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Ambassador Walker: Thank you very much, and thank you in particular to the Air Force Association for giving me this opportunity. It's very encouraging to me to see diplomacy as an aspect of the discussions that you're having at this conference. I think it is critical to you as our military and it's critical for the country.

On October 13, 1999, then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright said at the University of Maine, "Our diplomacy is stronger because we have the threat of force behind it." In this way force and diplomacy complement each other. It's like having Pedro Martinez to do your pitching and Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa to bat cleanup.

The intersection of force and diplomacy has spawned many theories and a lot of newsprint. Clausewitz, the grandfather of grand strategy asserted, "War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of policy carried out by other means."

Now I don't want to take Clausewitz on in this audience and I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion, but I don't agree with him. From my very limited perspective, war is a failure of policy, and more particularly, a failure of diplomacy. When you ladies and gentlemen have to fight it means that I have failed in my job. Now let's apply that premise to Iraq.

Independent commissions and congressional committees have examined the failure of intelligence, but who has examined our diplomacy to determine why we did not achieve our goals through diplomacy?

I think we have to keep in mind that the driving force behind our attack on Iraq was not democracy nor was it the horrors that Saddam Hussein had imposed on his own people, and I know this first-hand because I sat in on the initial National Security Council (NSC) meetings with President Bush and his team in the new Administration. As one individual put it in those meetings, "I don't give a damn about Saddam Hussein. I care about weapons of mass destruction falling into his hands." A very reasonable position I thought. And he wasn't the only one who cared about that or assumed that Saddam had certain weapons and was seeking more.

In 1998, Bill Clinton was President and I was Ambassador to Israel. We were attacking Baghdad and both the Israelis and we were put on notice that we could face a chemical or biological attack. I sealed up a room in the residence, like everybody in the entire country. We got gas masks into the hands of all our employees. We had training sessions for our staff on how to put on the gas masks and how to take care of little children, particularly babies. We brought US military biological and chemical identification vehicles into Tel Aviv because the Israelis did not have that kind of equipment.

There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he was seeking greater capabilities, and that he would have no compunction about using them if he got them. I'm not prescient and I'm not omniscient, and I certainly had the same intelligence that the President of the United States had. But I can certainly understand why the Administration had to act on that premise. This wasn't a problem of George W. Bush's Administration. It was a comprehensive assumption by everyone and by at least three Presidents of the United States and all their senior advisors that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

At the beginning of the Bush Administration, war was not a foregone conclusion, but by that time, diplomatic options were already dwindling.

In 1991, we put the sanctions policy into place after the first Gulf War. It was rigorous. And when I was at the United Nations shortly thereafter in 1992, I was called down to discuss the sanctions policy with the members of the NSC. I was asked from the perspective of the Security Council and the United Nations, “how long can you keep sanctions in place?” I said I thought we could keep the Security Council in line for at least four years. That is until 1995.

It was felt at that time that that was more than enough time for Saddam Hussein to fall and for a new regime to take over. Well, he did not fall and we did not adjust the sanctions policy. It became increasingly onerous for the people of Iraq. Children were affected. We tried to use the media to discredit those stories, but the reality was that people were suffering and Saddam was having a propaganda windfall. He was convincing the people of the region, and in Europe, that he was the victim. The result was that the sanctions were being eaten away by some of our closest friends in the region and in Europe.

Saddam's bribes were not confined to the United Nations Oil for Food program. We allowed the sanctions policy to atrophy in the Clinton Administration and as Assistant Secretary at the time I can take a lot of responsibility for that.

We also lost the solid coalition that had opposed Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. The French were being the French. The Russians were looking covetously at debts Iraq owed them. And countries in the Middle East were profiting from captive Iraqi markets for their goods, market shares that Saddam could hand out for good international behavior.

The message to Saddam was clear. The sanctions were crumbling, he did not have to worry about a unified opposition against him, and the United States was unable to gain the support of its old allies except for perhaps Britain. That emboldened him and it made it clear to him that he didn't need to take into account the inspections of the United Nations or the United States.

