2:30 P.M. (EDT)

Kim Nisbet: Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who is the former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan and currently USAID's Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Asia and the Near East. She's here today to discuss the reconstruction and humanitarian relief efforts in Iraq. And after the Ambassador's remarks, we'll go ahead and take questions. Please make sure to state your name and affiliation, and please wait for the mike.

Thank you.

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: With your permission, I'd like to invite Assistant Secretary Gene Dewey from the Department of State, Population and Refugees, to join me so that we can make this a joint humanitarian and reconstruction briefing. He'll be able to field many of the questions on the humanitarian side of the house, and since we're a partnership we might as well be a partnership on the question-and-answer period.

Please, Gene, join me, and please jump in whenever you feel like it.

Let me just say that we are now at day 15 of the reconstruction period, actually day 19. The first day of the reconstruction period began when the President announced the end of hostilities from the aircraft carrier. In that very short time, we have achieved progress. We haven't finished the job. The job is just beginning. But there are some concrete successes that we can talk about, in addition to many challenges that lie ahead.

But in order to paint a picture of what -- how we're proceeding in Iraq in the reconstruction and the kinds of successes we have, let me just take one town alone, one small town, and tell you what's happening in Umm Qasr. Umm Qasr is the port. It's extremely important. We recognized this from the beginning of our planning as the port city where most of the humanitarian goods would be delivered by large ships.

There were enormous problems in Umm Qasr even before the hostilities began. The facilities were greatly run down. It was insecure. The ships could not land because the river had silted up the harbor so much. There were sunken ships and unexploded ordnance that impeded the docking of ships.

Gradually, in the post-war, post-conflict period, the coalition partners have tackled these problems one by one. We have our private partner, partners, Bechtel and their subcontractors, are dredging the port, removing silt. In fact, they're moving -- let me estimate the amount of mud that they are dredging in a single day would have amounted to four football fields full, soccer fields full, of mud. We had Bechtel divers in those muddy waters helping to remove some of the sunken debris so that the ships can sail into the port. The British Navy has removed over 200 objects of unexploded ordnance. The American private sector we've contracted with, Stevedoring Services of America, has done repairs to the facility and brought in equipment in order to unload grain, have repaired silos and warehouses, have reestablishing trucking routes for the speedy unloading and delivery of mostly food items, but other reconstruction items that are being delivered by sea, so that the reconstruction of Iraq can begin as quickly as possible.

But that's only a small part of it. That's just the port part. The port exists in a town, and the town was disrupted. As part of our reconstruction efforts, a number of positive steps have been taken in this one small town. USAID personnel have met with local leaders, Iraqi leaders. They have helped them to organize into an interim town council. Elections for a permanent town council will be held in just a few days. We have asked those leaders -- we went, we met with the Iraqis, we listened, "What do you want for your community?"

Some of the answers were a little surprising. One of the first things they wanted for their community was repairs to the soccer field, repairs -- which surprised us a bit. Their request for repairs to the schools and to the clinic did not surprise us. But why a soccer field? Because when you get teenage boys off the streets and into schools and on the playing field playing soccer, then they're not beside the road throwing rocks or looting. It was a very wise thing. We learned from listening and we learned from working with our Iraqi partners.

We have delivered, on their request, and we have opened the schools. And I tell you this story as illustrative of what's happening in one small provincial town. We're beginning to repeat this all over Iraq where it's permissive. USAID and coalition partners are working on Basra. We've met with local Iraqi leaders there. The Iraqis have identified 700 schools that they would like to see repaired so that students can begin -- resume their studies as quickly as possible. We are in the process of doing that through our private sector contractors. Through our contributions to UNICEF, we're providing schools-in-a-box, chalkboards, desks, schools, pencils, papers, protractors, little hand calculators. Things students need to have in order to get back to school, we're providing as we speak as a stabilization program.

We have identified the water and sanitation system within Basra as something that will be a high priority for repair. Now, this isn't something that was recently broken. This has been broken for a long time. A huge percentage, a unconscionable percentage of the population in Basra has suffered from dirty water and lack of sanitation for too many years under the Saddam Hussein regime. And this will change. This will change with the contributions of the coalition, from the British, from other nations that have joined us in the effort of helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country.

The Basra International Airport is open for flights now. It was basically -- it was not damaged during the conflict. But there are great need of air traffic control equipment and other technology to elevate the standards of the Basra Airport to international levels. And that's what we're working on now and elsewhere.

