2:00 P.M. EDT

MS. NISBET: Well, first of all, I'd like to welcome all of you and welcome David Ballard, the State Department's Director of the Foreign Press Centers. He returned recently from his posting in Baghdad with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA. He's here today to give us some insight on what's happening there on the streets and his experience while in Iraq. So thank you for being here.

MR. BALLARD: Thanks. Thanks for your interest. I'll make short opening remarks and then we can just have, you know, discussion or conversation as you'd like.

What I'd like to do is talk about three things that I think are part of the context of understanding what's happening in Iraq that are easy to overlook because of the press of news, but I think that are valuable towards getting a clearer picture of how things work both from our end and on the ground in Iraq.

And the three areas in particular are: The CPA and what it does, but particularly outside of the capital. The second area is the international nature of the effort in Iraq. And the third area is the ways in which Iraqis themselves are building their democracy.

So let me start a little bit with the CPA. I think a lot of times, the image of the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, is Ambassador Bremer, Baghdad, the Green Zone, and people don't think much beyond that other than, you know, occupying authority or whatever the words want to be used. Often -- and that's absolutely true. All of that is true. Obviously, Ambassador Bremer is the head. It is headquartered in Baghdad. But I think something that people can lose track of is that the Coalition Provisional Authority, as the civilian side of the Coalition, in other words, there are the Coalition forces and then the CPA, which is a civilian administration, has a team and an office in every single province in Iraq, the 18 provinces, which are called governorates in Iraq.

The teams are anywhere from five to ten people, and they work on local administration. They work in, obviously, putting together, finding the funding for and approving reconstruction projects. They work with the representatives of ministries in Baghdad.

To give you an example, take education. The CPA team there would be looking into how to do reconstruction of schools, working with the local educational authorities, the representatives of the ministry of education, and, obviously, the municipal councils or the provincial councils, wherever they are located.

They have a lot of programs that are designed to stimulate the economy, to create jobs, and, of course, they have the very important goal of -- role of coordinating with the military authorities, the Coalition forces present, wherever they are. So that's something that -- imagine this going on every day in the 18 provinces outside of Iraq.

Now let me introduce the next element, which I think is also often easily overlooked, certainly -- probably much less by all of you, frankly, than by those of us in the United States. But oftentimes, I think people substitute the words United States or Americans for CPA when they should not, because the CPA is, in fact, very much an international effort. And it is true that the Americans are the dominant partners, both on the military side and in the CPA administration, but that is by no means a complete picture of what is happening.

Of those 18 teams that I mentioned, for example, every single one of them is multinational. There is no team in Iraq that is all Americans or all British or all Italians or whatever. The network of Public Affairs Officers that I was coordinating was about 25 Public Affairs Officers on the CPA side again, not counting the military side, and we had eight non-Americans out of the 25.

Then -- that, of course, is much more pronounced on the military side, where -- and I think this has come out more in recent days and in the past ten days, two weeks, for example, the extent of the involvement of foreign militaries. Everybody knows that they're there, but it tends to -- there tends to be, often, a focus on what the U.S. military is doing anywhere. In fact, there are many places you can go in Iraq and you won't see American troops. I was in Nasiriyah, for example, and it's the Italian army and the caribineri who are working in Nasiriyah; in Basra, it's the British army; in Al Kut, it's the Ukrainian forces; in Najaf and Karbala, you'll find the Spanish and the Bulgarians and the Hondurans and the Salvadorans. But the point I'm making is that while, again, the Americans are the dominant partner on the military side, there are many parts of the country where you'll almost never see American forces.

What does this mean in terms of coordination? Obviously, it means that each one of these CPA teams has a bit of a different role because each team has to work with whatever Coalition forces happen to be there. And so each team has different approaches, different ways too coordinate, and different -- well, I wouldn't say priorities, all of the priorities are the same, but the priorities may be a little bit different from place to place depending on the particular skills and contributions that whoever is there is able to bring.

The third area, and the most important that I'd like to talk about, is the ways in which the Iraqis themselves are developing their own democratic future. And I had as one of my responsibilities in Iraq to go around, and this is the reason, really, that I traveled quite a bit, was to go around and help Iraqis plan, organize and prepare for town hall meetings, we called them.

And these were meetings, which are still ongoing, but the initial series was a series of meetings designed to explain the November 15th Agreement and the transition process to citizens around the country.

