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QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your very fascinating speech. I'm Sebastien Loisere, I'm from France and working here at the Council as a stagiaire. I found, suddenly, great comfort and strength in the transatlantic community as you presented it. I was just wondering, your speech mostly referred to Europe and America, or America and particular European member states. I wonder if you thought it was still in the American national interest to favor and support further European integration, talking about the EU and especially in foreign security affairs? And in this respect, I wondered how you looked at European initiatives in this field, such as in Ukraine, mediation in Ukraine, or Iranian negotiations, or the crisis in Sudan?
SECRETARY POWELL: We've always been supportive of European integration, and I can say this in my own career for 20 years, and we have applauded the integration that's taken place so far. And we hope to see, as I said, the expansion of the EU and greater integration. We had a concern a couple of years ago, as Europe was looking for its security identity and defense identity, that there might be a potential conflict with NATO. And we did not want NATO to be undercut by the European security identity. And we debated it, had differences of view, and we worked it all out, and came out with what's known as Berlin-Plus, where there is understanding that if there is a problem or crisis that comes along, NATO, as the premier security institution, would have the first look at it to see whether it was something NATO should do or wanted to do, or whether the EU is better suited to it. And then the EU would make a judgment and see whether it needed to borrow some NATO assets to help perform the mission, or whether the EU could do it entirely with its own resources. And that all worked out fine. We're very pleased with it. That's the way it's worked in Bosnia. We also see that the EU now is planning to create individual force packages throughout the Union, We support all of that.
The work we have been doing with the European Union on the Iranian nuclear program, I think, is also illustrative of how we work with Europe. Now sometimes the United States is the nag. Sometimes we are the ones who sort of shout loudest about a particular problem. In the case of Iran, we've been shouting for a long time, "There's something going on, they're moving toward a nuclear weapon." And others have said, "Well, no, maybe you're overreacting." But, we made the case and, lo and behold, the IAEA finally found that the Iranians were doing things that IAEA didn't know about and should have known about. And they were hiding programs from the world that the world should have known about. And as a result of that, the Russians, building the reactor at Bushir, made it clear to the Iranians they wouldn't fuel it until they had a guarantee that all of the spent fuel would come back to control of the Russian Federation. That was a responsible decision on the part of the Russians.
And then the European Union said, "Let us see if we cannot get a way to suspend or end or terminate this program." And my German, French and UK colleagues went at it, and over a period of a year, they've now come up with an agreement that suspends all enrichment and conversion activities. The United States is still pushing on this, because a suspension is not a termination, and if you suspend something you can turn it right back on. So, we're still pressing for full accounting, and the kind of transparency and the kind of oversight of what Iran's doing that will give the entire international community comfort. So, we're working with Europe, but sometimes we are the nag, sometimes we are the ones shouting perhaps more loudly than Europe would like us to shout at any particular point in time.
But as long as we solve the problem, then maybe that's not a bad way to go about it. Look how we worked on the Libya programs, principally the US and the UK worked on it quietly, had a breakthrough, and what do we do? We immediately brought the IAEA in to the process. So, the United States really does reach out and work in a multilateral way. We did it with Iran, we did it with Libya, and we're doing it with North Korea. So, I think we have demonstrated our desire to work in partnership with Europe and we applaud European additional efforts and steps toward European integration.
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