[«Entrevista de Lorenzo Milá a Condoleezza Rice»:http://www.rtve.es/FRONT_SALA_PRENSA/?go=eacaa4148f48af89730076a6669df2169fcb5b71e1aa29da2797499a86bc1e70eba2430c71357c93a819c4cba3b5cdc5]
MILÁ: Mmm-hmm. You were talking about the disagreements we still have between Spain, and some of them are around Venezuela and particularly Cuba — Cuba, I mean. Have you reached any agreement about Cuba with the Spanish Government today?
RICE: Well, let me just say on Venezuela, I found that we’re in complete accord about the seriousness of the decision of the Venezuelan President to take off the air opposition television. And in fact, Foreign Minister Moratinos and I today at the press conference that we held said that that station should be allowed to be on the air, Venezuelans should have access to it, and this was indeed an anti-democratic act.
On Cuba, I think we are in agreement that Cuba should have a democratic transition. The Cuban people deserve that. Spain has its own history of having lived under authoritarianism. The transition to democracy is here — here as one that people greatly admire, and you can see what democracy has done for Spain. It is prosperous. It’s vital. And the Cuban people deserve the same thing.
And so we talked today about the importance of sending the right messages to the opposition, to dissidents, so that the Cuban people realize that those of us who are lucky enough to live in freedom believe that they also should live in freedom, and that we are not going to countenance the transfer of power from one dictatorship to another dictatorship.
MILÁ: In Spain, many people will share that point of view, but also, these people would find it a bit paradoxical U.S. fighting so hard to defend human rights and also have Guantanamo, and also having the EU parliament, Brussels, saying these CIA flights in Europe — those prisons are intolerable.
RICE: Well, first of all —
MILÁ: Is it a paradox?
RICE: No. The United States is the strongest defender of human rights in the entire international system. We are the ones that every year go and try very hard to get the world to stand up for human rights in Cuba, human rights in Belarus, human rights in Burma, and indeed human rights around the world. We are fighting so that the terrorists will not, as they have in places like the United States but also here in Madrid, take the lives of innocents.
And when you look at Guantanamo, yes, we would be very pleased to — the President has said it — to close Guantanamo; we hope to do that. But where are we to put these very dangerous people who have told us if they are out again, they’re going to kill again, they’re going to go out and try and kill innocent people?
I think it is just a terrible mistake to try and equate somehow human rights abuses around the world with the necessity of — on a legal basis, on a basis that protects the rule of law — what we are trying to do in the war on terror, which is to keep dangerous people from killing innocent people.
Mmm… Sure.