And in these meetings that we would have with Iraqis who would be organizing them in whatever province, I was always struck by two areas in particular in which the Iraqis were preparing their own democratic future and in their own way. And I found it to be incredibly reassuring and encouraging to see this.

The first was the area of decentralization. This is a country which has, for pretty well all of its history, had a strong central government and a strong central authority, which was responsible for appointing all high-ranking employees, wherever they were; for making all laws that would extend across the country; for changing those laws; for getting rid of those employees; essentially for making many of the decisions that in other systems are made more locally. And of course, that was carried to the extreme with the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Over and over we found that Iraqis were, as they built up confidence in their own local capabilities, not their own individual abilities, because obviously there are many, many capable individuals, but as groups -- and by groups I mean government groups and municipal councils, provincial councils, political parties, religious groups, ethnic federations, whatever type of group that a society is -- that takes -- that comprises any society; they were increasingly interested in and eager to promote the idea of increased decentralization, to make their own decisions themselves, to take responsibility at a local level, at a provincial level.

Now this meant different things to different people, obviously, and in some parts of Iraq the word federalism, people think it means that the country is, you know, going to be broken up until it's explained to them. In other parts, you know, they already have a pretty clear understanding of what they want.

So it -- but that was always an interesting thing to see, and, I thought, very encouraging. And it ties in to the second major comment I'd like to make on that; and that is that Iraqis understood and appreciated that they would have to participate politically; they would have to become engaged; that in a democracy, in the new system that they would have there was a chance for them to have their priorities recognized, their concerns acknowledged, their aspirations encouraged, and that there would be an opportunity for all of those hopes in a political or social sense to be represented, first locally, and then nationally.

And the accompanying understanding was that in order for that to happen, they had to participate; that nobody was going to say, "Well, you know, we think that we really ought to include somebody from your ethnic group in the municipal councils just because we ought to." They knew that they had to organize and they had to make sure that their concerns and their priorities were represented.

Let me close the remarks with just, sort of, a little snapshot, which I hope will illustrate the three points I've tried to make, which are: The work of the CPA in different parts of the country, the international nature of that work and the increased stirrings of democracy in Iraqi society.

The last town hall meeting that I went to help organize before I left was going to be held in Al Kut, which is in the Wasit Province in south, I'm sorry, in central-eastern Iraq. And I went there. The team that I was working with was American military, British military, American civilians and British civilians. We went there. We were met by our team there, which was British and American and Ukrainian.

The military liaison officer who joined us for the whole day and helped us in our process of working with the panel, the Iraqi panel that would be holding the meetings in Al Kut, was also a young Ukrainian captain. They had brought in a specialist in democratization who'd worked in many countries, particularly in the Balkans. He happened to be Gambian.

Then we met with the Iraqis. Usually, the same pattern followed almost everywhere we went. We would sit down and we would say, "All right, now, you understand what we're trying to do to try to explain to people and encourage their participation?" "Oh yes. Absolutely. We understand." "Okay. Well, let's talk about this November 15th Agreement. Do you feel that you, yourself, understand it well enough? Do you have any questions that maybe we can help you answer?" And instantly there would be -- usually these sessions would last two hours: Complaints, criticisms, they didn't like this part, that was completely unfair, what a bad idea this was, how could we defend this?

And so we would just have this conversation with them, and we would try to leave them with the assurance that that's exactly what these meetings were intended to do -- to get people to talk about what their concerns were, their criticisms, the problems they had with this transition process, and to make sure that that feedback went into -- and remember, this is before the final release of the Transitional Administrative Law -- so that that could be fed back to those people and the people would know what the concerns were because every region was a little bit different.

And, so anyway, we felt that we probably had not done a very good job of convincing them at the end of the time, and then we broke for lunch. And then after lunch, we decided that we would do a practice. And we said, "All right. We'll divide you up, and some of you will be the panel and some of you will be the audience." And so those who were on the panel, I worked with them personally, and I said, "Okay, now, one of you should make the opening statement." It was just practice doing that opening statement about these different subjects, just to introduce them, and then, "Are you ready to answer questions?"

And the people working with the audience would coach the audience to ask very difficult questions, to be rude, to ask a very long question so that they would be cut off, things like this. We didn't know how it was going to happen.
So then they ran their practice town hall meeting and the absolutely amazing thing was, these people, who had been completely criticizing us and talking about all the imperfections in the system, did a wonderful job of explaining and defending it to the others there. And they did it so much better than, obviously, than we ever could have.

