US President George W Bush has committed America's influence to alleviating, and where possible, ending 'destructive' regional conflicts from the Middle East to Kashmir to the Congo and beyond, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday.
She was addressing the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
"True peace will come only when the world is safer, better and freer. That is why we are helping Afghans and Iraqis build representative governments that will serve the decent aspirations of their people. That is why we are committed to building a global trading system that is more and more free, to expand the circle of prosperity into the Americas, Africa and the Middle East," Rice said.
"That is why President Bush has proposed a 50 per cent increase in US development assistance, with new funding going to countries that govern justly, invest in the health and education of their people, and encourage economic liberty," she added.
"That is why the president has announced -- and Congress has approved -- a $15 billion commitment to fight AIDS, a disease that threatens whole societies and challenges our humanity. And that is why the president has committed America's influence to alleviating -- and, where possible, ending --destructive regional conflicts, from the Middle East, to Kashmir, to the Congo, and beyond," Rice said.
Rice pointed out that it was the September 11 attacks, which changed the strategic perspective of the US.
"September 11 produced an acute sense of our vulnerability to attacks that come with no warning. In the terrifying hours and days following the attacks, we resolved that the only true defense against a threat of this kind is to root it out at its source and address it at its fundamental and ideological core," she said.
"With the help of our coalition partners, we have deposed two of the cruelest regimes of this or any time. The Al Qaeda network has been deprived of its chief sanctuary. Half its leadership has been captured or killed, and the rest is on the run -- permanently. Many nations are uniting around tougher measures to fight proliferation, and are determined to address the challenges posed by North Korea and Iran," she said.
On 'multipolarity', Rice said, "The reality is that 'multipolarity' was never a unifying idea, or a vision. It was a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but it did not promote the triumph of peace. Multipolarity is a theory of rivalry; of competing interests and at its worst of competing values."
On the Middle East Crisis, she said, "If we and the people of the Middle East are not bold enough today, we face a future in which the freedom deficit continues to create ideologies of hatred that threaten civilisation as we know it."
"We have important work to do . . . work that cannot be done by any of us alone . . . and cannot be done well if we are working at cross-purposes," she added.
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