So I offer this as an illustration, but what we're really interested in are some of your questions. Gene, do you have anything you'd like to add on the humanitarian side?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: Let me just say, and Ambassador Chamberlin has described some of the things the United States is doing bilaterally and unilaterally, the United States determined from the outset of the difficulties and the problems in Iraq that we would put humanity first there, that this required a lot of intensive planning on the humanitarian side. And we not only put humanity first, but we would put the United Nations first as the central gravity for the United States humanitarian action in Iraq.

Now, how did we do that? In terms of our own planning, we got -- our bureau at the State Department, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, we got the nongovernmental organizations together that are concerned about humanitarian relief and we asked them to contribute to a list of tasks that the military might be called upon to provide to assist the civilian humanitarian effort. And then we took that list to the military planners, who at that time were in the field in Kuwait and Doha, and went task by task -- protection of warehouses, protection of hospitals, protection of convoys, protection of food distribution, immunization activities -- and we went over the scenarios involved with those things with the military. So the things you're reading about in The New York Times, which are portrayed as so awful by the media today, are not surprises. They are things that we have been through.

Now, why aren't they being handled in a very smooth and with quick dispatch? I think we have to realize that this regime which has been overthrown is almost without parallel, that in respect to the infrastructure which Ambassador Chamberlin mentioned, which had been allowed to run down and had been allowed to run down in a discriminatory fashion, that is, in the neighborhoods, the Shiite neighborhoods and the minority neighborhoods, they have been disadvantaged by the Saddam regime. So it was an enormous challenge to try to start a humanitarian effort in this environment after the hostilities were over and, at the same time, as the humanitarian effort had to be started just to keep the people alive and sustain the necessities of life, that reconstruction had to start in the ways which Ambassador Chamberlin mentioned.

So it's been a tremendous effort, but not unexpected. Now, maybe the intensity of the breakdown in law and order has been disturbing in some of the locations, but it is not something that the planners had not looked at and faced up to before the hostilities started.

The one that you're most interested in and the one that concerns us a lot is the law and order, security and eventually the buildup of a justice system in Iraq. And the plan there was to decapitate the top of the Iraqi police, the Baathist part of the Iraqi police leadership, and try to build capacity in the parts that were left. And that's ongoing. That's happening.

Because of difficulties in certain areas, the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, has had to bring in additional troops to make sure that the humanitarian effort and the reconstruction effort can proceed. There is a concern, too, about the minorities that were manipulated by Saddam Hussein. This is a protection issue. In the north, you've been reading about the problems that the Arabs have had. These are people, in a kind of a Stalinist way, that Saddam Hussein moved from where they were to the northern part of Iraq to displace Kurds. This was his balancing -- political balancing act, in a way similar to the way that Stalin manipulated populations in a very cruel and barbaric way in the Soviet Union. Saddam Hussein had a similar -- had a similar problem with the -- had a similar practice with the Arabs and the Kurds.

Now we see the difficulty of Kurds coming back and say, "Well, this is my home. I need to take my home back." And you have pretty desperate Arab families, women and children that are tossed out now in weather which is tolerable, but when the weather is not tolerable there will have to be provisions for shelter and food and all the necessities of life for them. So there is a need for a concerted effort to deal with this aftermath of the treachery and the barbarism of Saddam Hussein's rule.

This requires an international focus and international participation, help from the United Nations, from United Nations Human Rights, from every agency of the United Nations that's involved in the operation. And that's the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and of course the non-UN organization that stayed in Iraq all during the hostilities, that is, the International Committee of the Red Cross. We certainly owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to their courageous and selfless humanitarian work. They lost one of their international staff in Baghdad, because they stayed, because they kept a post and did their job.

What are some of the positive effects of this? You know, we had planned for 600,000 refugees, people who would flee Iraq to neighboring countries. How many refugees did we have? We had 27. An extraordinary tribute to both the preparation that the United Nations agencies did and certain donor states did to assure people that relief, food and medical supplies would come to them, that they did not have to run to try to get it to neighboring countries.

The fact that of some 800,000 Iraqis who were out of Iraq before the conflict started for various reasons, most of them to flee Saddam Hussein's regime, but many of those can go back. It could be a very large repatriation program of Iraqis. The High Commissioner for Refugees is planning on up to 500,000 over the next two years going back home, which is the best solution to a refugee situation.

It's similar to the positive result of the action in Afghanistan. There, the return was much, much larger. Two millions Afghans have been able to go back home with the overthrow of the Taliban. We expect another 1.1 million Afghans would be able to go back this year. So these are the positive -- some of the positive effects of what has happened.