So I -- that was the kind of thing that I witnessed again and again, and that left me, in spite of the tremendous problems that we've had in recent days and weeks, continued to leave me very, very optimistic about the future of a prosperous, democratic Iraq. Because in the end, the goal that we in the Coalition and the Iraqis share is to develop an Iraq that Iraqis can be proud of. That's the bottom line. They know they want that, and they are working very hard toward it. And we're hoping to be able to help them along in this process.

Thanks very much. If you have any questions, I'll take them now.

MS. NISBET: And if you could please start with your name and affiliation.

MR. BALLARD: Okay.

QUESTION: Janine Harper from Fuji TV.

The CPA has been critical of Iraqi local media and of other Arab media. Most recently there was a charge that Al-Jazeera's reports had been erroneous. What are you doing on the ground, I guess, to make sure it doesn't seem like it's a battle of your President and your country and (inaudible)?

MR. BALLARD: Well, there are two parts to that. There's obviously the international media that's present in Iraq, and there's a very large CPA presence and a very large, I should add, military, which is called CJTF7, which is the Combined Joint Task Force. General Kimmett is the Deputy Director, right, Deputy Director of Operations, and he's the main spokesman for the CJTF7.

They engaged the international media on a daily basis. I mean there's a big sort of filing center there. There's a big press conference area, and they go out. When we have problems with particular reporting, we certainly let people know. There is no reason not to. It's what we do here in the United States. It's what we do anywhere. And I don't think there's any reason that any international news medium should not be held to the same standards.

The second side of that, though, is the Iraqi media side. And there is a very concerted effort to work with the Iraqi media for a few reasons. One is, obviously, that the Iraqi media tradition, at least in the past 35 years, is one of complete state dominance and the media exists to basically glorify the leader and the party. That's a very difficult tradition to break out of. And yet, I found that the Iraqi journalists were actually really very good. The fact that there are some 200, 250, depending on, you know, who knows what the number is, publications that are, you know, appearing in Iraq, some of them with greater regularity than others, is an indication of a desire on the part of people to make their views known and an indication of the market in Iraq, for people to be interested in reading what different opinions the different organizations might have or different newspapers might have.

We worked very closely with them. In some of the CPA teams, they have media training programs specific to the media in the region. There are a couple of national media training programs. But I thought more importantly, certainly from our point of view, was just the day-to-day contact. We would hold special press briefings in Arabic three or four times a week in Baghdad, obviously, and in different provinces maybe once or twice a week, for the Iraqi media, because it's absolutely essential that they understand in order to explain to the Iraqi people. And I certainly witnessed in the short time I was there a growing sophistication on the part of that media.

There -- of those publications -- and I should add, there is something like 120 radio stations and about 80 television stations, as well -- and they had to register with the CPA and the ministry of communications, but they don't have to -- that was for format -- sorry, what's the word -- spectrum allocation. There's no control of -- there's no control of content. It was merely to know that they're there. "Tell us that you're here. We'll put you down. We know you're using that spectrum, et cetera."

And they -- the -- of those publications and radio stations, a lot of them are not exactly what you would call pro-Coalition.

I'll, you know, obviously, in the past couple of weeks, the big story was the temporary banning of the newspaper Al-Hawza. Well, you know, Al-Hawza was an extreme example, but there are many, many other publications in Iraq that are routinely critical, routinely negative, routinely anti-Coalition, if you can put it that way. That's fine. When a newspaper goes to the extreme like Al-Hawza did of encouraging people to kill other people, well then, that is a direct violation of a specific CPA order.

Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Robert McMahon, Radio Free Europe.

June 30th is looming. You know, there's been a lot of activity building towards the UN having a more and more dominant role, but President Bush mentioned by name several UN officials in and around Iraq. Today, (inaudible) came out with some general ideas about what a caretaker government would be all about -- currently a prime minister, a president, a vice president.

Do you get the sense from what you saw there that that's one of the things that (inaudible) is hearing, a representative, really broadly representative, in terms of, he obviously heard that this type of approach of a caretaker, a prime minister, a president and so forth is something that, you know, people could support. Do you get that that sense that there is support for that kind of a --
MR. BALLARD: Well, I wouldn't want to go into specifics and I always hate to put myself in the position of sort of characterizing Iraqi opinion, not being an Iraqi. But I think it's very clear that they -- that there is a sense that whatever government comes out must provide certain basic guarantees, and the guarantees are essentially what we would call fundamental rights and they are outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law, and then they include a great deal of political freedom.

