[Senate Hearing 107-41]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-41
OVERVIEW OF FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES AND BUDGET
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 8, 2001
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
72-227 WASHINGTON : 2001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
BILL FRIST, Tennessee RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia BARBARA BOXER, California
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL NELSON, Florida
Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared
statement...................................................... 30
Powell, Hon. Colin L., Secretary of State, Department of State,
Washington, DC................................................. 3
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Responses to additional questions submitted for the record
by:
Senator Jesse Helms........................................ 36
Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr................................ 43
Senator Russell D. Feingold................................ 45
Senator Paul Wellstone..................................... 46
Statement submitted for the record:
The Fourth Freedom Forum..................................... 35
(iii)
OVERVIEW OF FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES AND BUDGET
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:35 a.m. in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jesse Helms
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Helms, Lugar, Hagel, Thomas, Frist,
Brownback, Biden, Sarbanes, Kerry, Feingold, and Torricelli.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order, and I wish
we had a larger hearing room, because there are at least as
many people outside as are inside, so you know how to draw a
crowd, Mr. Secretary.
Having said that, we welcome you, of course, for this
morning's meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
and this meeting is your first appearance before the committee
as Secretary of State. We are pleased and honored to have you
with us.
Now, we hope that you will always feel at home here and
that you will visit with us often, not only when we ask you to
come, but whenever you have something to say to Congress and
the American people. So the door will always be open.
Before we turn to you for your testimony, there is one
issue that I hope you will address while you are with us, and
that is, reforming foreign aid. First, the Agency for
International Development [USAID] must be folded into the State
Department directly under the control of your own good self,
the Secretary of State.
Second, there must be a significant cut in the size and
cost of the foreign aid bureaucracy, and I will leave it to you
to decide how much.
Third, we must take every penny we save by cutting
bureaucracy and invest it in a new international development
foundation charged with delivering block grants to private and
faith-based charities that are saving lives all around the
world, and finally, we must match those savings dollar for
dollar with an increased U.S. investment in the work of these
relief organizations, and specifically, Mr. Secretary, I pledge
to you this morning that for every dollar we take out of
bureaucratic overhead, I personally will support a matching
dollar increase in U.S. assistance delivered through these
private and faith-based charities.
In other words, every $1 that is cut from the bureaucracy
will translate into $2 in real relief for the neediest people
in this world.
Now, if you reduce the size of the bureaucracy by 5
percent, I personally will help you fight for a 5 percent
increase in U.S. assistance. If you reduce the bureaucracy by
10 percent, I will champion a 10-percent increase, and 15
percent, and on down the line. Mr. Secretary, let me put it
this way. If you want to see how far I will go in working with
you, just test me.
In any case, Mr. Secretary, I hope that I can have your
commitment today to work with this committee to reform the way
that we have been delivering so wastefully foreign aid in the
past.
Senator Biden. Excuse me. I'm sorry.
I beg your pardon, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I join you
in welcoming Secretary Powell. Secretary Powell, I just want
you to know that you have knowledgeable people hopefully in
front of you, but you also have Mrs. Sarbanes sitting behind
you, so she is more knowledgeable than we are, so I just
wanted--I just embarrassed her--but I welcome you here.
Last week, the President submitted his budget, Mr.
Secretary, his budget outline, I should be more precise, to
Congress. A more detailed budget is still to come, and based on
what we know so far, I must tell you I am disappointed with the
international affairs budget. It provides only a modest
increase in real terms over fiscal year 2001, and it is below
the levels provided for fiscal year 1999 and 2000.
During your confirmation hearing, Mr. Secretary, you made
clear your belief that you did not have enough resources to
accomplish your mission. Now, I acknowledge that you are just
getting underway, and there is a lot you have to get in place,
but I want you to know that you have not only raised my
expectations, but I think you raised, in your first meetings
with your colleagues at the State Department, their
expectations as to how significant an increase may be
forthcoming to do some of the very basic things that have to be
done at State to modernize it.
As you well know, you have been put in the dubious position
by the press and both parties as being the guy who is going to
be able to deliver like no other Secretary could for your folks
over at State, so I realize you are in a bit of a tough
position. I am glad to see the increase, but I am concerned
that the funding levels in the budget may be insufficient to
strengthen our diplomatic readiness.
I think it is a delusion to believe that we can protect our
numerous interests overseas with a diplomatic infrastructure
that is second-rate--I am not talking about the people. I am
talking about the infrastructure--and assistance programs that
are underfunded.
As you continue to develop your priorities, I strongly urge
you to seek additional funding for the Department and
international programs that you need, notwithstanding the fact
that you may not be able to get them. I realize every Cabinet
Secretary has that difficulty, but we are counting on you to
make the best case possible for the needs of the Department.
I hope you can spend a few minutes this morning reporting
on your recent trip, although I know that is not the primary
purpose of your visit here today. In particular, I am
interested in hearing your ideas about reenergizing sanctions
against Iraq.
We also must keep the world focused on the key threat,
Saddam's effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and
that can again and are likely to threaten our neighbors.
I particularly welcome your assurance to our NATO partners.
I have had more calls than I can tell you, including a visit
from Lord Robertson yesterday, to tell me how pleased everyone
was with your comment, that we went in together and we will
come out together. I think that goes a long, long way to
reassuring our NATO allies of our steadfastness and our
commitment.
Finally, let me say a quick word about the current visit of
South Korean President Kim, who is the author of the engagement
strategy and is slowing opening up North Korea. I must tell
you, I was somewhere between puzzled and disappointed by what
the reports of the meeting with the President were yesterday,
particularly in light of what I read your statements--that you
were taking a positive but not naive look at what possibilities
there may be.
If President Kim was correctly quoted, or paraphrased, he
said he thinks there is a window of opportunity that is open
now that will not stay open very long. As I have said in
response to inquiries from the press, I am not sure what is on
the other side of that window. I am not sure that we want what
is on the other side of the window, but I am quite sure that we
should look through the window.
So I hope that if you have an opportunity, again, today--
there is a lot on your plate here, but I hope you get an
opportunity to maybe--clarify is the wrong word, explain to us
what President Bush, if you are able to, meant by his statement
yesterday that there be no immediate--and I emphasize, I, maybe
because I want to convince myself, look to the word immediate
as the operative word, but I may be wrong, no immediate
interfacing with North Korea.
But if you have time, I would like you to--you may be able
to respond to that in the question and answer period.
But again, I welcome you, look forward to working with you.
As the Senator said to you, I think you can count on both sides
of this panel, Democrats and Republicans to, once you conclude
what you need, to help you fight for the resources you believe
you need at State to do the job I think we all think we need to
do.
Thank you very much, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Secretary.
STATEMENT OF HON. COLIN L. POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE,
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Secretary Powell. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman
and Senator Biden for your welcome. It is good to be back
before the committee, this time as the Secretary of State, and
I thank you for the prompt consideration of my nomination just
a few short weeks ago.
I have been the Secretary of State for 5\1/2\ weeks. I must
admit, it is beginning to feel like 5\1/2\ months, if not 5\1/
2\ years, as I have begun to deal with the tasks before me, and
I am also pleased that you will be dealing with the other
nominees for the Department of State in a prompt manner, as
those nominees come up to you. It is still a little lonely down
there at the State Department, Mr. Chairman, but I am looking
forward to a great team joining me in the very, very near
future.
I, too, look forward to the opportunity on a regular basis
to come before the committee and to share my thoughts on the
policies of the Bush administration, and to answer any
questions you may have and, of course, I am at your disposal at
any time, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, and look
forward to seeing you individually and in different
aggregations and not just in the form of hearings.
Mr. Chairman, I fully take aboard what you said with
respect to USAID. I remember vividly our previous conversation
on this. Early on, the second week of my tenure as the
Secretary of State, I went over to USAID and with the entire
staff sat and talked and began the process of understanding how
they were operating, making it clear to them that changes would
be coming.
I put in place an aggressive transition team, which is
still over there working, and I am waiting for their report
back on what directions we ought to move into, and I made sure
I understood your interest in this particular matter, and said
to the whole USAID team that I have been given an offer from
Senator Helms as to how we can get more resources for these
vital programs of ours if we show movement toward efficiency,
toward reducing bureaucracy, and toward making better use of
the nongovernmental organizations, especially faith-based sorts
of organizations that are available to us.
And so, Mr. Chairman, we have all that underway. As you
know, the President has expressed his intention to nominate Mr.
Andrew Natsios to be the next Director of the USAID. He brings
a great deal of experience and a great deal of leadership
ability and skill to this task and, in my conversations with
Andy, I made it clear to him that I wanted him to be a change
agent in order to make sure that we are doing the best job for
the American people, and the people of the world, with the
money that Congress is providing us to use through the U.S.
Agency for International Development.
So I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and
the members of the committee, and the Congress, on this issue,
and I wrote down very, very carefully the deal that we just
talked about, one for one. It is going to be a lot more than
one for one, and we will look forward to that, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Biden, I thank you for your comment on resources.
This budget submission is far from the end of the game. It is
the beginning. In the short period of time we had to make
adjustments to the budget submission, I think that the State
Department did rather well, with a 5-percent overall increase
in the account and the function, and with about a 15-percent
increase in the Commerce, State, Justice piece of the account,
which gives us the operational money we need to run the
Department, and so I think we are off to a good start.
But I am not fearful at this point that I am going to fail
the expectations that you have of me, sir, or that the
Department has of me, because I think President Bush also has
expectations that we will do better, and that he will help us
do better in future budgets.
The outyears are a source of concern, and we will deal with
that as we get into the next budget cycle, and I am confident I
will be able to make the case that will generate more resources
from within the President's budget, and that I can come up in
future hearings and talk about a higher level of resources for
the Department.
I think before going into a very short version of my
prepared statement, I would like to talk to some of the foreign
policy issues that Senator Biden raised, because for the most
part I am here to talk about the budget, but of course we can
talk about any issues that members wish to talk about.