The collapse of our Iraq policy and our diplomacy crept up on us while we were all very actively engaged with the Camp David process and the Palestinians and the Israelis. One thing I've learned about government is that we may be able to fight two and a half wars at one time, or even one and a half wars at one time, but our government can only handle one foreign policy crisis at a time. We don't have the manpower at the highest levels to be able to concentrate on more than one major crisis at a time. That's something we have to look at, whether we need to make some corrections in that situation.

I can't prove that a stronger, harsher, more aggressive policy from 1998 on would have led to a different result. There are times when war is the only answer. But we owe it to ourselves to examine the history and to see if other outcomes may have been possible if we had moved more rapidly and followed other courses.

The war was engaged and the campaign of shock and awe was brilliant. The aftermath has not been so brilliant. We have the best equipped and best trained fighting force in the world, but they are not equipped nor trained for the duties they’ve been thrust into in the so-called “nation-building.”

I spoke this year at the Marine Corps War College. I was challenged aggressively by the students: “Where is the State Department? Why are you all asking the Marines to do the job that somebody else ought to be doing? Marines are trained to fight. They're not trained to babysit. They're not trained to build a nation.” I had no real answers.

Now it's true that the State Department did send people out in the Coalition Provisional Government. Twenty-six of Iraq's provinces had provincial representatives in there, more than they have today. But I think the criticism was valid. We're not organized well to take care of the aftermath of a military operation.

We saw that in a small scale in Somalia. My God, we went into Somalia for the best intentions and the best reasons in the world. It was a humanitarian mission and it was successful. Then we got caught up in the middle of a civil war and we didn't really know how to manage it or handle it.

As the Marines told me, we have to reorganize ourselves in a different way.

Nation-building is a different job than warfighting, even though it has some components of warfighting, and we have to start asking ourselves the questions … Are we doing the right job in our training, not only of our military forces, but of our State Department people? Have we got the organization to pull these things together into a coherent operation where there is coordination? Can we use the full resources of the United States and of the government and of the non-governmental organizations in the United States to bring to bear our real true power?

I think the answer right now is no, and I think it requires a lot more introspection and investigation.

The question is how can we better prepare ourselves for the next time, because there probably will be a next time somewhere, some place, some time. Or better yet, how can we anticipate and avoid the next time? None of us proves very good at prediction, but if diplomacy depends on the cooperation of others, then we must take a hard look at our standing in the world.

One organization that takes the temperature of the world from time to time is the Pew Global Attitudes Project. It tracks the standing of the US in major countries in most regions of the world. The last temperature check in June of this year was a pretty appalling predictor of our ability to engage others in the support of our policies.

If we take a look at the favorable opinion of the United States, in Canada it's fallen from 71 percent in the year 2000 to 59 percent in 2005. In Britain it's even more troubling. Eighty-nine percent favorable in 2000, 55 percent in 2005. Britain—89 percent favorable versus 55 percent now. Germany, 78 to 41. And in Jordan, forget it. Of course it was only 25 percent in 2000 and 21 percent in 2005. So we haven't lost that much ground. [Laughter] But that doesn't fill me with a lot of hope.

Now it's not true that popular attitudes are direct predictors of governmental actions. In Jordan, for example, King Abdullah is way out in front of his people in his support of America. In virtually every Arab country the King or President is out in front of his people and more willing to support us than his people would be. But some of these leaders are getting tired of being exposed. Some are tired of the constant criticism they hear from the United States media and our Congress. Some are ready to wash their hands of us. That's not a good sign for our future ability to drive policies in the region to our advantage.

I'm not alone in worrying about this problem of attitudes towards the United States. In a different survey that the organization Public Agenda took of US attitudes in August of this year, three-quarters of the American people who were surveyed said they worried that the US may be losing the trust and friendship of people in other countries, that there may be growing hatred of the US in Muslim countries. In the same survey, when asked to grade our performance on foreign policy, nearly two-thirds, 64 percent, gave the US a ‘C’ or worse on having good relations with Muslim countries. When asked if showing more respect for the views and needs of other countries would enhance our security, 49 percent said a great deal and 38 percent said somewhat.

There are a lot of other depressing stories in these polls, but getting depressed is not going to answer our problems.