So I think that whatever comes out -- and remember that the Iraqis themselves, at least through the Governing Council and through several other non-Governing Council leaders, are the ones who very much wanted to have UN involvement in planning this process.

I think whatever comes out will be certainly reflective enough -- reflective of this desire and flexible enough to accommodate the different important political forces in Iraq. And that's -- and another thing to keep in mind, which I think, again, is easy not to, is that it is exactly a transitional government and that the process, as outlined, calls for several other steps before, including the drafting of the constitution and a referendum on that constitution, before elections that will result in a permanent government.

QUESTION: Is there concern that July 1st that that will not be seen as just a token handover but that as a -- what sort of steps is the U.S. taking to make sure that that handover is seen as legitimate? It seems to be a huge (inaudible).

MR. BALLARD: Well, no, obviously, it's a very hard deadline and it's something that we, you know, we've stressed is very important, because it reflects the Iraqi people's natural desire to get their country -- get their own government back, get their sovereignty back.

On the other hand, as you mentioned, there is, and as the President mentioned last night, there is going to continue to be the need to support the government, both on the security side and on the economic development -- and in support for political institutions.

Remember, our Congress has appropriated $18.7 billion and that's to say nothing of the many other nations and organizations who were there spending their citizens' money on important projects. And many of those projects have to do precisely with what you're talking about, which is institution building in a sort of a dual sense. One is administrative capacities at ministries, at provincial councils, at local government level, and in the national government -- although that will -- obviously, it's hard to do it right this minute until that's set up.

And then the second area is more basic but equally important citizenship work. They call it local governance, for the most part, that's the general term we use. But what it amounts to is working with people all over, through professional associations, religious organizations, political parties, whatever institutions exist in a society, to develop notions of citizenship that frankly have been -- you know, had been shattered in the Baathist time.

And that's the part that is incredibly encouraging. I mean, people get in there and they complain and they say, oh, well, you know, my group is being mistreated. My group doesn't have the authority or the power or the representation that it really deserves or who knows what. And by the end of it, everybody's heard the other group complaining and everybody comes to a bit of a better appreciation for the fact that there are many sets of legitimate demands and many sets of legitimate concerns, and that whatever evolves is going to have to address those in a way that everybody can live with. And I'm confident that's exactly what will happen.

I mean, despite -- as I say, I don't mean to downplay ongoing problems that are certainly there. I mean, nobody is -- I'm not trying to say that there are no challenges along this road. But I think that there is -- there is a very strong will on the part of Iraqis to overcome this and to find a way to move ahead and to be the strong nation that they ought to be.

QUESTION: Daigo Kubota, TV Asahi. First of all, you said that you've been doing some preparation for a town hall meeting.

MR. BALLARD: Right.

QUESTION: And my first question will be, has the town hall meetings already taken place? You were talking about the prior meeting to the town hall meeting.

MR. BALLARD: Right.

QUESTION: And the first question will be: As the town hall meetings already taken place?

And the second question will be: Are these town hall meetings some kind of preparational -- preparation? Or is the town hall meeting the caucus that the CPA has been mentioning for choosing the interim government?

MR. BALLARD: Right. Well, okay, the idea of a town hall meeting was twofold, and it was, first of all, to inform citizens about what was happening in this transition process; and the second was to encourage their participation.

The initial round of town hall meetings is completed, but the process was designed to be a continuing series. And the initial round was on explaining the transition process, which the November 15th agreement, and this date means this, and this date means that. And in those days, in the very beginning, in December and January, we did have a lot of discussion of the caucuses. That's a system that has now evolved, and that's basically gone away.

So that was part of it, but it was explaining this. Because a lot of people they would, you know, understandably have a lot -- they'd get a date mixed up, they weren't really sure. What about this? Or maybe they had heard some rumor, or they had heard whatever. So it was very important just to lay the facts out there. And then once the facts were known to say, now, how are you going to fit into this? What are you going to do?

So that was the idea. And they were done all over the country. I'm not sure they did them in every single governance. It could there were one or two that they missed. The first was in Basra, and the next was in Mosul, and then the third was in Baghdad. So the three largest cities, and then after that into -- to other provinces.

They were all on television, either national television -- but certainly, those three were on national television and parts of other ones were -- or local television, and they were all Iraqis. I mean, in other words, there were no CPA or coalition authority representatives participating in the town hall meeting. Maybe a few would sit and watch, but I mean, none were asking questions or answering questions.