Let me start with Iraq. Iraq and the situation in Iraq was
the principal purpose of my trip throughout the Persian Gulf
and Middle East area the week before last. When we took over on
the 20th of January, I discovered that we had an Iraq policy
that was in disarray, and the sanctions part of that policy was
not just in disarray, it was falling apart. We were losing
support for the sanctions regime that had served so well over
the last 10 years, with all of the ups and downs and all of the
difficulties that are associated with that regime. It was
falling apart.
It had been successful. Saddam Hussein has not been able to
rebuild his army, notwithstanding claims that he has. He has
fewer tanks in his inventory today than he had 10 years ago.
Even though we know he is working on weapons of mass
destruction, we know he has things squirreled away, at the same
time, we have not seen the capacity emerge to present a full-
fledged threat to us. So I think credit has to be given to the
United Nations and to the Perm 5 and to the nations in the
region for putting in place a regime that has kept him pretty
much in check.
What I found on the 20th of January, however, was that
regime was collapsing. More and more nations were saying, let's
just get rid of the sanctions, let's not worry about
inspectors, just forget it. There was all kinds of leakage from
the frontline states, whether it was through Syria, through
Jordan, through Turkey, or down through the Persian Gulf with
the smuggling of oil, and so what I felt we had to do was to
start taking a look at these sanctions, remember what they were
oriented on in the first place, and remember that with respect
to the sanctions--let's call that basket No. 1. That is what
the United Nations does. It has nothing to do with regime
change. That is U.S. policy. That U.S. policy, that let us put
in basket No. 2, the no-fly zone, or in basket No. 3, Iraqi
opposition activities.
My immediate concern was basket No. 1, the U.N. basket and
how it was falling apart, and it seemed to me the first thing
we had to do was to change the nature of the debate. We were
being accused and we were taking on the burden of hurting Iraqi
people, hurting Iraqi children, and we needed to turn that
around.
The purpose of these sanctions was to go after weapons of
mass destruction. That is what they were put in place for in
the first instance, back at the end of the gulf war, so let us
start talking about how the Iraqi regime is threatening
children, their own children and the children of Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait and Syria and all over the region, how they were a
danger, in danger of what Saddam Hussein was doing, and take
away the argument he was using against us.
In order to make sure that that carried forward, we then
had to take a look at the sanctions themselves. Were they being
used to go after weapons of mass destruction, and was that the
way they were connected to our original goals, or increasingly,
were those sanctions starting to look as if they were hurting
the Iraqi people.
And it seems to me one approach to this was to go to those
sanctions and eliminate those items in the sanctions regime
that really were of civilian use, and benefited people, and
focus them exclusively on weapons of mass destruction and items
that could be directed toward the development of weapons of
mass destruction.
I carried that message around the region, and I found that
our Arab friends in the region, as well as members of the Perm
5 in the United Nations, as well as a number of my colleagues
in NATO, found this to be a very attractive approach, and that
we should continue down this line. And so we are continuing
down this line that says, let's see if there is a better way to
use these sanctions to go after weapons of mass destruction and
take away the argument we have given him that we are somehow
hurting the Iraqi people.
He is hurting the Iraqi people, not us. There is more than
enough money available to the regime now to take care of the
needs they have. No more money comes in as a result of the
change to this new kind of sanctions policy, but there is
greater flexibility for the regime if they choose to use that
flexibility to take care of the needs of its people.
How do we get out of this regime ultimately? The inspectors
have to go back in. If he wants to get out of this, if he wants
to regain control of the oil for food escrow accounts, the only
way that can happen is for the inspectors to go back in. But
rather than us begging him to let the inspectors in, the burden
is now on him. We control the money. We will continue to
restrict weapons of mass destruction. You no longer have an
argument, Mr. Iraqi Regime, that we are hurting your people.
You let the inspectors in and we can start to get out of this.
If the inspectors get in, do their job, we are satisfied
with their first look at things, maybe we can suspend the
sanctions, and then at some point, way in the future, when we
are absolutely satisfied there are no such weapons around, then
maybe we can consider lifting, but that is a long way in the
future.
So this was not an effort to ease the sanctions. This was
an effort to rescue the sanctions policy that was collapsing.
We discovered that we were in an airplane that was heading to a
crash, and what we have done and what we are trying to do is to
pull it out of that dive and put it on an altitude that is
sustainable, bring the coalition back together.
As part of this approach to the problem, we would also make
sure that the Iraqi regime understood that we reserve the right
to strike militarily any activity out there, any facility we
find that is inconsistent with our obligations to get rid of
such weapons of mass destruction.
That takes care of the U.N. piece. On the no-fly zone, we
are reviewing our policies to see if we are operating those in
the most effective way possible and, with respect to the Iraqi
opposition activities, we are supporting those. Our principal
avenue of support is with the Iraqi National Congress, and last
week I released more money of the money that had been made
available to us by the Congress, released more of that money
for their activities, and we are looking at what more we can
support and what other opposition activities are available that
we might bring into this strategy of regime change.
And so I think it is a comprehensive, full review, to bring
the coalition back together, put the burden on the Iraqi
regime, keep focused on what is important, weapons of mass
destruction, and keep him isolated and make sure that he is
contained, and hopefully the day will come when circumstances
will allow, permit, or it will happen with Iraq we see a regime
change that will be better for the world.
And so I would hope that the members of the committee will
examine this approach as we develop it further, and I hope that
you will find the basis upon which you can support it.
Senator Biden also mentioned NATO. I am very pleased that
we have solid relations with NATO. There were some irritants in
the relationship, and I think those have been taken care of.
With respect to the President's meeting with Kim Dae Jung
yesterday, I think it was a very good meeting. They had a good
exchange of views. The President expressed his support for
President Kim Dae Jung's efforts to open North Korea. It is a
regime that is despotic. It is broken. We have no illusions
about this regime. We have no illusions about the nature of the
gentleman who runs North Korea. He is a despot, but he is also
sitting on a failed society that has to somehow begin opening
if it is not to collapse. Once it is opened, it may well
collapse anyway.
And so we support what President Kim Dae Jung is doing. At
the same time, we have expressed in the strongest possible
terms, and President Bush did it in the strongest possible
terms yesterday, our concerns about their efforts toward
development of weapons of mass destruction and the
proliferation of such weapons and missiles and other materials
to other nations, not only in the region, but around the world,
a major source of proliferation.
As we look at the elements of the negotiation that the
previous administration had left behind, there are some things
there that are very promising. What was not there was a
monitoring and verification regime of the kind that we would
have to have in order to move forward in negotiations with such
a regime.
And so what the President was saying yesterday is that we
are going to take our time, we are going to put together a
comprehensive policy and in due course, at a time and at a
place of our choosing, we will decide and determine how best to
engage with the North Korean regime, but it was a good meeting,
and I think the two Presidents had a very candid exchange of
views, and we look forward to more exchanges of views with the
South Koreans as we move forward, as well as with the Japanese,
so we can move forward together, even though we may be on
separate tracks from time to time.
Mr. Chairman, I will stop there on foreign policy issues
and just briefly touch on what we are trying to do in this
budget. As you know, there are many ways that the President
engages in foreign policy, sometimes it is meetings such as he
held yesterday with President Kim Dae Jung, or meetings he has
held with President Fox and held with Prime Minister Chretien
of Canada.
Sometimes it is sending the Secretary of State whizzing
around the world, seven countries in 4 days. That gets a lot of
news. But the real work of foreign policy is not accomplished
just by Presidents or by Secretaries of State. It is done by
the thousands and thousands of dedicated Americans who have
signed up to serve in the Foreign Service, to serve as civil
servants, to serve as Foreign Service nationals, for those who
are not Americans, representing us around the world, and it is
theirs that is the daily grind of foreign policy, punctuated by
the occasional thrill and excitement of a diplomatic success.
And their activities range from the minor to the sublime,
from the courteous handling of a visa application, to the
inking of a treaty limiting arms control, or limiting
conventional arms in Europe, and I am saying to you, Mr.
Chairman, something that you and the members of the committee
already know. There are no finer groups of Americans anywhere
in the world who represent our interests as well, and it is our
obligation to give them the resources they need.
I have seen how we try to take care of our military folks.
I mentioned this to you at the last hearing, how places like
Camp Bondsteel look so great when you go over to the Balkans.
We ought to make sure that all of our State Department
facilities look as great as those military facilities, and I
think the budget that we have presented to you, with the
increases that are proposed, start moving us in that direction.
We are making strides in classified information technology.
We are making sure that our people have access to the Internet.
We are doing all we can to get a handle on energy, on embassy
construction. We are especially grateful to a former member of
this committee, Senator Grams, for his part in conceiving the
5-year authorization of embassy funds.
I am very pleased that 2\1/2\ years after the bombings in
Kenya and Tanzania we are well on our way to reestablishing our
presence there. We have other embassies that are state-of-the-
art that are coming up out of the ground now, so we have a lot
going on, but I think we could do a better job of managing our
embassy construction program.
It is for that reason that I went out and tried to find one
of the best persons I could find, expert in this, to come in
and help me in the Department. I have acquired the services of
a retired Major General in the United States Army, surprise,
surprise, but retired Major General Chuck Williams, Charles E.
Williams is from the Corps of Engineers. He built Fort Drum,
New York. He built the Dulles Greenway out here, not far from
here. He has brought projects to life all over the world, and
he knows this business, and he is coming in to serve as the new
head of our Foreign Buildings Office.
I am going to move it out from under its current location
so that it can have more direct reporting responsibility to me
and to the Under Secretary for Management, and General
Williams' instructions are, get out there, find out what we
need to fix the management of this account, and we want to get
rid of the bureaucracy, we want to find private ways of doing
things. This is a first step toward perhaps ultimately going in
the direction of the Kaden Commission recommendation, which
would move it entirely out of the Department.
I am not there yet. We have got a long way to go, but this,
I think, is an aggressive first step in showing the kind of
leadership I want the Department to see that we have identified
a problem in that operation, went out and got a leader who is
skilled, not just a political appointee, but somebody who knows
how to get this job done, given him the political mandate to do
it, and I am sure that General Williams will do a good job that
will make us all proud.