Before we went into Iraq we made assumptions. Assumptions about our reception—we would be greeted with flowers. About the Iraqi people—they would welcome anyone who got rid of Saddam Hussein. About the expatriate opposition—they knew Iraq better than Iraq's neighbors. About the history and structure of Iraq—national pride would hold the country together. It just so happens that many of these assumptions were wrong.

Right before the war, I toured the region to talk to the leaders in various countries there. I was warned, and I'm sure the message was also conveyed directly to our government: Iraq is not like any other Arab country. It is not Kuwait, it is not Afghanistan, you will not be welcomed with open arms, you are releasing forces you can't control, there's a risk of chaos and that you will strengthen extremists throughout the region. That's what they said before the war.

Our failure was not a failure of intelligence. I think we hold onto the wrong answer here. It was a failure to listen or to perhaps understand what we were hearing. Or maybe we didn't think we had to listen.

I think we've had a hard time adapting to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps we took too seriously the hyperbole of the United States being the world's only super power. We got caught up in an ideology of unilateralism that flew in the face of our longstanding policies of alliances and common action. No doubt there are times when we may have to go it alone and we have to be prepared for that, but in my view we were a lot stronger when we propelled Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait with a broad military and political coalition behind us than we have been in Iraq with a Coalition of the Willing.

No matter how many boots we have on the ground, we cannot win the War on Terrorism in Iraq. The scope of our battlefield has to be a lot broader than that. We have to win this war wherever there is support for the terrorist ideology, wherever there is sympathy for the terrorists. That means we have to have common cause with countries and leaders spanning this entire globe.

I think King Abdullah of Jordan is speaking today here in Washington. He and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Hosny Mubarak of Egypt, and other leaders in the region are in the front lines of the War on Terror. They're the direct targets of the terrorists. That's who Al Qaeda is after. They’re not after George W. Bush. They're after King Abdullah. They're after the Saudis. They're after the Egyptian regime.

Now King Abdullah of Jordan, because he understands this and he wants to do his part, has been leading an international Islamic effort to discredit the philosophy that drives Al Qaeda and he's had some success with some conferences and so on. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has been cleaning house of radical Islamists in the mosques and schools of Saudi Arabia. President Mubarak has been in the forefront of the fight since the mid '90s when he and I worked together to expel terrorism from Cairo and Luxor. President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has been bringing tribal areas under control that were being used as conduits for terrorists and training grounds. I remember one occasion when I was Ambassador to Egypt when we lost an opportunity to capture a major terrorist operative because the Yemeni authorities turned a blind eye when he went through an airport in that country. That would not happen today. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria has been fighting an at times lonely war against religious extremists in Algeria. We refused him military support because we did not understand the nature of the threat until it came to our own shores. We've corrected that oversight now.

Our very ability to project our forces into the region and to protect our interests still depends on access. In the old days of the tanker war in the Gulf, I was in Saudi Arabia. We were re-flagging and escorting Kuwaiti tankers to protect them from Iranian attack, but we couldn't send our nuclear-powered ships through the Suez Canal. It had been closed to us for "safety reasons". This created an enormous problem for our Navy. Moving fleets from Japan over to the Gulf, it extended the service time for the sailors on board, it beat the ships up, it created enormous problems, logistic problems.

During the first Gulf War in 1990 when the Egyptians joined with us against Saddam Hussein, the canal was opened and has remained open ever since. Having the flexibility to move ships from the Mediterranean or the Atlantic to the Gulf had a marked impact on the sustainability of our presence there and it was a critical issue when we had to move forces at the last minute from outside Turkey to the Gulf in the most recent Iraq war.

Overflight rights over Egypt and the Gulf states have also been crucial to our war effort in Iraq. Prepositioning in Qatar, our naval base in Bahrain, our forces in Kuwait, the UAE and Oman have all been components of the US footprint in the region and they allow us to project our power.

I'm afraid that most Americans do not understand the complex problems of logistics that can affect the lives of our men and women and that depend on the support of other countries, so nobody should be confused about this. We need allies, we need friends, and we need support for the vital interests of America.