And the idea was to have a panel of respected citizens, and they could -- in every town it was different. Sometimes it was government, like the governor, or provincial council members or university professors, religious leaders, whoever was a respected citizen might be somebody who would be on the panel, usually four or five people, always at least one woman; then the audience would be anywhere from 2 to 300 people and the audience -- I should, at least in the first round, I should stress it was an invited audience.

In a city like Basra of 2 million people, you couldn't just say, we're going to have a town hall meeting, anybody who wants to show up can show up. That would be a very difficult logistical challenge. So the idea was -- what I used to tell them was, make sure that you invite anybody who would complain if he or she is not invited.

That's just sort of a guideline, someone who is representative in your town, for some reason, the head of the Turkomen Association, or the head of a particular religious organization, or of the -- a political party, a union, a lot of union leaders, the university, the president of a university, that kind of -- whoever would have legitimate reason to be sort of upset if he or she weren't invited.

And then the next round, which is ongoing now -- although I suspect in some places has been, you know, suspended, depending on the security situation -- is explaining the Transitional Administrative Law because that is a long thing. It is an interim constitution for the country of Iraq. And it is important, again, that the citizens understand it, and that once they understand it, they understand what their own role might be in moving forward in the process.

In some places, they chose to do, rather than one big one for the province, they chose like we'll do the five largest cities and smaller town hall meetings. So that was, of course, up to whatever they thought best. And in many cases, after town hall meetings, the panelists themselves would go on and do more in different places smaller than these. They, you know, had the experience. They knew how to answer the difficult questions. They had a good sense of what the concerns of the citizens were.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. BALLARD: Well, yeah, there are lots and lots of political parties in Iraq now. I can't give you a number. Many of the people in the Governing Council actually do represent specific political parties. So that's something to keep in mind. And there are, in spite of what you're saying, there are political parties that are religious in nature.

So in other words, it's not just the followers of a certain Imam or Ayatollah or something, but, in fact, a political party that has a religious platform, and there are several of those. Well, they are very active. And depending on where you are, some of them are strong. The Communist Party is actually quite a good example. They had, from the very beginning, after the liberation of Baghdad, they started getting organized and they are quite an active party.

You know, I'm not going to try to tell you how influential they are, or anything like that, but they are certainly present and they are certainly active. And that's one of the things that I think the Iraqis appreciate is that there is no restrictions on that now.

The next step, of course, will be deciding what do these parties mean: Are they something that represents me or not? Just like in any country. And that's a process that, you know, many of us 200 years later are still trying to figure out. But it's certainly an encouraging thing, and they're all over the place.

I mean, any town you drive through in Iraq, you will see headquarters of different political parties. And some of them, again, have a certain -- obviously, there are two major Kurdish political parties. Well, they have offices in other parts of Iraq. But in three Kurdish provinces, that's where you'll -- you know, they're obviously very, very well represented there.

But there are other Kurdish parties, there are the two major ones. But, in fact, there is the Islamic Party of Kurdistan, which is a Kurdish religious political party, and they're -- well, so, it's -- yeah, it's a very interesting thing, and it will be interesting to see how that plays into the setting up of the transitional assembly.

QUESTION: Can you say anything about what sort of engagements have you had with Iraq's neighbors, countries that the U.S. has troubled relationships like Iran and Syria, or in terms of Turkey and Jordan? What is the relationship with the neighbors? And how much are they being part of the process right now? Or are they being -- is there more intensive efforts for you to bring them in?

MR. BALLARD: Well, I wouldn't characterize it as CPA involvement. You know, certainly, the Iraqi Governing Council is very involved with the neighbors, and whoever is going to have a rotating presidency, and the president -- whoever is president at any give time, generally travels, and often, to the neighboring countries.

In particular, there has been a big emphasis on working with Iran and Syria on border issues because many of the -- you know, with whatever the foreign fighters who are coming in may be coming across those borders, so there has been a concerted effort and long-term on those issues.

The CPA itself does not have a, you know, a relationship with countries nearby. Now, individual governments within the CPA, obviously, have embassies in those countries and work through their embassies, and obviously, on the military side, there is coordination with militaries on other -- of the other countries, again, on border issues, border protection and things like that. But it's --

QUESTION: Presumably with the UN meeting to help bring that together more coherently, in terms of the borders? I guess Sergio de Mello had done that last summer ,and then that kind of was broken.

