For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 25, 2002
Press Briefing by Gary Edson
Aboard Air Force One
En route Phoenix, Arizona
10:25 A.M. EDT
MR. FLEISCHER: Let me turn you over to Mr. Gary Edson. Are you
going to do this on the record?
MR. EDSON: Any way you want.
MR. FLEISCHER: Let's do this on the record, Gary Edson, briefing
on the G8.
MR. EDSON: The G8, as Ari said, is going to focus on essentially
three issues: terrorism, global economy and development and Africa.
On terrorism, we're going to be issuing -- a series of documents
will be issued over the course of the summit. One of the good -- the
good news is that we've prevailed, there will not be a communique, per
se, as you've seen in past years. We've argued, the U.S. has argued
that it's of limited utility. We will issue -- or the plan is to issue
some other relevant documents.
One, I believe, will be a background paper talking about
accomplishments of the G8 to date in the area of counter-terrorism. We
also hope to issue a set of principles on nonproliferation that are
very precise -- a set of principles that are very concrete, where the
G8 says: we commit to do the following; we call on other countries to
join us. And those principles talk about such things as securing
facilities, disposing of stocks. The principles speak to the issue of
stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
We also hope to issue an action plan on transport security. You
know, the G8 together represents 50 percent of world trade. As I said,
the summit is going to focus on three themes. Two of those --
terrorism and growing the global economy -- are extremely important.
And the transport security initiative is focused on enabling us to grow
our economies and enhance our security at the same time.
So it is focused on enhancing the security of people and containers
in international traffic, the ships and planes that move them, and the
ports and airports from which they embark and disembark. You know,
there are 48 million containers that are exported or imported
annually. There are 28,000 ships trading daily around the world. It's
a huge challenge, and the challenge is principally to facilitate
legitimate commerce so that we can continue to grow our economies while
enhancing our security.
And this transportation security initiative involves a series of
concrete actions that are an extension, frankly, of the smart border
initiatives that we have with Canada and Mexico; the vision that --
promote a vision of security that pushes the perimeter beyond the
physical border so that we can share advance passenger information, so
that we can ensure the documentation is valid and accurate, in terms of
what's in cargo, et cetera.
So we think that that's a critically important initiative that the
United States has been driving. It's a huge challenge, but it's a
great opportunity for the G8 to lead by example, because all of these
-- many of these things are being negotiated in much larger settings,
through the U.N. and other organizations. but this is an opportunity
to accelerate progress by having the G8 lead by example through this
action agenda.
Q On nonproliferation, can I just ask, are you going to be
10-plus-10-over 10?
MR. EDSON: Well, we're focused on the principles. The transport
security initiative is one way to operationalize those principles. And
we're obviously going to be discussing other ways to operationalize
those nonproliferation principles. principles.
The principles themselves are very robust. And I think you'll see
that they really address on the ground real-world concerns and issues.
And we're hoping to focus more G8 attention, as well as global
attention, on those issues.
Q The French want to do this with a conference call next year.
Why shouldn't that happen?
MR. EDSON: Pardon me?
Q The French want to do this summit with a conference call next
year. Why shouldn't that happen?
MR. EDSON: We haven't heard that proposal. But we would -- we
have encouraged, in terms of the process, we've encouraged a more
flexible, more informal, less bureaucratic G8. We've encouraged
meetings where leaders are able to come together, exchange views
candidly and focus on a few issues of great global importance.
So in terms of making the agenda more informal, more flexible,
we're obviously open to that. We believe that the G8 ought to be forum
for focusing leaders' attention and global attention on a few key
issues, and mobilizing action, not an ongoing, huge, international
bureaucracies.
Q Why do they even get together, given that draws the
anti-globalization folks who will this year be in Calgary? Why do they
even need to get together?
MR. EDSON: Well, I think there's tremendous value in getting
together and candidly exchanging views. I mean, they get together in a
variety of settings, not only just as the G8. But we see these leaders
at NATO summits, at the U.S.-EU summit that we hold. But as a general
principle, what we want to do and what we've been trying to do since we
entered office is make the G8 a more flexible institution, using it not
simply as -- not viewing it simply as an opportunity to come together
once a year, but using it over the course of the year to accomplish
things.