So Mr. Chairman, that is the kind of thing we are doing,
the kind of thing we are going to do to get our information
infrastructure fixed, to make sure that 30,000 desks throughout
the State Department are wired for unclassified access to the
Internet. This budget will do that, and then we will start
working on classified access to the Internet.
We are going to make sure that our people are state-of-the-
art. We are going to make sure that if an ambassador somewhere
out there needs to get something from the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, he is not going to wait for something to
be faxed or mailed to him, he is going to be able to bring it
out of the ether online instantaneously, as he needs it.
We are going to get into the state-of-the-art with the
State Department. Mr. Chairman, I want our people to be
supported as well as all of our soldiers and sailors and airmen
and marines, and we are going to make sure that happens in the
years ahead.
The President's budget also provides money to hire a number
of new Foreign Service officers. We are below the number we
need to get the job done. One of the things we are going to do
with this new budget is to create a float. We do not have a
float in the Department. We always are robbing Peter to pay
Paul when a new mission comes along.
I need a float, just as we had in the military, so people
can go to training, so that there is always a little reserve
capacity where people can go off to school and get the
additional skills they need without us vacating a position
somewhere in an embassy or an important office here in
Washington, and so we are going to increase the number of
Foreign Service officers. We are going to create a float so
that they can get the training that they need.
And you are going to see, Mr. Chairman, that the budget
also provides for the kinds of things that really advance our
foreign policy, programs aimed at restoring peace, building
democracy, and civil societies, safeguarding human rights,
tackling nonproliferation and counterterrorism challenges,
addressing global health and environmental issues, responding
to disasters, and promoting economic reform.
The budget expands counterdrug alternative development and
government reform programs in the Andean region. It helps
provide military assistance to Israel to meet cash-flow needs.
It will fund all of the scheduled payments that are due in 2002
to the multilateral development banks, and the United States
commitment to the heavily indebted poor countries. It increases
funding for migration and refugee assistance, for HIV/AIDS, one
of the biggest problems facing the world today, trafficking in
women, basic education for children.
And with respect to trafficking in women and children, let
me take this opportunity to thank Senator Brownback for his
work in this effort and for the amendment that you offered last
year, Senator, that was successful and added $10 million in
economic support funds for efforts in Sudan to protect
civilians from attacks and from slave trades.
Mr. Chairman, the President's budget for 2002 also provides
money to support peacekeeping operations, supports political
and economic transitions in Africa, with emphasis on countries
such as Nigeria and South Africa.
As I go into these sorts of programs, I am going to be
trying to invest in those countries that have made the
necessary changes that put them on the path of democracy and
the free enterprise system, and not keep propping up despots
who will not move in the right direction. The cold war is over.
We do not need to prop up those kinds of institutions in
countries any longer.
And so, Mr. Chairman, I think it is a budget that moves in
the direction of freedom and democracy and supporting those
efforts. It will help to reduce the risks presented by
international terrorism. It will help halt the spread of
weapons of mass destruction by providing stronger international
safeguards on civilian nuclear activity. We are also going to
increase funding for the Peace Corps, and I know Senator Dodd
has a particular interest in that.
And as I noted earlier, we are also going to provide
additional money, not for Plan Colombia, per se, but to
regionalize our activities so that Plan Colombia just does not
become a snapshot, but it is part of a broader strategy for the
region.
Mr. Chairman, I can also say to you that I am going to work
hard to carve out needless layers within the State Department.
I know that the committee has intense interest in
organizational activities and streamlining activities in the
Department, and I am going to be on top of that, but I think
that all begins with leadership. It begins with putting a team
together. It begins with communicating throughout the
Department that we are a team. We are going to be linked
together on the basis of trust.
When you have got that all going, Mr. Chairman, then you
can start to make the organizational changes that I think will
be needed and are needed to make sure that the Department is
relevant to the needs of the Nation and the needs of the world
in the 21st century.
Mr. Chairman, let me stop there. I will provide the whole
statement for the record, with your permission, and now I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Powell follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. COLIN L. POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE
``FUNCTION 150 OF THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002''
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am pleased to be back
before you so soon after our last hearing in January--and this time in
support of President Bush's budget request for FY 2002.
I know that it is the custom to use this particular hearing not
only to discuss the President's budget but also to have the Secretary
of State present, as Chairman Helms described it last year, ``the
annual around-the-world state of our nation's foreign affairs.''
But since we did a great deal of that in our January hearing, and
since I warned you in that hearing that as soon as I got the details
together to support budget testimony, you would see me again, I want to
use my opening statement to focus on the budget.
I know that you will want to ask questions of me with respect to
President Bush's foreign policy and I will be pleased to answer them
for you when I can and get for you any answers when I cannot. But for
my opening statement I would like to concentrate on a matter very dear
to me and, I know, very dear to you--the dollars for State Department
operations particularly, and for Function 150 in general.
Mr. Chairman, in January I not only told you to expect my return
with respect to budget matters. I also told you that President Bush
would be a leader who faithfully represents to the world the ideas of
freedom and justice and open markets.
The President has many ways he can do this, many different methods
through which he can show the world the values of America and the
prosperity and peace those values can generate. His recent personal
visit to Mexico to talk with President Fox is one of those methods.
Working out the means of cooperation and trade with a neighbor such
as Mexico, however complex and difficult some of the underlying issues
may be, is an undertaking full of promise for the future. President
Bush knows how important such foreign policy efforts are and that is
why we went to see President Fox.
And, as you know, I returned just last week from visits to Israel,
Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the West Bank, as well
as to Brussels on my way home to participate in a meeting of the North
Atlantic Council and to talk with some of my counterparts in Europe.
As you also may know, I was able to have a talk with Russian
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov as well, while I was in Cairo.
Such trips by his Secretary of State are another of the methods the
President has at his disposal to represent American values and
interests in the councils of state around the world.
But the most important method by which the President presents
America to the world, the most important method by far, is through the
thousands of people who labor away at such representation every day of
the week in almost every country in the world.
I am of course speaking of our front line troops in the State
Department, as well as those here in America who support them.
I am talking about the Foreign Service officers, the Civil Service
employees, and the Foreign Service nationals who make up the Department
of State.
Theirs is the daily drudgery of foreign policy, punctuated by the
thrill and excitement of diplomatic success ranging from the minor to
the sublime, from the courteous handling of a visa application to the
inking of a treaty limiting conventional arms in Europe.
Mr. Chairman, there are no finer people chipping away at tyranny,
loosening the bonds of poverty, pushing the cause of freedom and peace,
on the U.S. Government payroll.
And it is a mystery to me how they have continued to do it over the
years with so little resources.
In my confirmation hearing with this committee I mentioned Camp
Bondsteel in Kosovo where our GIs are stationed. As you know, it is a
superb, first-class facility put in overnight to make sure that our
troops are taken care of. But as many of you also know--Senator Biden
for example--if you visited some of our dilapidated embassies and other
facilities in the region, you would wonder whether the same government
was taking care of them. The same bald eagle is clutching the arrows
and the olive branch, but in many of State's buildings that American
eagle is very ill-housed.
Also at Camp Bondsteel there are excellent capabilities with
respect to information technology, including the capability to send
unclassified e-mails. In many of State's facilities there were no such
capabilities.
Now since the time that construction was begun on Camp Bondsteel,
with the help of this committee and of the Congress as a whole, and
with the good work of former Secretary Albright and her dedicated
people, we have made great strides in our unclassified information
technology at State.
I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and all the members on this
committee, for what you have done to get this process started.
Many of you were active in helping to steer the Admiral James W.
Nance and Meg Donovan Foreign Relations Act--our authorizing
legislation and an important counterpart to the later appropriations
bill--through the committee process and ultimately to floor passage.
That legislation was an important start to what needs to be done
with respect to the State Department's budget.
My hope is that, in the first year of the Bush administration, you
will work with us to continue this good progress we have made, and to
see that our operations and our foreign affairs are put back in balance
with everything else we do in the world.
For example, now that we have made such strides in our unclassified
information technology, we have to continue that progress by gaining
broad-based Internet access. At the same time, we have to begin work to
create classifled Local Area Network capabilities, to include e-mail
and word-processing.
Mr. Chairman, as you well know some of our embassies in addition to
lacking up-to-date information technology, are not as secure as they
should be--and so we have people who are not as secure as they should
be.
But again thanks to the House and Senate's attention to this
matter, we are beginning to get a handle on it.
We are especially grateful to a former member of this committee,
Senator Grams, for his part in conceiving the five-year authorization
of funds for embassy construction and to all the members of this
committee for your hard work to begin to correct the years of neglect
of our embassy infrastructure.
I understand that when the FY 99 emergency supplemental was being
put together, we did not have the sort of robust buildings program that
was needed to meet security needs. We had to prove that we could ramp
up to such a program and then manage it.
Let me just say that in the two and a half years since the bombings
in Kenya and Tanzania, we are well on the way to doing just that.
We provided an immediate stand-up of facilities in Dar Es Salaam
and Nairobi and within 12 months replaced each with more secure interim
facilities that will be in place until the new replacement facilities
are finished.
We broke ground on those permanent facilities in August.
Likewise, we just completed construction in Kampala, Uganda and our
people have moved in just 15 months after construction began.
We will also move into a new embassy in Doha, Qatar in early June
of this year.
Other new construction projects where we have broken ground include
Zagreb, Istanbul, and Tunis.
Ground-breaking for Abu Dhabi will occur this spring.
In addition, we've funded over 1,200 individual perimeter security
upgrades with over 50 percent now completed.
But we are still not moving quickly enough nor efficiently enough.
And I want to work with you and the other Members of Congress to
gain your confidence so that we can move faster and eliminate some of
the barriers that cost money to overcome.
In that regard, we are carefully studying construction costs.
I know that we can do better in adapting the best practices of
industry and smart engineering techniques and technologies to embassy
construction.
The hundred-foot set-back, for example, can sometimes be overcome
by better and smarter construction.