We still have to struggle with the problems of protection, the problems of law and order, always to keep an eye on the health concerns, again, because the health of children, in particular, was at such a precarious level under the Saddam Hussein regime that we can't lose our vigilance in making sure that there are no pockets of need. There are no humanitarian crises right now. That doesn't mean that we can relax.

Ambassador Chamberlin mentioned the problems with waterborne disease, with water, which has always been unsatisfactory in many places of Iraq, particularly in urban areas, and the ugly C word, the cholera threat. Whenever that comes up, those of us who have worked in these emergencies over the years know that this has to get your attention. There have been cases in Basra of cholera, but those are about at the seasonal average for this time of year when waterborne disease is a problem in Iraq.

I'll stop there and Ambassador Chamberlin and I will be open to your questions.

QUESTION: Hi, Elena Molinari with Avvenire Italian daily. I have a question about schools. You mentioned the effort to rebuild schools. There's an American company, Creative Associates, that has already contracted for that.

Does that also include rethinking the classic system, the programs, reorganizing that part, not just structures? What's the extent of that contract?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: You're exactly right. The answer is yes. There are several different parts of what we're hoping to do to assist the Iraqi people in the sector of education.

On the first level, it's reconstruction work and repair work to some of the schools buildings themselves. This will be handled through the reconstruction contract. Many of the buildings have been run down and need some repair work.

On a second level, what is it that is important to do for the stabilization of the country in the short term? And that's to get kids back to school. I mentioned this. We are hoping to open the schools are quickly as possible now, but by -- but the school year is almost over. Some of the seniors and some of the students who are at a level where they need to take tests to advance to the next level will need to take those tests, so we're working with local Iraqi officials to assure that they get the opportunity to take those tests and aren't penalized by the lack of opportunity to take their tests for advancement in their own system.

And thirdly, we're looking to the October 1 deadline for the reopening of the next school year. Certainly, we would not want to open school, help the Iraqi people open schools to their students, just to have them learn the same -- in the same Baathist, biased, intolerant curriculum that they had had in the past, and in the same methods of rote memory, which really doesn't prepare for students for entering a global economy and marketplace.

So there is a need to respond to many of the pleas we're hearing from Iraqi education leaders to help them reform the curriculum. Now, we have no intention to come in and impose a curriculum on the Iraqi people. We want to work with the Iraqi education leaders themselves to develop that curriculum. We are reaching out and drawing upon the best that is available in the region, and there are many good examples in Egypt, Oman, Cairo -- I mean Jordan, of some thoughtful processes that have gone in to curriculum for -- that are adapted to the region, in Arabic, that stimulate thinking, that are interactive, that move beyond rote memory, curriculum that will overcome some of the very damaging practices that have gone on in Iraq to date, where students are treated almost like little paramilitary practices and are asked to inform on their parents and practices of that sort. We certainly would like to get that out of the schools and get into the schools curriculum that will enable the students to find jobs, to develop the information technology skills, the questioning mechanisms that enable them to be able to absorb information from all different kinds of methods.

And then finally, one last thing that we're doing. We'd like to work with the Iraqi people to capture those students that have fallen out and are left behind. Of the estimated 5 million potential school population, there might be as many as 1 million that have dropped out, many of them girls. We have asked our partners to develop an accelerated school program where we'll actually go out to the provincial towns door to door, talk to local council members, find out who the students are who have been left out, get them back into programs, maybe outside of the classroom, maybe at night, maybe in the local mosques, in the local school in a nighttime program, to get them integrated back into the school so they can either reenter at their own grade level or get enough education and skills that they can find jobs.

QUESTION: I'm Steve Evans from the BBC. I've got two questions, so forgive me for that.

One, what's the situation now with the proportion of the work going to -- I mean private sector work going to U.S. companies and the proportion going to non-U.S. companies in terms of subcontracting? I mean, if you want to break that down furthermore for British companies, that would be nice.

And the second question is: Why does Iraq need a new currency?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: On the first question, let me just address our own bilateral program because that is what we manage at AID. The Congress, in its generosity, appropriated $2.4 billion of taxpayer contributions, U.S. money, for the purpose of bridging the gap in between the time there was a regime change and there was the time where there was a new Iraqi government, ministries reconstructed, run by elected officials, with -- supported by those revenue sources that are indigenous, in this case oil, and they were up on their own feet and running again.