MR. BALLARD: Well, no, I think, I mean, I think the Governing Council is -- I mean, they are a member of the Arab League. They, you know, have been accredited to many international organizations. When they travel, they are received by, you know, the head of state wherever they go. And so the Governing Council has taken that on.

Now, the CPA does, of course, have what's called the Senior Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an office which helps the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in rebuilding that ministry and in developing foreign policy, as it were. But in the end, this is something that the Iraqis have taken on.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. BALLARD: Well, okay, that would be more -- that would be more of a military question, which I can't really answer very specifically, but I would say a few things. One is that, you know, obviously, this is part of an overall terrorist approach, and it's something that has not been -- I mean, if you read back a month, two months ago, Ambassador Bremer and others were saying, as we approach this deadline of the 30th of June, we can expect to see an increase in violence against coalition forces and coalition targets and increase in the civilian targets and probably most -- the largest target is innocent Iraqis, obviously. There are more of them around and they are often the target of terrorist violence.

As far as what is being done to protect them, obviously, they -- first of all, anybody going to Iraq knows the conditions there and has specific instructions from their organization, advice from their country. We, in the United States, have very specific warnings about travel to Iraq through the State Department Travel Advisories, for example, and has individual security, depending on the organization they are with.

Now, is -- are the coalition forces doing something in particular to work with this? Yes, obviously. I mean, this is obviously a big problem and they're working on it. What specifically they are doing, I can't say.

But the overall picture is one in which: a) we know there are terrorists there; b) we know they are going to try to do and try to increase these kinds of things; and c) every organization does have a security posture that they review and continue to review and try to work on. Certainly, everybody in the CPA knows what they can and can't do and what they should be careful about. And it's just another example of -- well, of terrorism. It's just that these are terrorist acts. I mean, it's part and parcel of blowing up people at a checkpoint or at the entrance to the CPA like -- and those tend to be Iraqis.

QUESTION: Policing those areas of concern, though, I understand that the Germans, among others, are helping train police in UAE, Iraqi police. There is some training going on in Jordan. But what would you say about the status of police training, making sure that there is an ample number, that, obviously, that will be a position of greater importance at the end of a date approaching.

Is there going to be any sort of push on maybe bringing international police, maybe Arabic-speaking police, or is it going to try to focus on Iraqis themselves policing the main cities?

MR. BALLARD: I don't know. I mean, I can't answer. I don't know. I just don't know how to answer that future question, whether that's something the United Nations, which they do in many countries, for example, is interested in doing. I mean, I can't say.

Yes, I mean, obviously, there has been a tremendous amount of work put into training and developing the Iraqi police. And it's obvious, in many respects, that we still need more police and more training. I mean, the President addressed that directly last night. I mean, I don't have anything specific to add to that, other than that it has been a concern from the beginning. It has been something that we've seen actually a great deal.

I mean, to start with zero police on April 9, a year ago, and over 70,000 now, that are out there. I mean, I certainly -- you know, I know there have been terrible stories about problems with the Iraqi police, but I was always actually very encouraged whenever I saw them. Because, you know, they looked good. They were out there. They were doing their job, and it was -- and you'd see more and more.

Certainly, in Baghdad, you'd see more and more, and then as you traveled around the country, they seemed to be -- everybody was respecting them in the polls that we did. And I haven't seen a very recent one. But they were always an institution that scored very, very high, in terms of public approval, if you will.

You know, do you have a negative or positive opinion of the following institutions? And the Iraqi police was always at or near the top. People were very pleased at the development of a professional Iraqi police force after the decades of a police force that was essentially -- it was hard to tell whether the bigger priority was corruption or oppression.

QUESTION: But in terms of gauging how much farther we have to go then to achieve that?

MR. BALLARD: I wouldn't be qualified to answer it.

QUESTION: Knowing that you speak Arabic fluently, were you able to get out on the streets and actually interface with the regular citizens?

MR. BALLARD: Yes, some. We generally go out and visit, in my case, in Baghdad, we would visit newspapers in my office just to say hello and see how they're doing, and we would try to take the opportunity inasmuch as our security conditions would permit to go into doors and talk to people.

Again, from town to town, it's different. And in other towns, there is obviously -- the environment changes At some points, the environment is very permissive to do that; at some points, it's not. In Nasiriyah, for example, my colleague there was Italian and he and I just got in the car and drove off and went to different places. And I visited the -- where the Caribineiri headquarters had been bombed with loss of 17 Italian Caribineiri, and went to several other places without any problems. In other towns, you do have to be much more careful about how you go out and meet people.