Blast protection remains the same but the dollar costs are
significantly lower because acquisition of land is exorbitantly
expensive. If we can provide the same degree of security through a
better built wall that has only, say, a fifty-foot set-back, then
that's what we are going to do.
And we believe better overall management is also achievable so that
construction delays don't eat up precious more dollars.
Better overall management includes bringing on board an experienced
operations executive to manage the Overseas Facilities Program, as
recommended by the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel. It also includes
realigning the Foreign Buildings Office from within the Bureau of
Administration to a stand-alone organization reporting directly to the
Undersecretary for Management--requiring of course consultation with
the Congress. And I hope I'll have your support on that.
The combination of strong leadership, realignment of the function,
and an industry panel to assist with identifying best practices from
the private sector, along with implementation of other OPAP
recommendations, will greatly improve the management of the overseas
buildings program.
I have asked one of the Army's finest engineers, retired Major
General Charles Williams, to head this effort. He is an expert at
reducing costs while delivering high quality and I've no doubt he will
offer us new ways to execute and to manage our embassy construction.
As a result, we may be able to reduce that hundred-million-dollar
price tag on new embassy construction. I am committed to working with
you and the appropriators on this issue.
Mr. Chairman, in the past we have not in all cases done the best we
could to see that our overseas personnel were as secure as they should
be--but together, you and I can change that. Together, we can continue
this very positive effort we have begun to pull the State Department
into the 21st century.
And that is what we are after in the President's Budget for Fiscal
Year 2002--to continue this very positive forward momentum.
The President's request of about $23.9 billion--a five-percent
increase over this year--will do just that.
We are providing increased funding, for example, toward our
steadfast commitment to the safety of our men and women serving
overseas.
These dollars will allow us to continue to address our
infrastructure needs including the construction of new, secure
facilities and the continuing refurbishment of existing ones.
These dollars also provide the means to improve security
operations--including the hiring of additional security officers who
are essential to the prevention and deterrence of terrorist attacks
against our embassies, such as those that occurred in Nairobi and in
Dar Es Salaam.
We will not be deterred by such attacks from doing our job in the
world--but we will take measures to protect our people.
The President's budget also provides funds for modernizing--and in
some cases acquiring for the first time--the required information
technology for the conduct of foreign affairs.
These dollars will allow us to modernize our secure Local Area
Network capability, including e-mail and word-processing. Likewise,
they will allow us to provide open access channels to the Internet so
that our people can take full advantage of this enormously important
new means of communication and research. This access will also increase
communications and information sharing within the foreign affairs
community.
Mr. Chairman, this development alone has the potential to
revolutionize the way we do business.
Take for example the great products turned out by the Foreign
Broadcast Information Service, or ``FBIS'' as we call it.
No longer will an ambassador or political or economic officer in
one of our embassies have to wait for the bound copies to arrive by
courier or mail at his desk or office, often delaying the hottest, most
recent news.
Switching on the computer, accessing the Internet, and clicking on
the FBIS account puts the latest news from in-country and regional
newspapers and periodicals at your fingertips almost instantly.
Similarly, clicking onto your e-mail account allows you to query
any subject matter expert in the system as swiftly and securely as
modern technology permits.
When I arrived in the Transition Office at State in December of
last year, the first thing I put on the table behind my desk was my
computer with access to my e-mail account.
I didn't want to be out of touch for an instant.
We are talking of course about unclassified communications. But
unclassified communications are a considerable part of our everyday
routine.
As you know, we need secure methods of communications also. And
with the President's budget we will continue installing these secure
methods everywhere we need them.
The Department of State intends to exploit fully the ongoing
technology and information revolutions.
Our long-term investment strategy and ongoing acquisition of new
technology will continue to address the many information needs of our
foreign policy professionals.
I have personally committed to this transformation and the
President's budget for 2002 is the next step toward fulfilling that
commitment.
I have also personally committed to reinvigorating the Foreign
Service--an arm of our professional public service apparatus every bit
as important as the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, or Coast
Guard.
To do this, we need to hire more of America's brightest and most
talented young people who are committed to service.
And we will only be successful if we change how we recruit, assess,
and hire Foreign Service officers. And we are doing that. We also need
to be smarter about how we market the State Department if we are to win
the fight for talent.
Funding alone will not solve our human resource challenges. We must
create a place of work that can compete with our higher paying private
sector competitors for the very best young people America has to offer.
And I assure you we will, by providing a career that rewards
innovation, recognizes achievement, and demands accountability and
excellence. With your help we will win the fight for talent and that
victory will be reflected every day in America's foreign policy.
The President's budget provides the dollars to hire a significant
number of new Foreign Service officers so we can establish a training
float--a group of FSOs that will begin to relieve some of the terrible
pressures put on the conduct of America's foreign policy by the
considerable shortage of FSOs we are currently experiencing.
Mr. Chairman, there are other areas of the President's budget that
I want to highlight in addition to embassy security, construction and
refurbishment; information technology; and hiring of new people for the
Foreign Service.
These are the program areas that must be funded to advance
America's foreign policy interests overseas--the backbone of our
foreign affairs.
These are programs aimed at restoring peace, building democracy and
civil societies, safeguarding human rights, tackling non-proliferation
and counter-terrorism challenges, addressing global health and
environment issues, responding to disasters, and promoting economic
reform.
For example, the budget expands counterdrug, alternative
development, and government reform programs in the Andean region.
The budget provides for military assistance to Israel to help meet
cash flow needs for procurement of U.S. defense systems, and to
demonstrate our solid commitment to Israel's security.
The budget fully funds all 2002 scheduled payments to the
Multilateral Development Banks and the U.S. commitment to the Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries debt reduction initiative.
The budget increases funding for Migration and Refugee Assistance--
to give crucial and life-sustaining support to refugees and victims of
conflict throughout the world.
The budget reflects the Bush administration's leadership in
promoting the protection of human rights, for example, in combating
impunity for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.
The budget increases resources for combating global HIV/AIDS and
trafficking in women and children, and for basic education for
children.
With respect to trafficking in women and children, let me take this
opportunity to thank you, Senator Brownback, for the amendment you
offered in Senate debate last year, an amendment that was successful
and that added ten million dollars in Economic Support Funds for
efforts in the Sudan to protect civilians from attacks and from slave
raids.
And I would also like to note that today, March 8, is International
Women's Day, a day set aside to honor women for their extraordinary
achievements and important contributions to family, society, country,
and the world.
Mr. Chairman, the President's budget for 2002 also provides money
to support peacekeeping operations around the world, such as those in
Bosnia and in Kosovo.
The budget also supports political and economic transitions in
Africa, with emphasis on those countries, such as Nigeria and South
Africa, that have a direct bearing on our national security and on
those countries that have demonstrated progress in economic reform and
in building democracy.
Building democracy and civil societies remains a top priority of
this administration, so our budget also supports short- and long-term
programs to support democratic elements in countries where alternative
voices are silenced. Toward this end, the budget increases funding for
U.S. international broadcasting to support the free flow of information
by providing accurate information on world and local events to
audiences abroad.
It also sustains our efforts to remove landmines in former war-
ravaged countries--landmines that kill and maim children and innocent
civilians.
The budget supports our efforts to reduce risks posed by
international terrorism, and to halt the spread of weapons of mass
destruction by supporting stronger international safeguards on civilian
nuclear activity and by helping other countries to improve their
controls on exports of potentially dangerous technology.
The budget also provides increased funding for the Peace Corps. And
I want to thank Senator Dodd, not only for your past service in the
Corps, sir, but for your help last year in pushing through the
amendment that secured an increase in funding for the Peace Corps--an
increase that was important enough so that, in conference, the amount
was increased even further.
The Peace Corps is another group of bright and talented individuals
committed to public service. There are more than 7,000 volunteers
around the world, addressing a variety of challenges in agriculture,
education, small business, the environment, and health matters.
Mr. Chairman, before I conclude my prepared statement, let me call
your attention to several areas upon which I want to place a special
emphasis.
In addition to what I have already highlighted with respect to the
money for the Andean region, you know that much of that money is
directed at Plan Colombia.
We are asking for money to continue and expand programs begun with
the 1.3 billion dollar emergency supplemental in FY 2000.
Colombia is the source or transit point of 90 percent of the
cocaine and over 50 percent of the heroin that arrives in America.
Those percentages are increasing, by the way.
Neighboring countries, such as Bolivia and Peru, have conducted
effective coca eradication programs, but maintaining their successes
will require vigilance and U.S. support.
The Bush administration believes strongly that any successful
counterdrug strategy in the region must include funding to bring
greater economic and political stability to the region and a peaceful
resolution to Colombia's internal conflict.
We must capitalize on the ground work of programs funded thus far,
including the expansion of Andean eradication and interdiction
programs, sustained alternative development programs, and continued
attention to justice and government reform initiatives.
In addition, the President's budget requests funding for Ecuador,
Brazil, Venezuela, and Panama, to strengthen their efforts to control
drug production and the drug trade. Our efforts must be regional in
scope and this money keeps them so.
Mr. Chairman, I also want to emphasize our efforts to de-layer the
bureaucracy at State to promote a more effective and efficient
organization for the conduct of our foreign policy.
We have begun an initiative to empower line officers--the true
experts in most areas--and use their expertise to streamline decision-
making and to increase accountability.
The current organization sometimes complicate lines of authority
within the Department and hinders the development and presentation of a
coherent foreign policy, and thus mars its effectiveness.
I ask your help on this serious matter. When I want to carve out
needless and even hurtful pieces of the current organization, I will
need your support. I won't do it unless I am certain it is necessary,
but when I do it I will look for your assistance and backing.
I feel very strongly about this effort. Throughout the last 4 years
I have seen up close and personal how American business has streamlined
itself. This streamlining is sometimes ruthless; it is sometimes hard;
it is almost always necessary. We need to do the same thing at the
State Department.
Mr. Chairman, consistent with the effort to reduce subsidies that
primarily benefit corporations rather than individuals, our budget for
international affairs will include savings in credit subsidy funding
for the Export-Import Bank.