But in that period, there would be a gap, and in that gap we didn't -- we wanted to kickstart the economy, kickstart the various infrastructure projects so that there would be an easy transition. The U.S. taxpayer is stepping into that gap with USAID programs. Now, our regulations that are set by Congress that guide how we spend USAID programs stipulates that our contractors, our prime contractors are American companies. To this we are not apologetic. All of the eight contractors, contracts that we let, were to American companies, as is instructed by the Congress.

What we did do to open up to coalition partners is to waive the provision, because we could, that guided the subcontracts to those prime contractors, and Andrew Natsios, in January, only for the third time in history, waived it so that other countries -- companies from other countries could bid on the subcontracts. Many British -- some British companies have already won those subcontracts. The only restriction on subcontracts is that they couldn't be companies from a country that was on the terrorism list, and I don't think there are any. So it's a wide open process at the subcontract level and we're getting a lot of interest. But again, this is U.S. taxpayer money.

Now, for all of the other companies out there that would like to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, you are most welcome to seek funding from your own government's bilateral aid program. We are encouraging this. We've never meant for this to be a United States-only program. It is a partnership. We have invited many countries from around the world to join the coalition. Many have. We are working with the UN. The UN has issued flash appeals. We invite your countries to participate in those flash appeals and to bid on those contracts. There are many ways to participate other than through the mechanism of the U.S. taxpayer.

And on the currency, there are two currencies that are currently operative in Iraq, one in the north, which I think is called the Swiss dinar -- I believe that's still a recognized currency -- and in the south you had the Saddam currency, and that had his picture on it. And I understand the American dollar is exchangeable anywhere.

My understanding, and I am really kind of -- correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff -- is that both -- all three of these currencies are currently in use and recognized, but that over time there is an intention to substitute the Saddam currency from our stable currency. Now, I'm not sure there's been a decision yet. There can't be until we have some Iraqi partners to work with. But as soon as there are Iraqi partners to work with, there will be some decisions on what the permanent currency will be. We don't intend to prejudice that at this point. But all currencies are working at this -- all three are working at this point.

QUESTION: Antti Oksanen with the Finnish Business Weekly (ph). May I just clarify the subcontractor part? Are coalition partner countries somehow preferred in those deals, or is it really up to just the individual prime contractor to choose which subcontractors to use?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Thank you for that question. I do appreciate the opportunity to clarify that. We are guided by our regulations and by Congress on how we conduct our prime contracts. We, as a government, and as AID, have nothing to do with the subcontracts, other than to say that they can be open to any coalition partner or any other country even if they're not part of the coalition. But we cannot instruct or even guide or pressure or influence in any way our prime contracts as to whom they pick as a sub. That is a company-to-company partnership and we have to be very careful that we, in no way, influence that because we hold our prime accountable, accountable for the work that we've contracted them to do. The moment we begin to tell them that they have to pick this company or that company, they can come back and say, "Oh, well, the reason we didn't make our mark, we didn't make our objective, is because you told us we had to pick, you know, X, Y or Z." We're not going to do that. We cannot do that.

So the answer is no, no preference given to anybody as a sub. That is a relationship between the sub and the prime alone -- business relationship.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: As long as you're not on the terrorist list.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: It would depend -- it's a decision that is made by the prime, by the prime contractor as to whom they partner with.

QUESTION: Steve Baragano with Voice of America. Is there any provision to get Iraqi companies involved in this process?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Certainly, there is. I mean, it is understood that the more involvement of Iraqi people, Iraqi companies, that that's a sound developmental principle. But again, we would not, as a government, be making that decision. We would certainly hope that that would be what would happen in practice, and, in fact, I'm fairly confident that prime contractors would look around and see who was available and who was provided the best local experience, the best contacts on the ground, cheap labor, et cetera, et cetera, would make those kinds of decisions.

QUESTION: Is that happening now?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Yeah, that's happening. Yes.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Stevedore. Some of the people that are hired in Umm Qasr, for example, are local companies. Many of the trucking companies are local that we're working with. A lot of the labor being provided for the projects that we're doing are local. There's going to be a lot of local participation by the time this is over -- a lot.

Yes? Oh, sure. Gene.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: On the local participation, there is an effort to buy local. Why import food from the food-producing countries when you have it in Northern Iraq? So that's another good source of food, much less expensive in trying to bring it in. Another contracting opportunity is security. The UN agencies are hiring commercial -- Iraqi commercial security firms, and that can be a big business. So yeah, there's lots of opportunity.

