Rumsfeld told Fox News he was confident Saddam would be found, if he was still alive. “He and his crowd are gone. They’re either in a tunnel someplace or in a basement hiding. We’ll find them -- if he’s alive."
Just back from a seven-day tour of the Gulf region and on the Sunday television interview circuit, Rumsfeld discounted concerns that the U.S. would be in “perpetual conflict.”
Rumsfeld said, “The effect of that was a demonstration to the world that an awful lot of countries don’t think it’s a good idea for countries to have weapons of mass destruction, or to be on the terrorist list, or to have relationships with terrorist networks. And that message is a good message for the world ... It’s a healthy one ... and we may see some behavior modification."
Meanwhile, U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell, back from his own Middle East trip and also on the TV circuit, was warning Syria on Sunday that the United States would closely watch for policy and behavior changes that showed new Syrian cooperation.
Powell told ABC's "This Week" that President Bashrad Assad had told him he was "taking action to close" the offices of groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which are on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.
"But it is not what he says, it's what actually happens, what actually happens on the ground," Powell said. "And what I said to him is that we would be watching and we would measure performance over time to see whether Syria is prepared now to move in a new direction in light of these changed circumstances."
Powell warned that if Syria continued to serve as a transit point for military equipment and weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, "then we will have continuing difficulties with Syria, and Syria will not find that it is on a path to a better relationship with the United States and it would not be in their interests."
Powell also responded to criticism from some quarters that his trip to Syria was a waste of time. Before the trip, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., called the proposed visit "ludicrous."
"I spent three hours with President Bashar Assad yesterday and they were a profitable three hours," he said. "He understands clearly the message that I delivered."
Powell said Assad showed a "desire to see a better relationship with the United States. But there is no illusion in his mind as to what it will take to move us in this more positive direction."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also defended Powell's trip despite reports of differences of opinion between the two men. Gingrich is a member of the influential Defense Policy Board.
"He (Powell) went to Damascus because the president of the United States decided it made sense for the secretary of state to go to Damascus," Rumsfeld told "Fox News Sunday." "Now, if you don't like the decision, don't blame the secretary; blame the president."
Powell also said that the message delivered to Assad was that there was a new situation in the region with the end of Saddam's regime in Iraq and with Washington's commitment to peace between the Palestinians and Israel.
"He (Assad) can be a part of positive developments in the region if he chooses to do so," he said.
He said if Syria did not comply, it may face tightened U.S. sanctions.
"I pointed out to President Bashar Assad that performance is important," he said. " ... (We) talked about the kind of actions that might be forthcoming if he does not make new choices, compared to the choices that Syria has made in the past."
He also said full cooperation with Washington on all issues would lead to "advantages ... that might benefit them."
Visiting Beirut, Lebanon for a few hours Saturday, Powell was working in tandem with Rumsfeld to collect dividends from the defeat of the regime in Iraq.
Powell called on Lebanon to keep the calm on its border with Israel by deploying army troops on the frontier and putting an end to the presence of armed militants of the anti-Israel group Hezbollah.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud in Beirut, Powell said he strongly emphasized U.S. concern about the “continued terrorist activities of Hezbollah in the region and around the world. Saddam Hussein and his terrorist regime are now gone. We want to cooperate with Syria in adopting this new strategic situation.”
Rumsfeld also told Fox that cooperation by low-level Iraqi officials involved in their country’s efforts to pursue weapons of mass destruction will lead to the recovery of WMD.
The weapons will be found through cooperation with “people down below who had been involved in one way or another. His comments, in which he also expressed confidence in U.S. intelligence that under Saddam Hussein Iraq possessed banned weapons, came a day after President Bush said proscribed WMD will be found in Iraq.
“We’ll find them,” Bush said. “It’ll be a matter of time to do so.”
Rumsfeld also said higher-level Iraqi officials who are in the custody of U.S. authorities may not be revealing the existence of WMDs because they had a lot to lose.
“They would be vulnerable to charges,” he said. Rumsfeld said one possibility would be to try top members of Saddam’s regime in Iraq.
“The Iraqi people could have some sort of a tribunal if they wished,” he told Fox.
The defense secretary also said the war, in which the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam in less than three weeks, taught the United States lessons on how its military should be structured.
“Well, there’s no question but we simply have got to be able to move in hours and days and weeks, rather than months and years,” he said. “We need to be swift. We need to have deployment capabilities that enable us to move in places.”
“I never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. We’re going to find what we find as a result of talking to people, I believe, not simply by going to some site and hoping to discover it," Rumsfeld said when pressed on that sensitive subject.
“We don’t have anything substantive to announce at the present time," he said.
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