As you know, the Export-Import Bank provides export credits, in the
forms of direct loans or loan guarantees, to U.S. exporters who meet
basic eligibility requirements and who request the Bank's help.
The President's budget proposes savings of about 25 percent in the
Bank's credit subsidy requirements through policy changes that focus
the Bank on U.S. exporters who truly cannot access private financing,
as well as through lower estimates of international risk in 2002.
These changes could include a combination of increased risk-sharing
with the private sector, higher user fees, and more stringent value-
added tests.
These efforts at redirection anticipate that the role of the
Export-Import Bank will become more focused on correcting market
imperfections as the private sector's ability to bear emerging market
risks becomes larger, more sophisticated, and more efficient.
Mr. Chairman, there is one more issue I want to highlight here.
I want to thank the Senate for enacting legislation to release $582
million in arrears payments to the United Nations. This was an
important step that I hope will soon be incorporated into legislation
for the President's signature.
But I also want to stress the urgency of simultaneous movement to
lift the cap on peacekeeping payments so we do not accumulate new
arrears.
If we do not deliver on our end of this commitment, we will halt
the momentum for UN reform and run up new arrears.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I believe we have an
historic opportunity with this budget to continue--and even to speed up
a little--the refurbishment of our foreign policy organization and,
ultimately, of our foreign policy itself.
I believe that is as it should be for what we are doing, finally,
is redressing the imbalance that resulted from the long duration--and
necessary diversion of funds--of the Cold War.
For over half a century we found it absolutely imperative that we
look to our participation in that titanic struggle for ideological
leadership in the world as the first and foremost requirement of our
foreign policy and our national security.
Now, the Cold War is over. Now, as all of you have recognized, we
are involved in spreading the fruits of our ideological triumph in that
war. Now, we have need of a more sophisticated, a more efficient, a
more effective foreign policy. Indeed too, a more traditional foreign
policy--with the exception that there is nothing traditional about the
information and technology revolutions nor about the speed with which
they are bringing the potential for a wider and more prosperous freedom
to the entire world.
Now is the time to provide to the principal practitioners of that
foreign policy the resources they need to conduct it.
Thank you, and I welcome your questions.
The Chairman. Mr. Secretary, an excellent statement. Your
entire statement as written will be printed in the record as if
read.
I was sitting here thinking about Saddam Hussein. There may
have been somewhere in history a more brutal guy to his own
people than Saddam Hussein. I could never forget what he did to
the Kurds, hundreds of thousands of them. There are many other
instances, and I am a little disappointed in my and your
friends among the other Arab states. They seem to be a little
bit less than eager to get involved, and in the name of God and
everything else that is holy, whatever their God is, they had
better take stock of what Saddam Hussein is.
By the way, you started the clock on me, and we will have 5
minutes on the first round, and when the red light comes on,
please be conclusive in what you are saying.
In 1982, the Reagan administration made the six assurances
to Congress on Taiwan, and every administration since then has
declared them to be U.S. policy, and I am particularly
interested about assurance number three, which is that the
United States would not engage in advance consultations with
the People's Republic of China, that is, Communist China, on
defense sales to Taiwan, and I would like for you to comment,
if you will, sir, that all of the six assurances will remain
U.S. policy, and that there will be no advance consultations
with mainland China, Beijing, on defense sales to Taiwan.
Secretary Powell. They do remain U.S. policy, and we are
now reviewing the arms sales proposal. We have a list, and have
been going over the list from the Republic of China. I can
assure you, I have no plans to consult with anybody in the
People's Republic of China on what the relationship is we have
with Taiwan or what their needs should or should not be.
The Chairman. Are you confident that nobody else in the
administration will consult with Beijing?
Secretary Powell. Yes, sir, I am reasonably confident. It
is an administration where I cannot think of any of my
colleagues who would be so inclined.
The Chairman. They had better not, or we will both jump on
them at the same time.
During your recent trip--you mentioned this in your
remarks--your trip to the Middle East, you talked about smart
sanctions on Iraq, and I guess we all are in favor of smart
sanctions as opposed to dumb sanctions, but I have got to tell
you, I am a little bit confused about smart and dumb.
I assume that the United States will continue to object to
any exports to Iraq that will contribute to Saddam's weapons
program.
Secretary Powell. Absolutely.
The Chairman. All right. I am told that there is already $4
billion in cash available to the United Nations escrow account
for Iraq to buy pretty much anything Iraq needs. Is that your
understanding, too?
Secretary Powell. As long as the items they wish to
purchase are not proscribed because they are weapons, or they
might lead to the development of a weapon, or they may be dual
use, of a nature that causes us concern. If that is the case,
then those contracts will not be honored no matter how much
money there is in that escrow account.
The Chairman. Well, are you going to monitor that situation
personally?
Secretary Powell. Very carefully, and one of the advantages
of the new system is that we can sort of sweep out the
underbrush of other things that people want to argue about and
make sure we are focusing on the important things that really
could add to his capability.
The Chairman. Just one further question on this. What might
Saddam be able to buy, under smart sanctions, that he is not
able to buy right now?
Secretary Powell. There are probably some dual use items
that we might be holding up. Let me just pull an example out of
the air, which may or may not be correct, but I think it is
illustrative, and you have seen it in the paper from time to
time, water pumps.
Water pumps can be used to bring water up out of a well,
and that would benefit people. But a sophisticated kind of a
water pump, a water pump that is of a uniquely high tolerance
and pressure settings or what-not, that could be used in an
industrial way, and perhaps used in the kind of plant that
might develop weapons of mass destruction, I think what we
would say is let water pump number one go. Let us not waste
time arguing about that, and let us make sure we take a good
look at water pump number two.
The United States right now holds up about 1,500 contracts,
and at the same time we are holding up those 1,500, the United
Kingdom only finds 250 of those troublesome, and all of our
other friends find only 10 or 20 troublesome. So we would take
another look at the ones we are holding up to make sure we are
holding them up for the real reasons of weapons of mass
destruction and not just for another reason which is, we are
holding them up to hold them up because there are some things
in there that we are really going to make a point of, that all
of our other allies do not make, or is worth making a point of.
That has been the problem, and that is why we are getting
such pressure, look, if we cannot do this in a smart way, as
some call it, then let us get rid of the whole thing.
One other point, if I may, sir. I understand your
disappointment with respect to the Arab states, but I came back
from my trip with all of them saying to me, and I left one of
my Assistant Secretaries behind to visit the rest of them, we
understand the threat presented by Saddam Hussein, and we are
willing to work with you on the weapons of mass destruction,
but we are getting killed in the Arab street. We are getting
killed in the Arab population, who think we are responsible for
hurting the Iraqi people with the sanctions regime. So this is
a way of clearing out that argument and giving them something
to stand for with us.
The Chairman. I will be back.
Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am one of those
who is sympathetic to what you are attempting to do with regard
to Iraq, Mr. Secretary, in large part because I believe if
something is not done, we will be unilaterally imposing
sanctions.
I am not going to take the time now, but at another time I
will go back and drop you a note. I am very anxious to know
what the French reaction is to your initiative, and whether or
not what they consider to be--I am not sure they consider
anything to be smart sanctions right now.
Secretary Powell. I had positive discussions with my French
colleague, and I am waiting for a further response.
Senator Biden. I would like to move very quickly to the
issue of the budget, your budget. We are at a slight
disadvantage here this morning, we the committee, because as
you well know, we have the 150 function number, but we do not
have the account-level numbers. We inquired of your folks, and
they indicated, and possibly with good reason, that they were
not authorized to release any of those numbers until Monday,
and so when you talk to us about the increase, State-Commerce-
Justice budget, that is really where those account functions
are, and we do not know how they break out.
Could you in the brief time I have here list for me what
the priorities are in this sense, that you have sought roughly
a $700 million increase in your budget which in real terms is
about 3 percent, as I read it, Mr. Secretary, but I do not want
to quibble over whether it is 3 or 5.
You obviously made judgments about what are the most
important areas you need immediately to get increases, an
infusion of dollars. Can you tell us, not necessarily the
numbers, but what the priorities are in your first crack at an
attempt to put this Department in shape?
Secretary Powell. Information technology investment,
consular affairs, embassy security. There is a--let's see,
those are the three that immediately come to mind. I would like
to give you a more----
Senator Biden. Well, no, I am sure by Monday--we have been
assured by Monday your Department will provide those to us. We
had your old boss here, Frank Carlucci, last week, and he made
a very, very strong case for additional resources as well as
reform, and he emphasized very strongly embassy security
technology and increased investment in personnel, bringing the
Department up to--now, it is one thing to cut the fat that
exists in the bureaucracy, and there is some there, in my view,
but it is another thing to have this shortfall in Foreign
Service officers.
And there seems to be an attitude, at least in the campuses
I have been, there is not nearly the enthusiasm for getting
into this line of work that I think there need be--not only
should be, need be, and so I hope as you develop and lay out
these priorities you will be willing to discuss them with us,
and I am anxious to see what the actual account levels are, so
we could more intelligently followup with questions.
Secretary Powell. Recruiting is a part of it, and sometimes
it does not take money, it just takes common sense. It has
taken us 27 months--I may have mentioned this before--to
recruit somebody from the day they say they want to join the
Foreign Service until we get them in. Well, for young people
today, they cannot hang around for 2\1/2\ years, so we got that
down now to 22 months, and I want to find ways to change the
whole recruiting system so that we can get people in a lot
faster and get them moving into meaningful jobs.
Senator Biden. Let me just say one thing on Korea. You
indicated that there was a time and place of the
administration's choosing, that what was missing was mention of
monitoring or verification. Well, I do not think that was
missing in my discussions with the last administration. They
had not reached any agreement on that, but that was the next
stage, when they were deciding whether or not to go in January,
and they made, I think, a wise decision not to put your
administration in the position in January of having moved to
finalize the agreement.
Let me just state what worries me, and if you want to
respond, fine. What worries me is, in my experience, which is
not that expansive, but I have been here a long time--it has
been 28 years--the Chinese, North Koreans, even our Japanese
allies sometimes have difficulty discerning the nuanced
approaches that we occasionally take, or the blunt approaches
we take.