QUESTION: Luis Sarmiento from RCN Television in Colombia. I wanted to ask you, what do you think about the new draft of the resolution in the United Nations in terms of laying a broader participation to the United Nations? Basically, is that a sign that maybe the U.S. was not prepared to deal with the reconstruction on its own?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Well, you're beyond my competency at this point. I'll leave that question to my colleagues at the U.S. Mission here. I think they are actively negotiating that resolution now and I certainly wouldn't want to say anything that would prejudice that.

QUESTION: But, I mean, the reconstruction effort, is it bigger than what the U.S. initially thought?

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Oh, we had no intention at all, ever, to dominate this, to be the sole contributors to this process. We certainly wanted to draw upon -- and I think Assistant Secretary Dewey was quite clear that we expected that there be a multilateral participation, that there be coalition partner participation, and of course Iraqi resources itselves would participate in this. Yes, we welcome the participation of a wide group of people around the world -- countries.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: If I could just say on that, it's -- that kind of widespread participation is not a recent development in the U.S. Government. Even before hostilities started, it was the position in the United States that there be a U.S. mission, that there be a UN, United Nations mission in Iraq. And that's essential for the purposes that you alluded to, that you cannot get by in the international community if you don't have that international multilateral presence.

QUESTION: Robert McMahon, Radio Free Europe. I just had a interesting -- I had a question about the scale of USAID involvement right now in terms of where in Iraq you're active, how much the security situation has affected your ability to deal -- to get some projects under way, and how much things like the looting that you hear so much about has set you back in your efforts.

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Well, security is an obstacle. It remains an obstacle in Afghanistan and it is an obstacle that we are seeking to overcome in Iraq. It's sporadic. It isn't, though -- it isn't a pervasive problem. And where it -- where security conditions are permissive, we're quite active. Bechtel, for example, is repairing bridges in Mosul, several bridges along the road from Jordan into Baghdad. We are working in the south, which is much more permissive, and in the north, which is much more permissive. Generally speaking, the security problems that plague us are in the Baghdad and central area, and even there it's sporadic. Looting of power stations, occasion theft of vehicles, that sort of thing.

But I don't want to underestimate security. It's a big problem. And as I think Assistant Secretary Dewey pointed out, American military is bringing in additional troops and some armor battalions in order to meet the security needs, and we are seeking the active contributions of coalition partners throughout the world to contribute to the police units and to work with -- so that they can work effectively with Iraqi police and so that they will be able to provide for their own security in as short a time frame as possible.

QUESTION: About that security, Mr. Dewey, you said that the fact that these problems came up was not a surprise and that you had talked to the military about this. Then why are we seeing such a problem now with security? If they knew it was going to be a problem, why didn't they do more to plan for it?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: We knew that there would be, as there has been in Bosnia, as there was in Kosovo, as there has been in Afghanistan -- this is a problem which we have to solve for any future operations with the international community. Hopefully, since peacekeeping is so difficult for the United Nations because -- the reason it's more difficult now is that the world neighborhoods seem to be rougher. They're tougher places in which to operate than they were when UN peacekeeping was first envisaged.

But there should be a way to build up a capability for civilian police in the United Nations and to get countries to contribute police forces to that UN competency for a situation such as Iraq. It hasn't completely come into place yet. We have been experiment, in Bosnia, if you'll recall, with a multinational support unit which is a carabinieri Italian unit. The Italians are also contributing in Iraq, a carabinieri kind of unit.

This was all expected. It can't come into place all at once. I suppose if you had the advantage of planning the ideal campaign, you'd have waves of civilian police come in right behind the advancing troops. We haven't quite reached that state yet, so we're having to compensate for, frankly, the lack of multilateral attention, particularly in the United Nations. And when I talk about lack of attention in the United Nations, I'm talking about lack of attention on the part of the member-states. For, after all, the UN is the member-states; it's not the Secretariat building down the street.

So yeah, it's got to be solved. It's about time that we stopped just identifying lessons. It would be nice if we could learn some of these lessons from the past and be more ready when these situations come up.

As I mentioned before, Iraq has proved to be one of the ugliest neighborhoods. It was hard, really, to imagine the depth of the hatred from one group against another. We expected the criminal element. In any transition like this you'll have the criminal element. But the intensity of the hatred which Saddam engendered has certainly just been unleashed with the end of military activity.

So there is the attempt to build up the Iraqi police force with the additional U.S. forces that are coming in, the carabinieri kind of forces coming in. There is a plan. There is an implementation in progress. It's not happening as fast as any of us would like to see it.

MODERATOR: Thank you, both.

AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Thank you.
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