Summary

Source CONUS Archive
Record ID 336920
Story Slug Brent Snowcroft Briefing (1991)
Location Washington, DC
Format TVD
Date 7/26/1991
Archive Time 18:26
TRT 10:01
Video Description News conference
Script (SUGGESTED TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO) If you could do anything you wanted to solve problems? 00:07 Well, I think what I would do is to make clear that what we have in in the archives is not the right words in the records in the Pentagon. And all the efforts that have been made have not been to conceal any information that there is still no credible evidence that would lead one to the kinds of conclusions that a number of people have have come to. This is a really tragic business. At one time, in the past, the Pentagon did allow fairly wide access to the records. And what happened, as a result is that family members started getting letters from unscrupulous people who had some of the data and who were playing on those people saying, well, they had worried about families and so on and so forth. And indeed, this, this latest photograph that has gotten such notoriety could conceivably be that kind of a thing. It there are not games being played. There is no incentive on the part of the United States to conceal anything. On this tragic issue, indeed, the Pentagon has bent every effort to pursue any credible evidence, investigating crash sites, encouraging the Vietnamese to come forward and so on. Is the new accessibility to the Vietnamese. 02:23 believe that there are any Americans being held against their will in Vietnam? Well, that's a very personal judgment. No, I do not. Thank you. Thank you. Where do we stand on the selling oil away food question working? We're keeping book on him keeping track or making it better? Well, I think the United Nations is now seized with the issue of, of oil. They're the real question on oil is not should he be allowed to buy food and medicine. He's allowed to buy food and medicine now. And and he has been doing it and there have been large amounts, especially in the health field in the medical field of contributions sent there, he diverts them. He diverts him both as a to to the parts of the population that he favors and also to punish others. But anyway, the fundamental question is not not Can he do it? But does he does? Does Iraq still have currency to buy them? Or is it broke? And that that's one of the fundamentally he doesn't have to sell oil if he still has money? Yeah, how does the if, if he is allowed to sell oil and afternoon? Let me let me say just a couple of sentences. Before I go to your questions, as you know, the scheduling time for this summit, was the conclusion of of the start negotiations. This would not be right to characterize this, however, is an arms control Summit. It is really the first post cold war Summit. And the fundamental discussions will be on the evolving new relationship with the Soviet Union. There'll be four very broad general areas. One is the evolution within the Soviet Union itself and how it affects the US Soviet relationship, that relationship between the center and republics and so on. Then there'll be a number of bilateral issues economic or maybe cultural space and so on, and discussion of, of regional issues, and how the kind of things that happened in the Gulf crisis between the United States and Soviet Union, which greatly facilitated the dealing with that crisis, how that can be extended into a pattern of cooperation and dealing with with some of the world's hotspots. And finally, of course, there will be some talks about about the future of arms control. And, and how can we change the focus of arms control, which of course, up to now has security relationship. So this is a, this is a real opportunity for the to to talk, conceptually, philosophically about a relationship, which has evolved with extreme rapidity since the President was in office. 06:26 the Senate used to expect Israel to have to reply to the Middle East peace conference proposal, by the time that President Bush gets to Moscow, I don't know that I expect I would hope, a deadline of No, no, it's not a deadline. It's it's a hope, because, you know, the United States and the Soviets will be co sponsors of any conference, and it would be useful to have an Israeli response before we get there. They will No, not yet. 07:00 This, suppose you don't get a response? I know you can say no answer, because it's hypothetical but appealing dojo? Suppose you don't get a response? How about the maneuver of issuing invitations from the solid even though you don't have a response from Israel? Is that an option? 07:15 But that certainly is an option. Yeah. See in that evolution, and specifically what he's likely to say about the nine plus one message of three, fairly, fairly simple, it's really two words, and that is democracy, and marketization and economy. That's, that's what we'd like to see. Which was, which was signed a year ago, what? Well, what has happened is the Soviets have passed some legislation, which, which casts some questions on some of the elements in the treaty? And we have, we have sought assurances as to the real meaning of that legislation. I think that's pretty well cleared up. So I don't have any announcement to make. But I'm fairly optimistic that very soon we'll be able to submit the the treaty to to the Senate. Susan, 08:16 you've all made a big point about not interfering the internal Soviet affairs not taking sides in these disputes and so forth. And yet the President is spending 90% of his time with score, which is believed 08:27 in concrete terms, then what would he hope to see what what he would hope to see is the termination of Soviet at least military assistance to Cuba as being absolutely without without merit, and and that Gorbachev should encourage Castro to, to join his communist colleagues around the world in recognizing that it's a different world? Not very general, in with the IMF, and the World Bank, because, in fact, you know, they they don't meet all the conditions for full membership, and we'll pursue will pursue it on on on that basis. Yes. Or no, I don't know. I'm not saying that he's setting himself up for any kind of of a fall, but we will proceed on along.
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