What I am very worried about is that this opportunity to
find out whether or not there is any real possibility here is
slipping away, can slip away, and the rhetoric makes a
difference. Rhetoric, words matter, I think, particularly in
this engagement. I compliment you on the rhetoric you have
used, the words you have used. I just strongly urge you to move
along as quickly as you can to decide what your policy is, and
move on, because this could easily escape us.
The Chairman. Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Powell, this is a moment for bullet comments, to
take full advantage of 5 minutes. Let me say first of all that
I appreciate very much the rallies that you have held at the
State Department, and inviting the President to come over, and
he responded. I think this is tremendously important, and I
applaud everything you are doing with regard to improving the
morale and the substance of those relationships.
I share Senator Biden's anxiety that the budget submission
may not support all of the thoughts that you have expressed
today as well as publicly, and I just want to say that there is
strong support on the Republican side and the Democratic side
to do a whole lot more, to have an ambitious budget submission,
and I mean that sincerely. I think this is a crucial point, at
the beginning of this administration, President Bush and your
administration, the Secretary of State, and if the moment is
not seized now, it is likely to be downhill from there on.
Senator Biden. That may be the only thing there is
absolute, total agreement on.
Senator Lugar. We are hopeful.
Now, having said that, specifically we have had success,
created by our chairman and Senator Biden, with regard to
payment of some of our U.N. dues and arrears. There is still an
item of the 25-percent cap on peacekeeping that I believe must
be addressed.
I hope that you will work with the chairman and ranking
member, with members of the committee, to fulfill what I
believe were obligations undertaken by former Ambassador
Holbrooke at the United Nations, and understood by many of our
allies, who are, in fact, providing the peacekeeping, and to
whom we owe back funds. I think this is a very important point
to follow through.
Second, last year, we adopted the African Growth and
Opportunity Act. The principal work was done by distinguished
Members of the House of Representatives. I introduced on the
Senate side equivalent legislation, joined by many of my
colleagues at this table. A very modest act was passed,
inhibited largely by protectionist forces in our country, but
nevertheless, it was a beginning, a minimal beginning to some
addressing of the economic side of the African equation.
I am hopeful, because I know your intense interest in that
continent, and in an unfilled agenda, that there will be a
full-blown program, a comprehensive approach to Africa, which I
look forward to supporting, and I think many others would
around this table.
On sanctions reform, I have offered, along with many others
in two Congresses, and am prepared to offer a third
comprehensive sanction reform that does not eliminate
sanctions, but gives some criteria as to how and why we ought
to do them, some way of removing them, and some way of
evaluating whether they are effective.
I know that you are studying the bill that we offered last
year that was supported by 600 firms in the USAEngage
coalition, the American Farm Bureau, and others. I would like
to work with you as we introduce that legislation, and hope for
greater success on this occasion.
I have worked with Senator Biden, and Representative
Portman over on the House side, once again, on a renewal of the
Tropical Forest Conservation Act for another 5 years. I think
for a variety of reasons this makes sense in foreign policy as
well as in the ecology. It is worth your study, I believe, or
those of your subordinates who are involved in this, to make
certain we do it right.
And finally I would ask that the State Department position
in the past administration with regard to carbon sinks, to rid
the world of carbon dioxide, that you study that carefully.
This is something of great consequence to American agriculture,
for obvious reasons.
I was sad that the negotiations on carbon sink went
downhill after an aggressive posture by State but affected by a
European barrage who simply want American industry to suffer.
But nevertheless, the carbon sink idea is a good one in
fulfilling a lot of obligations. We ought to do it in any
event, whether we have international obligations or not.
Insofar as we have a negotiating posture I think it is an
important bridge, and I would say this is one area where
American farmers come into very sharp coincidence with the
State Department, and as supporters of American diplomacy. I am
looking for those bridges, for obvious reasons, so I mention it
today.
Having said all that, there are only a few seconds for you
to respond, but I know that you have jotted down a few of these
things, and I am grateful to you.
Secretary Powell. Well, thank you.
The Chairman. The distinguished former chairman raised a
number of good points, and I wish you would comment.
Secretary Powell. Can I have just a few seconds to respond?
On resources, thank you very much, Senator Lugar, and I hope
you will keep pushing me, kicking me, nudging me in the
direction of more resources. It of course helps my case as I
make the argument within the administration as well.
On lifting the cap on peacekeeping, I have been in contact
both with the chairman and with Senator Biden on how best to do
that, and I think it is a matter of how best to do that, as
opposed to doing it.
African Growth and Opportunity Act, a wonderful piece of
work. Now we have got to implement it and make sure it happens.
Sanctions reform, I look forward to working with you, and
we are examining your proposals. I found some of the sanctions
to be even more constraining, now that I have been in the job
for 5\1/2\ weeks, than I did when I first mentioned it at the
end of my transition period.
Carbon sinks, if I could touch on that one, I understand
that the administration is just now coming to grips with what
our policy is going to be on global warming and climate, and we
are getting ourselves ready for the next conference at the end
of July, which we hope will not be as big a disaster as the
last one was.
Senator Lugar. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Good work, Senator. Senator Sarbanes.
Senator Sarbanes. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, welcome. We are pleased to have you back before
the committee.
First of all, I am just kind of curious, what is it like
driving this gray Mercedes S-500 with the 12 cylinder engine?
Secretary Powell. It was cool. It was very cool.
Senator Sarbanes. I hope the King realized he was really
getting a high-paid chauffeur there.
Secretary Powell. Well, I felt a little awkward the next
day, when I realized that it made the New York Times. That was
not our intention. So I called His Majesty a day later and said
I hoped I had not caused him any embarrassment, and he assured
me, not at all, and come back any time, and so I look forward
to that.
Then, as another aside, I called another leader in the
region who I did not have the chance to visit, and we were
chatting about Iraq and the Middle East peace process, and at
the end of the conversation, in order to needle me for not
having visited that particular country, he said, you know, we
have wonderful cars in this country, too.
So I have to get there very soon.
Senator Sarbanes. I want to first commend you for the
effort you are making within the Department itself to draw the
career people into the process. It has obviously been very well
received. There are an awful lot of very able and talented
people whose skills and capacities ought to be drawn upon, and
I am delighted to see what you are doing, and I just encourage
you in that regard.
I think having these desk officers brief the President on
his Mexico visit was a terrific idea, and I understand from
various reports that it just gave a terrific boost to morale
within the--well, certainly a boost to the morale of the desk
officers and the more junior people. I am not altogether sure
exactly how the senior people are taking it, but in any event--
--
I want to echo my colleagues on your budget. It is kind of
strange to come up here and have Members of the Congress
telling you, you know, you ought to be seeking more resources
rather than trying to chop you down. When George Shultz came in
as Secretary of State he met with a number of us, and one of
the pitches he made was the necessity of having adequate
resources.
Of course, we had a Republican administration and a
Democratic Congress, but he got a good reception on the
Democratic side to that pitch, not unanimous, but a good
reception, and of course he had the support of Republican
Members of the Congress because I mean, it was the Reagan
administration, and he was able to get a good increase in the
resources to carry out our international affairs function.
In fact, the average over those years in current dollars is
$27\1/2\ billion, just to put this in perspective. This was
when you were at the National Security Council, and the point I
am trying to make is, you know, you had more resources then to
work with in relative terms than you have today, significantly
more.
I mean, you would have to have about a 12 percent increase
in this budget you have come forward with to just reach that
average figure, let alone some of the better years, and I dare
say if at any point our military budget had ever reached the
point where our diplomatic budget is--it would never have
reached it. The outcry would have started much sooner, and the
response would have been much more intense. It never would have
gotten down to that point.
But you do not have the resources, in my judgment, with
which to do the job, and I just encourage you to push very hard
for that.
Now, let me make one final point and leave you with this
question. At the end of January, there was an article in the
Washington Post. I am going to quote from it.
``Two dozen leading conservatives yesterday sent a letter
calling on President Bush to make human rights, religious
freedom, and democracy priorities for American foreign policy,
and urging him not to adopt a narrow view of U.S. national
interests.
``American leadership must never remain indifferent to
tyranny, must never be agnostic about the virtues of political
and economic freedom, must always be concerned with the
fortunes of fragile democracies,'' the letter said, and the
same letter apparently was sent to you and to the National
Security Advisor and to the Vice President.
The letter also recommended support for groups promoting
democracy and said, `U.S. nonhumanitarian aid, including
assistance given through international lending institutions,
should be used to promote freedom and stop tyranny. When given
to governments, the aid should be tied to countries'
performance on human rights,'' the group said.
I just want to make the point for the record that that is
the sentiment and an emphasis on priority that extends well
beyond the conservative part of our political spectrum, and I
think is fairly widely held here in the Congress, and across
the country, and I guess my question is, have you all made any
response to this letter, or what is your view on this emphasis
with respect to our foreign policy priorities?
Secretary Powell. I agree, I believe that our foreign
policy should rest on the bedrock of human rights, respect for
the individual, democracy, and nations that are moving in that
direction. We should invest in those nations, and not invest in
those nations that are despotic or are moving in the wrong
direction.
We may sometimes have to do some things with those nations
for humanitarian concerns because there are people under those
despots, but for the most part we should invest in those that
are moving in the right direction, and so I agree entirely with
the sentiment. I cannot say whether or not the letter has been
answered.
The Chairman. Senator Hagel.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Mr. Secretary,
welcome. Good morning. I believe you are on the right track
regarding sanctions in Iraq, and I would encourage you to
continue to think broadly and deeply, as you are.
And on that general point, Senator Lugar made some
observations regarding trade and sanctions, and something that
he has been very actively engaged in for many years. It is my
understanding that you are in some stage of review at the State
Department on all sanctions, on all certifications, on onerous
reporting requirements. You, I believe, have significant
support up here to help you clear out the underbrush. I wonder
if you could give us some status report on how you are doing
with all of those reviews.