Our military is as much a component of our diplomacy as our Foreign Service Officers are. When I was Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and we were building up for a war to displace Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, there was considerable skepticism among the ruling families about hosting our forces. They had had no experience with our military. They did not know us. General Anthony Zinni, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander, came to the Emirates and he charmed them. He seduced them. General Joe Hoar, the previous CENTCOM Commander, I think was first and then Tony. He went out hunting bustards with them. He got up in the middle of the night to join in male bonding sessions on a different kind of bird hunt. [Laughter] Yeah. He was a super diplomat. And he worked so closely with me there was never miscommunication. When the Emirates asked for a joint exercise on tanker refueling, the Pentagon moved heaven and earth to make it happen. It didn't matter that the aircraft actually weren't compatible at first. The whole point was to show Saddam Hussein that the Emirates were not alone. That is diplomacy.

Tony wasn't unique. Every commander in the field from Colin Powell on down understood the importance of diplomacy to the war effort and they went out of their way in the long hours that they had to work, to take count of our Arab allies and sometimes with great effort.

There was one time when the will and the help of the UAE began to flag a bit. They were getting very nervous. So I called up the CENTCOM Commander and told him this was happening. He said put me on the phone with him, so I did. And ten minutes later it was all over. There is that kind of magic that occurs in the military-to-military relationships that we have built around the world that are so critical to what we are trying to do.

Now it wasn't always true that Washington understood what was going on or how to deal with the rest of the world. We had whole tent camps of Air Force personnel to run the squadrons, F-16s, and other aircraft stationed at a number of airfields in the Emirates. We had the Navy minesweepers in Dubai. We had the largest liberty port in the region. And the Pentagon lawyers came to me and wanted a Status of Forces Agreement. That's understandable in a Muslim country where Sharia law prevails. So I went to sit with Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE President. I explained the idea and the need. I explained the importance of an agreement to protect both sides from recriminations. I explained how the President of the United States wanted such an agreement. Zayed looked me in the eye and he said, "I give you my word. No US military personnel will be touched. If there is a problem we will take care of it and return your people immediately."

Now the Pentagon wasn't happy. They wanted a piece of paper. They wanted a signature. They wanted me to go back to Zayed and demand an agreement. In effect, they wanted me to go to him and say we don't trust your word, and I was supposed to do this when I had hundreds of US aircraft and thousands of military personnel depending on his goodwill. As you can imagine, I told the Pentagon to go to hell and I had the support of the military commanders in the field. You can get away with that in war-time.

We had 300,000 US military personnel come through Dubai and Abu-Dabi that year and not one incident in which our personnel were detained or subject to Amiri law. In fact, we only had one or two very minor incidents at all. It was a real testimony to the commanders of our forces and to the men and women of our armed forces. That too, is diplomacy. The quality of our troops, their behavior in spite of the pressures on them opened the way for long term cooperation well after the war ended. I can't tell you how proud I was of our men and women in the service. Of course it was for their bravery and sacrifice, but also because they understood their roles as ambassadors for the United States.

Iraq has had a significant and negative impact on our image abroad. We're called arrogant, aggressive, a bully, immoral, materialistic and spoiled. That's only what Americans think we're being called. [Laughter] Polls of attitudes towards America in the region are at the lowest point ever. We don't have to be liked, but it sure does help our policy when we are, so public diplomacy is important.

The most important part of public diplomacy is listening to our audience. We cannot hope to have a significant impact if we centralize the dictation in Washington. Our news management in Washington is directed towards the Washington Post and Congress. It has a "Made in Washington" label and it's not going to be persuasive in many other parts of the world.

The other day Karen Hughes, our new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, was challenged by people of the State Department on the fact that ambassadors and embassy people are afraid to talk to the press, afraid to go out in public and make the case for America for fear of saying something wrong and being disciplined in Washington and having their careers affected. That's not an attitude that is unique with this Administration. That's an attitude that persists in the Foreign Service.

I was over yesterday talking to some of the students of Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute. One young officer told me the same thing, saying that his colleagues were afraid to go out and talk to people. Now how can we do our job if we're afraid to talk to people? Karen Hughes responded that ambassadors and officers will not get in trouble so long as they use the approved talking points as a basis for their remarks. I'm afraid too many people that were listening to her heard "approved talking points" and very few heard the word "basis." That's the critical difference.

