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This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.
 

Kissinger calls for policy outline
AM Archive - Tuesday, 13 August , 2002 00:00:00
Reporter: John Shovelan

LINDA MOTTRAM: Overseas now and pressure continues to mount on the Bush administration to explain its plans for Iraq, the latest coming from the former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

He's urging the Bush White House to outline a policy to underpin it's new military doctrine of "pre-emptive action when necessary" because, he writes in a syndicated essay, a war with Iraq on that basis would overturn a 350 year-old legal principle of non intervention in the domestic affairs of other states.

Washington correspondent John Shovelan reports.

JOHN SHOVELAN: The unfinished business of Iraq, writes Henry Kissinger, will be the most important foreign policy decision of the Bush presidency and right now, Mr. Kissinger says, the Bush administration position is too vague.

On the one hand, the President says his policy is regime change. He's staked out a new pre-emptive strike policy, rejected weapons inspections as a solution to Saddam Hussein's arsenal, but continues to claim that the administration hasn't made any decision.

The ambiguity and confusion has reached the point, Kissinger writes, where the administration must define a comprehensive policy for America and the world.

FROM KISSINGER'S TEXT: The new approach is revolutionary. Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system and the notion of justified pre-emption runs counter to modern international law which sanctions the use of force in self defense only against actual rather than potential threats.

JOHN SHOVELAN: Henry Kissinger writes that Russia and China would be influenced by their desire for a co-operative relationship with the United States. But in the sub continent…

FROM KISSINGER'S TEXT: India would be tempted to apply the new principle of pre-emption to Pakistan.

JOHN SHOVELAN: But the risks of overturning the international order, he argues, are worth taking because the case for removing Iraq's capacity of mass destruction is extremely strong.

The old international order, he says, is based on limited military technology which generally allowed countries the luxury of a waiting and unambiguous attack.

Terrorism, he writes, transcends the nation state and if terrorist groups acquire weapons of mass destruction they could inflict catastrophic and even irretrievable damage.

FROM KISSINGER'S TEXT: That threat is compounded when these weapons are being built in violation of UN resolutions by a ruthless autocrat with a demonstrated record of hostility toward America and the existing international system. The restoration of the inspection system existing before its expulsion by Hussein is clearly inadequate.

JOHN SHOVELAN: But Henry Kissinger says President Bush has yet to make his case. He argues the administration must undertake a national debate and seek congressional approval if a war becomes unavoidable.

The campaign in Afghanistan, he says, was an important first step but it runs the risk of petering out into an intelligence operation if the region slides back into pre September 11 patterns with radicals encouraged by American hesitation and moderates demoralized by the continuation of an unimpaired Iraq as an aggressive regional power.

John Shovelan, Washington.
 

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