Secretary Powell. We are working on that, Senator. I do not
have a date I can give you where it will be ready. We want to
make sure that sanctions and certifications and similar
constraints are serving their originally intended purpose, and
they are not just burdens for us, and no longer serving the
foreign policy interest. And this is not to say that I do not
believe in sanctions, I believe in sanctions that are serving
the purpose and I will always support those.
But where they become a hindrance, and some of the drug
certification procedures right now I think have become a
problem, then I think we should aggressively go after them. In
many instances there are strong constituencies for some of
these sanctions, and it is difficult to remove the sanctions
language, but as soon as that review is completed, you can be
sure I will be bringing it up before this committee.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Senator Lugar also touched on carbon sinks. I have a
general question regarding climate change. You said that the
administration was now just coming to grips with all the
dynamics and we understand that, but let me ask this: is it
your intention, is it the President's intention to continue to
keep the climate change responsibility portfolio within the
State Department?
Secretary Powell. Yes, although the interagency working
groups that come together to determine our position might well
be chaired by the NSC, because of the disparate Cabinet
responsibilities. It really is such a complex issue that it
goes well beyond the State Department. EPA, Treasury, Commerce,
and a lot of others in the administration want to play a role
in establishing a new policy, but you can be sure that State
will continue to play a lead role.
Senator Hagel. One of the frustrations that some of us had,
if not many of us, in a subcommittee that I chair on this
committee and have chaired the last 4 years, was that we could
never get a concentrated answer to some of these, as you
suggest, complicated questions to complicated issues. We would
get witnesses before us who would say, well, I do not know,
that is another department, or that is the White House, or that
is somewhere else. I would hope that this administration, as
you develop your process and your policy, is going to be able
to concentrate the responsibility for this issue in the hands
of someone. I noted the EPA Administrator saying some things
last week, and then having to say other things in Rome, which
probably did not reflect great credit on the administration.
But I understand how those things work. I would hope that that
is done fairly quickly, that you get control of that.
Secretary Powell. We are trying. We pulled together an
interagency briefing team that is going around to each one of
the Cabinet officers and presenting them the same briefing, so
we can all start off with a common understanding of the
challenge and the dynamics and what global warming is all
about, and now we are starting to get together to come forward
with individual agency positions, and how do we move forward
and come up with an administration position.
Senator Hagel. Thank you. Let me ask a broader question
with my last few seconds about the South American situation in
a specific area, the Andean countries. A number of my
colleagues and I have just recently visited Colombia and
Ecuador. These are complicated problems, issues, dynamics.
Regarding Plan Colombia, I support Plan Colombia. Could you
reflect on that a bit as to where you are, the position of the
President on that part of the world, what we can look for from
you in further support, and further action regarding South
America?
Secretary Powell. We of course support Plan Colombia, and I
think there has been some degree of success in the destruction
of some of the crops in the Putumayo Valley, so we will
continue to support Plan Colombia.
But we feel just as strongly that you cannot deal with a
problem in one place without it spreading to other parts of the
region, so in subsequent years we will be talking about an
Andean strategy, and there is money in the budget for that
Andean strategy.
We will be talking about how the Free Trade Association of
The Americas plays into this, how Andean trade preference
extension plays into all of this, so we will try to come up
with a comprehensive strategy that deals with the whole region,
and not just singularly focusing on Plan Colombia.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Kerry. Before you begin, John, there
is a rollcall vote scheduled on the floor at 11:50 a.m. I just
wanted Senators to be aware of that.
Senator Kerry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary,
welcome. Good to see you.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Kerry. Mr. Secretary, I must confess to you that I
was puzzled and somewhat troubled by the decision made
yesterday to announce that the administration did not intend to
immediately sort of, quote, ``pick up where the Clinton
administration left off,'' which really means negotiating. I
mean, that was what was going on, it was a negotiating process.
On Tuesday of this week you were quoted as saying the
administration, the Bush administration did intend to pick up.
By the end of the meeting with President Kim it was stated that
there was some question about whether or not agreements had
been lived up with. There is only one agreement, and it seems
to me the only way to proceed is to negotiate.
What changed in those 2 days, and why is it that you would
not send a signal to North Korea that the direction they have
been moving in is, in fact, welcomed, and that you welcome the
concept of a dialog?
Secretary Powell. I think there is less difference there
than meets the eye. Obviously, when you come in from replacing
a previous administration, things are left on the table. What
was left on the table from North Korea was a set of ideas with
respect to reducing their missile production, their
proliferation of this kind of system, and Dr. Rice and I were
briefed extensively by the outgoing administration in the
transition period.
What was missing in what had been done was how one would
put in place any kind of monitoring or verification regime, and
the North Koreans had not engaged on that in any serious way in
the period of the Clinton administration. So where we are is
that those elements are still there. They have not been
dismissed, they have not been rejected, but the President said,
and we all agree, that we want to take some time in reviewing
what was accomplished in the previous administration, in
determining what we think we are going to need with respect to
monitoring and verification, and seeing whether there are other
things that ought to be part of such a discussion.
For example, there is a huge army poised on the
demilitarized zone pointing south that is probably as great a
threat to South Korea and Seoul and regional stability as are
weapons of mass destruction. Should that be included in a
negotiation with the North Koreans, and President Bush made
that point to President Kim yesterday.
So what came out of yesterday is that President Bush will
continue our policy review. We will do it in a measured way,
with clear-eyed realism with respect to the nature of the
regime and the single individual who has all authority within
that regime, and at a time when we are ready, and a time when
we are prepared to engage, we will then engage at that time,
but there was a suggestion that we were getting ready to do it
imminently, and it was that suggestion that we were trying to
beat down.
Senator Kerry. At this point, can you state whether or not
you support, whether or not the Bush administration continues
to support the 1994 agreed framework?
Secretary Powell. We are monitoring the agreed framework,
and we have continued to support the 1994 agreed framework.
Senator Kerry. So the administration will support the
continuation of the shipments of fuel oil, and construction of
the light water reactors?
Secretary Powell. We will do so, as we also at the same
time review some concerns that exist with respect to how the
light water reactors might be used, and what kind of
supervision it will be under, and is that supervision adequate
to the kinds of monitoring and verification regime we are
interested in.
There are others who have also suggested perhaps one might
want to substitute different kinds of energy-generating
capacity. So for the moment we are in accord with the 1994
agreement, but that does not prevent us from looking at aspects
of it that we might wish to revisit or change.
Senator Kerry. Well, obviously the administration can and
obviously will make up its own mind as to when it feels ready.
I think, given the tensions with respect to China and the
questions on the entire peninsula, the messages we send are
awfully important in terms of whether we are sort of open to
engagement.
If we start to--I think you are free to raise anything you
want at any time you want in the course of that, but I just
have a sense that we may be sending messages that are also
subject to misinterpretation. In that vein, I would ask you how
you react to the military expenditure increase in China, and
likewise the issue of--my time is up, but the issue of whether
or not you are satisfied with their answer with respect to
fiber optic transfer to Iraq, how that fits in the picture.
The Chairman. The chair will allow time for you to answer
this.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir. On Korea, I think the
important message that came out of yesterday's meeting is that
President Bush appreciated what President Kim Dae Jung has done
with respect to opening that door, opening that window, as it
is often referred to, and supports him, and supports the
additional things he is going to be doing this year with
respect to that second summit, while at the same time we review
what it is we plan to do with respect to our engagement with
North Korea, and when we decide that it is the appropriate time
to reengage.
With respect to China, a 70-percent increase is probably
leading to a 50-percent increase in total over the next several
years. We want to discuss with the Chinese the nature of this
buildup. We are going to encourage them to have more
transparency in what they do with their defense programs, as we
have transparency in ours.
I do not view it as a break-out investment, where suddenly
China is on the march as an enemy, but it is, of course,
something we have to look at carefully, make sure we keep our
forces in the region up to the best possible standard, and we
invest in them, because we really are the balance wheel of
stability in that part of the world.
With respect to the fiber optics case, China has now said
that they have told the companies that were in the area doing
fiber optics work to cease and desist. We are still examining
whether or not it was a specific violation of the sanctions
policy, and if it was, we will call that to the attention of
the sanctions committee so that they can take appropriate
action with respect to China.
Senator Kerry. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
The Chairman. Senator Thomas.
Senator Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr.
Secretary.
Let me say that I think it is very appropriate for you and
the new administration to take a little pause in these issues,
take a look at where we are. Times change, and I think we need
to take a little shot at some of these things.
For instance, I am very encouraged that we have some
openings in North Korea, but I think we have to move fairly
carefully, and require some more confirmation that we are
having something on the other side that occurs as we move,
certainly to stay with our friends in South Korea and in Japan
as we move forward.
I am also one that will not quite join in the chorus for
more and more money. I think 5.5, 5.3 percent increase is going
to be more than most agencies have in this budget, and I would
hope that, as is generally the case, you take a look at how it
is managed now. We can look for different ways. Times have
changed, and efficiencies and so on. How many total full-time
employees are there?
Secretary Powell. If you add it all up, with overseas and
here in the United States, Foreign Service nationals approach
40,000, roughly.
Senator Thomas. A total of 40,000. What was the dollars in
Colombia? There were some commitments last year to billions of
dollars. Where are we on that?
Secretary Powell. A total of $1.3 billion was the U.S.
contribution to Plan Colombia, a roughly $7 billion program,
the rest of the money being made up by European contributors,
as well as Colombia's own contribution of a little--close to $3
billion to the effort. Ours was principally for the
helicopters, and the training for the helicopters.
Senator Thomas. So there was a $7 billion effort?
Secretary Powell. The overall program was intended to be 7
or 7\1/2\, as I recall.
Senator Thomas. Have the participants contributed all that
money?
Secretary Powell. No. There has been a shortfall, so far,
with the European contribution, and the Colombians are still
striving to make the contribution they promised to the program.
Senator Thomas. What is the status of appointments, in
terms of Under Secretaries?
Secretary Powell. You are looking at him, sir.
Senator Thomas. That is what I was afraid of.