Our ambassadors obviously have to stick to the general policy script. That is their job. But how they present that script, where they put the emphasis, how they tailor it to their local audience, that is what will make the difference.

We made a study last year of attitudes towards America and Egypt. The impressions we heard from Egyptians bore very little resemblance to who we really are. We were called cowboys, colonialists, bullies, materialistic, hedonistic and so on. That's not us. So Karen Hughes has a tough job ahead. But the fact that there is stereotyping, the fact that there is misinformation, the fact that some of our enemies mis-use information to challenge us means that we should have the capability of being able to turn that table around, to make a difference, because the facts ought to be able to speak for themselves.

I have hope that now with the new emphasis that is being placed on public diplomacy, we will be able to make a difference in the region. Now most people in the region dismiss public diplomacy and they say, “it's the policy, stupid.” And certainly policies do make a difference. But when their understanding of the policies and the motivations behind them are skewed, then it's not just a matter of policies.

When we went into Iraq there were two primary reasons that people in the region believed we went into Iraq. One was oil. We were going in to secure all the oil for the United States. The other was Israel, to protect Israel.

They were telling a joke in Egypt before we went into Iraq and it goes like this. Saddam Hussein called President Bush before the war and told him, "I had a dream last night. We won the war and I was flying over Washington. There were hundreds of banners proclaiming 'Long Live Saddam'." President Bush answered, "Hmm, how interesting. I had a dream last night as well. We won the war and I was flying over Baghdad where there were thousands of banners flying." Saddam asked, "Well what did the banners say?" Bush responds, "I don't know. I don't read Hebrew." [Laughter]

Well, just as oil was not the driving force behind our Iraq policy, neither was Israel. But that is what many people believed because they put two and two together and they come up with five. They said, “well who benefits?” Well obviously Israel is more secure because Iraq is not in the hands of Saddam Hussein. It's no secret. And it's a good thing. But when I sat in those meetings at the NSC, Israel's name never came up. That was not the focus of the Administration and I don't believe for a minute it was the reason that we went into Iraq. It was never mentioned in any of the papers that I wrote and prepared for the Embassy or for the President or the Secretary of State, and I don't think that my successors changed course.

We're also accused in the region of having a double standard. One standard for Israel and another for the Palestinians. We're not even-handed, it's said. This is the most persistent charge in the region, the question I get asked the most.

The fact is, the charge is correct. We have a special relationship with Israel and we'll continue to have one, and this is precisely what makes it possible for us to make a difference in negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Who else are the Israelis going to look to to assure them that a deal is a good deal and that they're going to be secure? You don't think they're going to go turning to the French or the Russians for that kind of assurance. So that relationship is critical, and many Arabs understand that. They realize that that very relationship is what can bring peace to that part of the world. And this is one of the overriding concerns they have.

Now, of course, that means that we have to engage. We have to be engaged. And if you look at the polls of attitudes towards the United States, when we are seriously engaged in trying to resolve the Palestinian issue, even when we don't succeed, our poll numbers go up. When we walk away from it, our poll numbers go down. They don't demand success, they demand commitment, they demand that we listen to hear what their most prevalent concerns are, and that we are willing to go to bat to try and solve those concerns. They realize the value of the American relationship with Israel, but only if we use that relationship in the cause of peace. There is a direct correlation between the attitudes towards us and our engagement in the peace process. They want our intervention. They want to make sure that we're engaging on issues which are of concern to them.

When I was in high school too many years ago we were taught that the great flaw in the Soviet system was that it did not allow for criticism and the strength of America is our freedom to challenge our leaders and learn from our mistakes.

We have a self-correcting mechanism that is the strength of our system, and we have a Secretary of State who is doing her best to change the way we approach the world and how we confront some of these problems. Her first order of business has been to repair the relations with some of the other major Western powers. I think she's done a good job on that. She's working on it hard.