But on that -- it's a good question, because regardless of what I was doing, our teams in all of those provinces are out doing this every day. And whether it means they go out with two Humvees and a 50-caliber machine gun to visit a newspaper or whether they can walk down a street or whatever it takes, they are out there engaging -- and I'm not just talking in the media sense, but also with whatever organization they need to go to.

I spent three days in Mosul, for example, and I went out four times a day with the team there. And who knows what they were doing, but I didn't participate in it -- that was just me -- had a meeting with tribal leaders on top of this hill to hear what they were concerned about and, you know, roads, sewage, things like that, schools; had several meetings with the city council or the governor's office, obviously, the town hall, stuff that we were doing; a visit to a detention centers to -- this was, in this case, American forces, the CPA, but they were American forces -- a detention center. They took members of the provincial council to the detention center so that they could see the conditions and hear anything that the prisoners wanted to tell them.

QUESTION: (Inaudible), Italy (inaudible). How can you explain the different environment that you are talking about in Nasiriyah or the Italian Caribineiri. Did they -- the more, the more (inaudible) involvement in this particular town that had also the --

MR. BALLARD: That's right.

QUESTION: Yes.

MR. BALLARD: Well, in almost every town, there have been incidences, of course. At that point --

QUESTION: Well, yes, who can explain? Is a matter of different Iraqis or is a matter of different coalition forces?

MR. BALLARD: Well, there's a lot of pseudo-science about that, and I really don't want to -- I don't have a strong personal opinion, and I certainly don't have any correct information about whether the approach of the Italians or the approach of the Americans or the British or the Ukrainians or who knows what -- because every town is also different.

Iraq is a country that is a very diverse country. It's a very big country. And if you go to Nasiriyah, one of the characteristics of Nasiriyah, for example, is that it is a town that was brutally oppressed, one of the most oppressed towns under the Saddam Hussein regime. And the people there are obviously very, very traumatized by this, and have been.

Now can foreign elements come in and stir things up? Can they come in and do things? Sure.

And Iraq, in many respects, it's a very easy country to go around in, to fight all the military presence,. You know, the roads are all open, they have very good roads. So who knows what causes one area. I mean, we've certainly seen problems in Al-Kut, to give you an example. My entire stay there was considered to be an incredibly sort of peaceful, not much of a dangerous security environment.

But all it took was Muqtada Sadr's thugs, a couple of weeks ago, to create a great deal of trouble in that town. So that one, you can say it was him. Other places, it's a little harder to say, you know, why the environment changes from day to day.

QUESTION: My last question is about the situation, I am curious, getting your opinion. And about university, for example, if they are going well, meet with terms with the regular season?

MR. BALLARD: Right.

QUESTION: And the other one, is thoughts of change. There were some reports before Saddam, there was a sort of change in Baghdad, of course.

MR. BALLARD: Right.

QUESTION: And after that, I didn't --

MR. BALLARD: Didn't hear.

QUESTION: -- hear you.

MR. BALLARD: Well, on the first one, the universities -- yes, all the universities are open. The universities suffered from a number of things. Depending on where they were, they might have been deprived of -- like the universities in Basra, for example, certainly did not get very much attention during the Saddam regime.

It was a city that he considered to be against him, and he didn't give them much; other universities in different parts of the country were in better shape. But all of them also -- well, no, I don't want to say all them, but lots of them, in any case, certainly also were looted after the -- and during the war. There was looting at many, many universities.

Now they're all open. There are two challenges, in particular, that are faced: One is sort of the reconstruction and rebuilding in a physical logistical sense, which is ongoing. They're all open. All students are going to school. They are taking exams. They are working, working universities.

And Iraq, by the way, I mean, has historically, at least in modern history, let's say, the past 40 or 50 years, a good strong university system, relatively speaking. You know, in the region, it has had a good educational tradition. So there is a strong base there.

The second part, though, other than just the physical rebuilding is curriculum, and this is, in many respects, a greater problem in the elementary schools because it's so much a part of formation of a child's education. But the curriculum in the country was -- well, I mean, you can look at it. You wouldn't believe it if you looked at it. I mean, it's like science fiction or something. It was completely designed to glorify Saddam and the Baath Party, and everything else was secondary.

That, obviously, had to be gotten rid of, and that continued up through the university level to a certain extent, obviously, when you get into more scientific technical subjects; and that there has been a team for a very long time working in that Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Education on curriculum design and curriculum reform, and they have their new textbooks, but it will be an ongoing thing.