For example, in the area of terrorist financing, we've used our G8
meetings and the G8 apparatus to enhance cooperation and collaboration
among the G8 in freezing terrorists' assets. And you saw that shortly
-- several months ago we had the first joint designation of terrorist
finances by the G8. That was a huge step forward. So that's what
we're trying to do, is make the process an effective and constructive
one on an ongoing basis, and less bureaucratic.
The second big issue at the summit is, of course, the global
economy and development. There, we're thrilled that there has been
agreement on the President's proposal to increase the amount of grants
that are being provided by the World Bank, rather than loans, to the
poorest countries -- especially for key social issues such as
education, health et cetera.
The President proposed that up to 50 percent of the support that
the World Bank gives to the poorest countries in those areas be in the
form of grants, not loans. There is now agreement on a formula that
will ensure that virtually all of the assistance provided for
education, health care, sanitation, nutrition for the very poorest
countries, dollar-a-day countries in per capita income will be provided
in the form of grants. And 100 percent of the assistance to those
countries for HIV/AIDS will now be provided in the form of grants.
We think this is a way, as you know, not merely to drop the debt,
not merely to give temporary debt relief, but to ensure that it's not
built up again, to stop the debt permanently. So that's an important
initiative and we'll be hailing the significance of that agreement and
of continuing to make the World Bank and the other multilateral lending
institutions more results oriented.
Q -- health and sanitation?
MR. EDSON: Education, health care, sanitation, nutrition. We can
check that for you. I believe it's nutrition and several other
sectors, as well. But those are representative of the kinds of
things.
If you think about them, grants in those areas make sense. We know
that investing in education is a tremendous investment. But you don't
see the returns on that investment immediately. So it doesn't lend
itself to having money provided in the form of a loan that's got to be
repaid in a few years. It is better for grant support, and that's the
agreement the President has gotten.
In terms of the Africa action plan, of course, what we're going to
-- the G8 leaders will be meeting with representatives of the New
Economic Partnership for African Development, NEPAD, which is a
continent-wide effort whereby the African leaders have stepped forward,
taken responsibility for their own development policies. And we're
going to be meeting with them and issuing a G8 action plan that's in
response to the NEPAD action plan itself.
That action plan, the G8 action plan and the political statement
that cover it, will reflect in many ways the principles that the
President outlined in his speech before the Monterrey conference on
financing development.
The President has been focusing on results, focusing ont outcomes,
not just the inputs. So that the debate is turning toward how do we
achieve real results, real changes in people's lives today. And what
we've proposed is a mutual accountability, whereby we will reward with
increased assistance countries that are putting in place the kinds of
policies that we know will achieve sustained economic development;
policies that include governing justly, investing in the health and
education of people and promoting -- in particular, promoting economic
freedom and entrepreneurship. So that the enterprises can be
development -- develop that can sustain economic growth over the long
haul.
And what we're focusing on are targeted initiatives that really
will change people's lives, like the President's newest, at $500
million initiative to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.
This initiative is the first large-scale assault on an issue that is
truly devastating, but that can be stopped. We know that 2 million HIV
infected women become pregnant each year. We know that a large
proportion of the children born to those women will be infected by
AIDS, either in childbirth or subsequently, through breast feeding.
And we know that the great majority of those infants will die before
they're five years old.
But we also know that we can stop it. And the President's
initiative is focused on eight African nations and the Caribbean, four
more African nations to be added next year. Those nations collectively
contain half of the women, 1 million of the 2 million women who will
become -- HIV infected women who will become pregnant. And in addition
to simply providing the treatment that can prevent those infections
from being transmitted, the initiative very importantly is focused on
building the health care infrastructure that can sustain a robust
health care system, not only to address the AIDS, but malaria,
tuberculosis and the other infectious diseases.
