own agreement with the IAEA, we needed the endorsement of the IAEA’s board of governors, a step that was achieved relatively easily in August 2008 after India agreed to give IAEA inspectors wider access to its civil nuclear facilities. Securing the consent of the Nuclear Suppliers Group was much harder.
The major nuclear technology suppliers—Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and, of course, the United States—all backed the deal. But there was significant resistance from the Austrians, the Irish, and the Nordic countries, all of which considered themselves guardians of the non-proliferation regime. John Rood, one of our primary negotiators and the acting under secretary for arms control and international security, was having little success in bringing these countries on board. Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian foreign minister, tried to help, writing language that I approved to bring the recalcitrant states along. I was in Algiers during the negotiations and stayed up all night making phone calls. (They were in addition to the more than twenty that I’d made before leaving Washington.) Finally it came down to the Austrian foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik, who was at a European Council meeting in Brussels. I asked German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to track her down and get her agreement. She apparently didn’t want to be found. But Frank-Walter persisted, and she instructed her negotiator to agree. John called the next morning to say that he had secured international consent from the Nuclear Suppliers Group to move ahead with the deal.
The next step was to get congressional approval before the end of the legislative session, and time was running out. Jeff Bergner, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, told me we were short on votes. But a last-minute deal satisfied New York Congressman Gary Ackerman, and with him came the requisite Democratic votes. The House passed the legislation 298 to 117.
Congress’s arcane rules made it much easier to get a vote in the House than in the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate was out of time, and it had apparently been the administration’s fault. When the White House had communicated to the Senate leadership the administration’s priorities, the civil-nuclear deal was somehow not on the list. That had begun a comedy of errors that almost cost the President one of his signature foreign policy achievements. When my legislative people at State told me what had happened, I called Steve and then Josh Bolten. The chagrined Josh admitted the mistake and said he’d do what he could. I talked to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He indicated that he could now only bring the bill to the Senate floor through a unanimous-consent agreement, but he couldn’t get that done because an anonymous hold had been placed on the bill. Unanimous consent could be achieved only once the hold was lifted, and that seemed a far way off.
I called the President. “Hi,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t know if he heard the irritation in my voice that quickly or if Steve had told him. “Mr. President,” I said, “thanks to a White House screw-up, Barack Obama or John McCain is going to be signing your treaty with India.” I then explained what had happened.
The President hung up, and a few minutes later Josh called back. “We’ll get it done,” he said. I still don’t know to this day what Josh did, but we got the vote.
The historic agreement passed the Senate 86 to 13, and the President signed the United States–India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act into law on October 8 in an East Room ceremony. With domestic approval from Congress in hand, I joined my Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, in formally signing the agreement at the State Department two days later. The accord would now permit the United States to exchange peaceful nuclear technology with India and, perhaps more important, establish a foundation for a new strategic partnership with New Delhi. I was proud of what we had achieved, especially of the core team that had gotten it done.
Tom and I would get together from time to time, and he was always there for me, even when we didn’t agree. I’d become close to his family. One day during one of our meetings, Tom was almost in tears. His beautiful granddaughter, Charity Sunshine, then twenty years old, had been diagnosed with a very rare and almost always fatal disease, idiopathic pulmonary hypertension. She was an operatic soprano who possessed, as he put it, “the voice of an angel.” Right then and there we came up with an idea: I’d accompany Charity in a performance at the Kennedy Center to raise awareness of the disease. The night of the performance was very special indeed. Doctors, researchers, and patients for whom the disease had become a way of life all turned out. So too did many diplomatic personnel and members of Congress. Tom and his wife, Annette, beamed as Charity sang some of their favorite show tunes. Remarkably and thankfully, even after a double lung transplant, she’s still singing today. And we did raise the awareness of those who hadn’t known about this near-orphan disease—including me.
When Tom died, I really missed him—his wisdom and warmth. At his memorial service I spoke about him as a conscience of the Congress on matters of human freedom. From time to time he would visit, and he would always bring me a plant or a flower. The last time he came he brought an orchid, but it didn’t bloom. On the morning of his memorial service, I woke up to see a white flower on the previously dormant plant. It was just like Tom to send a gentle reminder that he was still there.
54
HE LIVES IN HIS OWN HEAD
THE LAST FEW MONTHS did not go quietly or without consequence. They even brought historic moments—none more so than my much anticipated visit to Libya to meet with Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. When the Libyans gave up their weapons of mass destruction in 2003, there was a clear diplomatic quid pro quo: in exchange, we’d help them to return to good standing in the international community. But it would not be easy and not only because of Qaddafi’s long record of brutality.
Libya had arrested five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor several years before on trumped-up charges that they had deliberately infected more than four hundred Libyan children with HIV. The medics insisted that they were innocent, but the Libyan courts had sentenced the group to death. The United States repeatedly urged Libya to find a way to release them, and I was grateful for the dedication and leadership of European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner on the issue. Libya’s decision in 2007 to commute the sentences and allow the medics to return home was due in large part to Benita’s resolve.