The second is to recast America's campaign for democracy from what was being seen as an interventionist dictate to a program of help for changes that countries need to undertake for their own self interest. A different program in every single country… This is beginning to have an effect.

The third is to put the Palestinian issue back on the agenda, which she has been doing. And while Sharon has taken the lead in making the first steps, this is going to become increasingly important as we move into the future and we somehow have to link up what is happening in Gaza with what may or may not happen in the West Bank.

The final point is that Secretary Rice has been willing to listen to what others are saying, and not only listen, but to hear and act on what we are hearing. This is the essence of diplomacy. Regardless of nationality, people don't like to be ignored.

Thank you very much.

Q: Do you believe that the label "Global War on Terror" is constructive in engaging Arab governments and in swaying the Arab street perception of the United States? And more importantly, does the label help us achieve the goal of reducing or eliminating sources of religious extremism and terrorism in the Arab world?

Ambassador Walker: I'm not sure that labels really work too well. The biggest and the strongest reason that Arab governments in the region are going to be supportive of us in the Global War on Terrorism is because they are the targets of the terrorists, and they have come to realize that. It took a long time for some of them to realize this.

I don't think the Saudis realized it until October of 2003 when they were attacked on their own territory by the terrorists. But they did realize at that point and they started to act. They started to cooperate, a new kind of cooperation with us.

The Egyptians have long understood that they are the target of these attackers. So we have had their cooperation. In fact, when I was Ambassador to Egypt, they kept telling us we're not being strong enough about terrorism, we're not concerned enough, we need to work harder at it, we need to tell those British people to get rid of the Islamists in Britain who are encouraging people to go train in Afghanistan.

Certainly the Algerians don't have any time for terrorists. They've had too many people beheaded by them.

So I don't think our problem is convincing the governments of the region. We have that support and we will continue to have it, I'm convinced.

But that Global War on Terrorism label doesn't do the essential thing. There is a problem with it because it implies that it is something that can be corrected by force alone. It is not something that can be corrected by force alone. People become terrorists for reasons. Those reasons differ, but certainly you can look at the skewed version of Islam that is being preached by some and particularly by those who follow the ideology of Al Qaeda and by those who came out of Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood. Those people have to be attacked on the basis of the ideology. Some of them will have to be eliminated. But we've got to be able to get at the source of the problem.

That's what Jordan’s King Abdullah is trying to do. He’s making common cause with Islamic governments and majority populations around the world; Indonesia and so on. They are trying to reinterpret or not reinterpret, they are trying to interpret Islam as being hostile to the premises that Al Qaeda is based on. Al Qaeda is a very narrow concept. It says, “if you don't agree with me, you're my enemy and you have to be eliminated.” Virtually nobody in the Islamic world really agrees with them, at least not on the ideology, so a successful effort should be possible.

King Abdullah of Jordan has elicited the support of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This is a process that's going to continue. We can't do a whole lot about it because we can't speak for Islam, but we can certainly encourage these leaders to take the steps that are necessary to root out what is really an antithetical thesis for Islam and to encourage the moderates in Islam, both in the Arab countries and the Islamic countries, but also here at home; our own Muslim population. We can encourage them to take steps, active steps, to eliminate this kind of perversion from their religion.

I think we are making progress. Not as fast as I'd like to see it, but certainly it's a lot better situation than it was four years ago.

Q: The next major diplomatic challenge appears to be Syria. You haven't commented on Syria. Now that we're sort of looking forward toward a Syrian challenge instead of backward at our failures in Iraq, could you comment on where we should go diplomatically with Syria?

Ambassador Walker: I think we shouldn't kid ourselves, Syria is not going to change overnight. I was one of those people who thought with a new Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, that maybe there was hope, maybe he would engage in reform both of the economy and the politics, maybe he would take a different attitudes towards Israel, towards Lebanon and so on. I've been disappointed and frankly I don't have much hope now.

This is a case where Syria has to understand that they have no option but to change their policy. Syria's not that strong. It has enormous problems in its economy. It is very much subject to the goodwill of foreign trading, foreign countries and companies. It is a country that could be very much affected by a common front. And this is how we got the first UN Security Council resolution through. We worked closely with the French. The French are as fed up with the Syrians as we are. And with the French on board we were able to persuade the Russians and then the Chinese.