That's coupled with the President's doubling of funding for his
Africa education initiative; focused on training teachers, providing
textbooks, tuition for girls. These are the kinds of targeted
initiatives, results-oriented, that we're going to focused on as part
of our approach to financing for development.
Q Is there controversy over that? Does anybody disagree with
that idea?
MR. EDSON: No. What we're going to -- as I say, we're going to be
focusing more on these kinds of targeted, results-oriented initiatives
to achieve the goals we've already set for ourselves, not
pie-in-the-sky kind of sweeping new initiatives that are more focused
on grandiose kinds of goals, rather than making changes in people's
lives today. And that's the kind of thing that we're focused on.
Q -- any pie-in-the-sky, grandiose proposals likely to be
floated at this --
MR. EDSON: I don't know of any likely to be floated. All I can
tell you is that I think if you look at what's been going on, if you
draw a line from the President's World Bank speech a year ago in July,
all the way through the speeches that preceded Monterrey and at
Monterrey, you'll see that we've made combatting global poverty a
priority of U.S. foreign policy.
But the way we've gone about doing it isn't simply by mustering
more resources. What we've done is we've drawn the right conclusion
from the last 40 years of development assistance, which is that if you
take development assistance and you pour it into a bad policy
environment, it isn't just wasteful, it's downright harmful. It
perpetuates bad policies, it prolongs misery.
But if you take that development assistance and you pour it into a
good policy environment, we know that the evidence shows that you
actually attract private capital, two to one. So the President has
said, look, we will step forward with more resources -- $5 billion a
year, a 50 percent increase in our development assistance through his
Millennium Challenge account initiative. We'll step forward with more
resources and those resources will go to the countries that are making
the right choices.
So we're linking our responsibility to come forward with more
resources with responsibility on the part of the countries themselves
to put in place the kinds of policies and takes the kinds of actions
that we know we'll be able to leverage those resources and transform
them into sustained economic growth and development.
Q On the global economy part, can you talk a little bit about
the plans and the final statement to address the corporate
responsibility issue, transparency, fairness in accounting standards?
I mean, is that an issue that's going to be -- you know what I mean, in
a general way, mentioned? I know the President has been talking a lot
about that lately.
MR. EDSON: The current agenda doesn't have specifically on it that
issue. The plan instead of a communique is that at the end of the
summit, Prime Minister Chretien, as the host, will issue a Chairman's
Summary that presumably will reflect the issues that were raised on the
agenda .
We've argued for, in keeping with the point I made earlier, we've
argued for a more flexible kind of agenda so --
Q Is that an issue that -- you know, since the President has
talked so much about that lately, is that an issue he feels should be,
you know, touched on, even cursory?
MR. EDSON: We're focusing at this summit on those three big issues,
namely, counter-terrorism, the global growth and development and, of
course, the action plan with the African NEPAD group.
Q Does the Russian nuclear proliferation come up at all? You
know, finding a better way to get rid of their --
MR. EDSON: Well, as I said, we're continuing to work on the
proliferation issue. And we've got these principles and we're going to
be looking for ways to operationalize them. They're going to be a lot
of different ways in which we'll operationalize those principles.
Q What about the explicit expectations of the G8 partners to
come up with all the $10 billion over 10 years?
MR. EDSON: I think that there are expectations only that we will
try and find ways going forward here to operationalize those
principles.
MR. FLEISCHER: I forgot to mention, the President this morning
declared Arizona a major disaster area. And we will get you copies of
the declaration.
Q Can I check one quote with you, Ari, just because the tapes
don't always turn out very good here. When you were talking about the
Israel part of this, "he believes that his speech represents the best
long-term hopes for Israel because he is very worried about the
future" -- was it "viability"? Was that the word?
MR. FLEISCHER: You've heard the President say often that one of
the reasons he believes a Palestinian state needs to be created is not
only is it good for Palestinians, they deserve one, but it's good for
Israel. Israel -- his vision of peace long term is Israel and a
Palestine living side by side in peace and security.
That's why I was surprised that you sounded as if it was something
new.
END 10:42 A.M. EDT
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