We had to make sure, too, that we were sufficiently attentive to the sensitivities and needs of the families of the victims of the colonel’s decades-long reign of terror. I withheld my visit until we could secure a Libyan claims settlement for families whose relatives had been killed in attacks such as the bombing by Libyan agents of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. My upcoming trip gave me powerful leverage in these negotiations because Qaddafi desperately wanted me to visit Tripoli.
There were two reasons for this: one traditional and the other, well, a little disconcerting. Obviously, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state since 1953 would be a major milestone on the country’s path to international acceptability. But Qaddafi also had a slightly eerie fascination with me personally, asking visitors why his “African princess” wouldn’t visit him.
I decided to ignore the latter and dwell on the former to prepare for the trip. The arrangements were not easy, with all manner of Libyan demands, including that I meet the leader in his tent. Needless to say, I declined the invitation and met him in his formal residence.
Stopping first in Portugal and staying with my friends Ambassador Thomas Stephenson and his wife, Barbara, I took advantage of Foreign Minister Luis Amado’s knowledge of Libya and Qaddafi. He suggested that I open the conversation with a discussion of Africa. “And don’t be surprised when he says something crazy,” he cautioned. “He’ll get back on track.”
When I arrived in Tripoli, I was asked to wait at one of the only Western-style hotels in the city. There was no doubt that the capital had once been a beautiful place, but it appeared run-down and tired. The only bright lights seemed to be those illuminating the many, many billboards of Qaddafi and his “inspirational” sayings. In speaking with Libyans, a distinct generational divide manifested itself. While the senior staff spoke English fluently and reminded me of my European colleagues, younger officials appeared to have had fewer educational opportunities and little contact with the West. It was another reminder of the sad consequences of Qaddafi’s monstrous rule.
After several hours, we were summoned to the residence, where I greeted the Libyan leader and sat down to hundreds of camera flashes. Qaddafi said a few completely appropriate words, as did I, and the press left. We began the conversation as Amado had suggested, talking about Africa in general and Sudan in particular. Libya, he promised, would help with alternative routes for humanitarian supplies to the refugees. This is going pretty well, I thought. He doesn’t seem crazy. Then, as Amado had predicted, he suddenly stopped speaking and began rolling his head back and forth. “Tell President Bush to stop talking about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine!” he barked. “It should be one state! Israeltine!” Perhaps he didn’t like what I said next. In a sudden fit, he fired two translators in the room. Okay, I thought, this is Qaddafi.
It was Ramadan at the time of my visit, and after sundown the “Brother Leader” insisted that I join him for dinner in his private kitchen. Colby Cooper, who had overseen the arrangements for the trip, protested that this hadn’t been the plan. My security detail did as well, especially when they were told to stay outside. I thought I could take care of myself and went in. At the end of dinner, Qaddafi told me that he’d made a videotape for me. Uh oh, I thought, what is this going to be? It was a quite innocent collection of photos of me with world leaders—President Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, and so on—set to the music of a song called “Black Flower in the White House,” written for me by a Libyan composer. It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy. The press was fascinated with my trip, and I sat down for an interview with CNN’s Zain Verjee (who often worked with producer Elise Labott on State Department coverage). Zain asked me about my personal impressions of Qaddafi. I remember that I came away from the visit realizing how much Qaddafi lives inside his own head, in a kind of alternate reality. As I watched events unfold in the spring and summer of 2011, I wondered if he even understood fully what was going on around him. And I was very, very glad that we had disarmed him of his most dangerous weapons of mass destruction. There in his bunker, making his last stand, I have no doubt he would have used them.
55
ONE LAST CHANCE FOR NORTH KOREA
THE NEGOTIATED END to Libya’s weapons of mass destruction program was evidence that rogue states could be convinced—with the right incentives—to give them up. Occasionally, President Bush would say, “Dictators don’t give up their weapons,” and then he’d immediately correct himself. “But Libya did,” he’d add in amazement. The prospect of a tyrant facing his last days with the ultimate weapo
n to protect himself is reason enough to seek an end to such programs. So too is the possibility of a dictator who, playing out an endgame scenario or perhaps in need of funds, detonates a nuclear bomb or sells the world’s most dangerous weapons to the highest bidder.
It was concerns such as those that made us accelerate efforts to end the North Korean nuclear program. Our negotiations with the North Koreans had been guided by three breakthrough documents. The first, the Joint Statement signed by the six parties in September 2005, had established the basic framework for an agreement on nuclear disarmament of the Korean peninsula. In it, the North had committed to abandoning its nuclear programs in exchange for the gradual granting of benefits (such as heavy fuel oil deliveries) and the eventual normalization of relations with the United States, Japan, and South Korea. As I have discussed previously, these benefits would be delivered only after verifiable progress had been made by the North toward declaring, disabling, and eventually dismantling its nuclear program.
In February 2007 and again in October 2007 the six parties signed two detailed implementation plans that laid out specific steps to meet the terms of the 2005 Joint Statement, including the shutdown of the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the resumption of inspections, and “a complete declaration of all nuclear programs” in North Korea. These were agreements Chris Hill, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, had worked out with Kim Kye Gwan and then his Six-Party counterparts, and they required the United States to take a series of steps, including the return of the $25 million in frozen assets and the removal of North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, once the North Koreans had met their side of the bargain. The Chinese had played a major role in drafting the document.