Iraqi children in elementary schools are using new textbooks now. But, obviously, a future Iraqi government will need to continue to work on that. The primary goal right now, obviously, was to rid the curriculum and all of this other stuff.

QUESTION: And the stock exchange?

MR. BALLARD: Oh, yeah, stock exchange, I don't know. I know there was a very ambitious project to create a stock exchange, but I just don't know where it is right now. Within the CPA and the Ministry, I don't know who it would have been. The Ministry of Trade maybe?

I don't know who would have been in charge of it, but there was definitely -- but it is ongoing. Because there was, as you said, there was this small little stock exchange, but the idea was to create a modern real stock exchange. But I can't, I just don't have an exact answer.

QUESTION: Brahimi today, in a press conference, made a point of saying that this application process had fit in the ranks of the needed people, like in the universities or doctors, and so forth, other key technical areas, and he said this is something that really needs review. Is this something where there -- that they're going back to the well on this and reviewing these more thoroughly now? Or can you say where that's at now?

MR. BALLARD: Well, there were a few stages for the de-Baathification: first, the CPA came in and it made a de-Baathification policy; then the Iraqi Governing Council established the de-Baathification committee. And that committee came out with an actual, a more comprehensive policy which did change, in many respects, the original ruling that the CPA had issued and was much more flexible.

The reason it was flexible was the fact that what you're talking about. And this is a regional thing, in some respects. There are certain parts of Iraq -- Tikrit, to give you an example, with is Saddam Hussein's hometown, or the Fallujah, Ramadi area, which was an area of very strong support for Saddam, and an area from which many of the military officers and other officials in the Saddam regime came from.

Well, the Baath Party was very, very strong there, and if you take the educational system, every single school teacher was a member of the Baath Party, in those areas, maybe not in other areas. So in those -- there had to be -- they had to balance the need of the country to be rid of Baathists elements that would be destabilizing or that, in many, many cases, were criminals, with the need of the country to preserve, as you say, some sort of foundation of the technical or educated elite.

I mean, you can look up the policy, but the policy basically has an appeals process. There are certain ranks of person. In other words, if I'm there, the top three ranks of the Baath Party, and people who held certain jobs are excluded from future government employment and they're out.

But they -- the next level, they're -- they can appeal -- in other words, some of them there is no problem; the top ones, forget it; and then there is this section in the middle where they're technically excluded but they can either -- they have the choice of either retiring with pension and to go away, or they could appeal and say, I want this job or I want that job, and I'm going to appeal, in which case, they would have to make a determination as to whether this person was actually a bad Baathist or was just a member because his job required it, or because she was the daughter of who-knows-what.

And if they won the appeal, they were able to continue without any problem. If they lost the appeal, however, they did lose the opportunity for pension. So that was some sort of compromise. Whether they will review that, I don't know. But it was interesting to see because you would have very strong opinions about this, obviously. There were people, as you mentioned, would say, well, if I have to kick all of the Baathists out of my department, I have nobody there; and then in another part of the country, there would be equally strong complaint saying, you have not done a good enough job of getting rid of the Baathists.

So there was very strong feelings on both sides, and they came up with what seemed to be a pretty good mechanism. Whether they will have to continue to review it, they'll have to decide.

QUESTION: There seems to be some criticism among the watchdogs of the NGOs that feels the direct oil revenue which, I guess, (inaudible) the authority to allocate how much to use on which program? But there is an advisory board called the Program Review Board --

MR. BALLARD: Right -- oh, no. Well, yeah, there is a Program Review Board, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.

Go ahead.

QUESTION: And I dislike hearing from watchdog system. There are some criticisms about -- among the watchdogs -- that why aren't -- on the Program Review Board, there is only one Iraqi official who is from the Ministry of Finance. There is only one on that board, and worked with the members of the board that are members of the CPA. And there are some criticisms that: Why aren't the Governing Council participating in this talk, the allocation of the oil revenues?

MR. BALLARD: Right. I don't know how to answer that. I mean, I just don't know how they determined who was on the board, or what the mechanisms of the board are, so I --

QUESTION: It came as an order from the CPA.

MR. BALLARD: Yeah, but it's not an area that I have any personal expertise in. So I wouldn't want to try to get into what any of that means.

MS. NISBET: No more questions? Thank you.

MR. BALLARD: Thank you.
[End]