If we stick together and if we work very hard together to increase the pressure on Syria, I believe that we can enforce a change. I don't mean a regime change, I mean policy change. I don't care who's in charge of Syria so long as the policies change and they are not supporting the terrorists going into Iraq and they are not intervening in Lebanon's internal affairs. If we can achieve those goals, let anybody be in charge. Our interest is in the policies.

Q: I have two questions regarding Iran. First, could you please comment on the quality of diplomacy currently being used to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons? Second, if that diplomacy fails, what can and should the United States do about it?

Ambassador Walker: I'd have to comment on the quality of British, French and German diplomacy because they're the ones in the forefront of this. They certainly have long experience and very qualified people.

We have a real problem with Iran because it's not just the Iranian government that is seeking nuclear capability. The people of Iran all support this. They see it as a matter of national pride. They see it as a matter of national prestige. They aren't really thinking of it in terms of the weapons or of the use of the weapons so much as they are that it puts you in the club. It makes you a member of the big boys in the world. So it's going to be very difficult for any Iranian regime to actually admit that it is not moving down that path.

We've got some of the same problems that we faced in Iraq. We were convinced they had the weapons or were working toward them. They didn't actually have them. Saddam Hussein could have avoided the whole thing by throwing open the doors, but he didn't want to do it because he was afraid of the reaction back at home. The Iranians have somewhat of the same problem.

I'm not one who really believes in diplomatic isolation as an effective weapon. Regarding economic isolation, sanctions can be effective depending on how much support you have in the world, but not talking to somebody doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Personally, I think we should be talking to the Iranians. We should be taking part in those negotiations so that we can pursue our interests and so they don't make mistakes about our policies or our determination. I find that when we don't have that kind of dialogue going on we are usually weaker.

And nobody says that in a dialogue you have to agree with them. Nobody says you have to be weak. We can be pretty damn tough in any kind of a negotiation, and I think the Iranians would expect it. But at least we would be getting some direct sense of where their limits are and what the possibilities are and we would know how to pursue any opening that might come along.

I'm not looking for weak policy, I'm looking for a strong policy and I believe that diplomatic intervention makes that policy stronger. But that's not the way we're inclined and right now we have seconded our role to the Europeans and they are still working intermittently with the Iranians to come up to a solution. I frankly don't think they have the ultimate clout to get that solution in place without the United States very much being not only behind them, but almost in front of them.

So I would like to see a little bit more active role and then a common approach between the United States, England, France and Germany, building with the Russians a policy that has some rewards for Iran to behave and some very clear and certain penalties if they don't. And those penalties can be in terms of international sanctions, they can be in terms of the threat of force. But I think it is a place where we have to be extremely cautious about how we use or project or think about using force. There are options open to us. They shouldn't be ever under the impression that we won't use it. As I said early in my remarks, this is one of the tools of diplomacy, the fact that you've got the capability to hurt somebody.

So we should look at all of the tools to hurt. We should also look at all the tools we have to help.

Q: What do you envision as an end state of the relations with Iraq and Iran, assuming good relations are restored with a future Iraq government?

Ambassador Walker: I think that assuming we get a government in Iraq that is somewhat coherent and represents the broad majority of the Iraqi people, the Shia religion will have a strong place in it. But even more than the Shia religion, Iraqi nationalism will come to the fore. The Iraqis are Arabs. They are nationalists. And I don't believe that they (even the Shia), having secured their place in the sun, having thrown off, or having had our help in throwing off the repression that encompassed them for so long, I don't believe for a minute they're going to second that authority over to Iran. They will have reasonable relations with Iran, but it will be Iraq. It will not be an Iranian acolyte. It will not be a subordinate to Iran. It will have its own place in the Middle East. It will have its own place in the Gulf. And it will grow in power and it will act as a buffer to Iran in the future.

So the fears of a Shia takeover and a Shia subordination to Iran just doesn't make sense. It's not the way people are. They get the authority, they get the oil income, they get the power, they're going to hold onto it. They're not going to let it be given off to a foreign country.

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