US official: Iraq is contained and not a threat, Cohen to visit the region
Iraq-USA, Politics, 10/14/1999

A senior US defense official said yesterday that US Secretary of Defense William Cohen will visit the Middle East on October 17-26. The official said Cohen will visit Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and Israel.

"This is a series of meetings that are about consultations on regional issues. He'll talk about Iraq and Iran, of course. He'll talk about long-term defense cooperation, including the U.S. presence in the region, some of the initiatives that we have started," adding, "When he was there last, in February, as you'll recall, he talked to them about shared early warning and problems of weapons of mass destruction, and we started a so-called cooperative defense initiative, which focuses on passive defense and shared early warning, potential of theater missile defense.

"We will also talk about the Middle East peace process. Certainly we would have talked about India and Pakistan anyway, but I'm quite confident, in light of the ongoing activities in Pakistan, we'll talk about Pakistan. And then, if there's time, I suspect there will be some discussion of Afghanistan and Kosovo," the official said.

On US relations with Israel, he said, "From a DOD perspective, in addition to a U.S. government perspective, our role is to help ensure that the Israelis' security is ensured."

On Iraq, he said, "Iraq is being contained. It's not a threat to any of its neighbors. The neighbors are able, actually, to have developed economically. The peace process side, we've been able to have progress on the peace process. In the gulf we're working closely with the gulf countries. And Iraq has been made essentially a very limited factor in the overall. So from our perspective we're doing rather well."

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