Secretary Powell. We talked about this earlier. It is
really the ethics, and the conflict of interest clearance that
is taking the time, properly to make sure we put in place a
team that is great, and there are no problems, and the chairman
has given me his guarantee that as soon as I get them up here,
he will get them confirmed.
Senator Thomas. Have you had an opportunity to look at the
Indonesia situation?
Secretary Powell. Just recently I have started to turn my
attention there. It is a very troubling situation, and I think
it is an area that is not that well-known in the United States,
and the consequences of failure in Indonesia are very great,
not only for the region, but for the world.
Senator Thomas. I think they are. ASEAN, much depends on
it. I think you are right, it has been sort of out of the
vision, but it is very important too, obviously.
Have you had a chance with respect to the People's Republic
of China and Taiwan to have a position on the agreements that
have been made, the communications that have been made with
respect to Taiwan, Taiwan agreements?
Secretary Powell. Yes, sir, I have. The 1972--any specific
agreements you have in mind, sir?
Senator Thomas. The communiques, just the communiques.
Secretary Powell. Yes, sir. I am familiar with them. I
think we will continue the policy that has existed for a number
of years, the one China principle, and that the ultimate
resolution of how one China evolves is up to the parties in
power, and must not be imposed by force. They will have to deal
with that amongst themselves over time, and we maintain our
commitment to Taiwan to ensure that it has defensive means, so
that this democracy can feel secure behind its Armed Forces,
also in the knowledge that it has a friend in the United
States.
Senator Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Mr. Secretary, it is good to have you
here, and let me first compliment you on your comments on Iraq
and the Iraq sanctions. My constituents will be very pleased to
hear such a thoughtful series of ideas and comments about that
policy.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir.
Senator Feingold. Let me ask you about West Africa. There
has been consistent bipartisan support in Congress for ending
the cycle of impunity in West Africa, and for holding those
responsible for grave human rights abuses accountable for their
actions. But when I was in Sierra Leone last month, I did hear
a number of people say, Mr. Secretary, or voice concerns about
the State Department's willingness to identify funds for the
first year's commitment to the court, and I do see that in your
written remarks you make reference to it, so if you could just
assure me that this administration will commit to supporting
the special court for Sierra Leone, and also its Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.
Secretary Powell. I think I can give you that commitment,
Senator, but let me go back and find out what reticence may
exist within the Department.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, and then, with regard to the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila's strange rise to
power at least appears to have opened up new possibilities for
peace in the DROC, but some observers have suggested that the
United States may not actually want to see the Lusaka Accords
implemented, because we are unprepared to support a
peacekeeping mission in this difficult region. Can you assure
me that that cynical view is inaccurate, and what steps is the
United States willing to take to support peace in Central
Africa?
Secretary Powell. We support the Lusaka Accords. I met with
President Kabila a few weeks ago, and also with President
Kegami, and encouraged them to respect human rights, start to
disengage their forces and get back to the process of peace to
stop the suffering of the people in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo.
I am pleased to see that in recent weeks there has been
some movement, some disengagement of forces, and some hope for
the process to begin, and I notice that Secretary General Annan
is now prepared to send in some peacekeepers, so we are
prepared to back that, but we at the moment do not have a
commitment, nor have we made a commitment to provide U.S.
peacekeepers to such forces.
Senator Feingold. Fair enough, and I was not asking about
actually providing U.S. peacekeepers, but our support for what
the U.N. is attempting to do.
Secretary Powell. Yes, sir.
Senator Feingold. Let me switch to Indonesia and East
Timor, which Senator Thomas mentioned. More than a year after
the 1999 violence in East Timor, the Indonesian Government has
not indicted a single person in connection with that violence,
despite the fact that many of the suspected organizers are in
fact living in Indonesia, many of them in West Timor.
Kofi Annan said in January 2000 that the Indonesian courts
would be given a chance to handle the cases first, but he did
not rule out an international tribunal if the Indonesian
judicial process proved not to be credible.
As a permanent member of the United Nations Security
Council, will the United States push for an international
tribunal on East Timor now that Jakarta's unwillingness or
inability to prosecute anyone is really quite manifest?
Secretary Powell. That is certainly an option. I think what
I have to do on that one, Senator, is let me go back and study
the ramifications, and study the current state of play, and
then give you a more definitive answer for the record.
Senator Feingold. I would appreciate it.
[The following response was subsequently received:]
indonesia: international tribunal for east timor
Question. More than a year after the 1999 violence in East Timor,
the Indonesian Government has not indicted a single person in
connection with that violence, despite the fact that all the suspected
organizers are in fact living in Indonesia, most of them in West Timor
and Jakarta. Kofi Annan said in January 2000 that the Indonesian
Accords would be given a chance to handle the cases first, but he did
not rule out an international tribunal if the Indonesian judicial
process proved not to be credible. As a permanent member of the United
Nations Security Council, will the United States push for an
international tribunal on East Timor now that Jakarta's unwillingness
or inability to prosecute anyone is really quite manifest?
Answer. As I indicated at the committee hearing, establishing an
international tribunal for East Timor remains an option. We are very
concerned about the continued lack of accountability for human rights
abuses committed by the Indonesian military and pro-Indonesia militias
in East Timor in 1999. We will continue to urge the Indonesian
Government to fulfill its commitment to pursue its internal
investigation in a vigorous, expeditious and credible fashion.
The Indonesian Attorney General's office and the United Nations
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) are conducting
concurrent but separate investigations into these abuses. The United
States has provided technical assistance to both. We are convinced that
the best way forward at this time lies in supporting and encouraging a
credible Indonesian investigation and a strong and complementary UNTAET
investigation.
We believe that these two processes could form the foundation for
respect for and growth of the rule of law in what should soon be two,
neighboring countries. If these processes fail, we will consider other
options to ensure that credible justice and accountability are
achieved.
We will continue to monitor closely the progress of the Indonesian
government's and UNTAET's investigations, and will continue to support
efforts to pursue and to hold accountable those responsible for human
rights abuses. I welcome your interest in this issue and would welcome
your support for our efforts.
Senator Feingold. Do you believe it is possible, with
regard to China, for the United States to mobilize sufficient
support at the commission in Geneva this year to overcome a
Chinese-sponsored no-action motion to prevent a debate on their
human rights record, and what other methods will the United
States take to press the Chinese on human rights issues in the
year ahead?
Secretary Powell. I press my Chinese interlocutor at every
occasion. I met with the new ambassador and made sure he
understood that human rights will remain in a place of honor
within U.S. foreign policy goals, and we are looking forward to
the visit of the Vice Premier in a few weeks time.
We will be aggressively pushing the resolution in Geneva.
It will be tough. It will be very difficult. The situation is
more difficult this year than it was last year, but we will be
giving it our every effort.
We just selected a delegation to represent us there, of
people who have strong views on human rights, and I will be
spending a good part of my time from the middle of March until
the middle of April to press the case.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD
Secretary Powell, I want to welcome you again and to thank you for
being here today. The administration's ``budget blueprint'' does not,
of course, contain a great deal of detail at this point. But this is
still a very valuable opportunity to discuss foreign policy priorities,
which will eventually be reflected in our international affairs budget.
I have been heartened by many of your recent statements and by your
obvious commitment to reinvigorating the State Department and the
foreign service, two critically important and long-neglected
institutions. But the budget numbers that we do have suggest that there
are some difficult choices ahead. Compared to the fiscal year 2001
appropriated level of $22.7 billion, the administration's budget
blueprint represents a 3% increase in real terms, but is a 3.8% and
2.9% decrease compared to fiscal years 1999 and 2000 respectively. The
priorities that you have identified--embassy security, information
technology, and human resources are clearly important, and I commend
you for pursuing them.
But the United States confronts vast challenges and great
opportunities abroad in this new century, and we cannot afford to
ignore regional needs and transnational issues that also deserve
attention from the administration and within the 150 account. As the
sole remaining superpower, and as a country committed to the integrity
of our national values, the United States must strive each day to
balance the imperatives of order and justice around the world. We must
work to protect human rights, to stop environmental degradation, to
fight infectious disease, and to combat international crime and
corruption.
I recently returned from a trip to Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and
Senegal, and I can say unequivocally that the United States has a
tremendously important role to play in the region, and that we neglect
it only at our peril. Likewise, as new prospects for stability emerge
in central Africa, the United States must remain engaged. And in China,
Indonesia, Colombia and the Middle East, policy-makers face
extraordinarily difficult situations, and the critical importance of
getting it right, maintaining a highly principled approach, and putting
the appropriate resources behind our policy.
I look forward to discussing these crucial policy priorities with
you today.
The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Frist.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, thanks for your leadership, your energy,
your commitment to Foreign Service officers within the State
Department. You just travel throughout Washington, you are
running into people who reflect and respect your commitment to
them as Foreign Service officers, and their expertise and their
skills.
I want to turn our attention briefly to what I regard as
one of the most dangerous humanitarian, economic, and
development crises of our time, and that is the global epidemic
of AIDS, AIDS/HIV. The facts, you know them well, they are
sobering. AIDS killed ten times the number of people in Africa
than all of the armed conflicts combined. In eight countries at
least one-third of all 15-year-olds today, eight countries,
that will die of AIDS.
I have a 15-year-old, and every time I look into his eyes
and I think about this, I think about the 85 percent chance
that he would die from that if he were in one country,
Botswana. Some 13 million orphans already, 40 million orphans
over the next 10 years, all of this dramatically undermining
the social structures and reversing economic development,
wiping out a whole era of people in the most productive years
of their lives.
You look at Russia, you see the largest percent increase in
AIDS cases. You look at India, that has the largest number of
HIV/AIDS cases in the world as a country today. The statistics
go on and on.
David Gergan wrote recently, the struggle against AIDS and
related diseases in Africa represents one of the greatest moral
tests of our time.
You put all that together, and we have no choice but to
respond. It is the appropriate, it is the right thing to do.
How we do it, where we do it in our Government, what entity, is
it under your Department amidst the 40,000 people somewhere? It
is clear we have got to have a focus because the medical
profession, the public health infrastructure, the
pharmaceutical companies, our Government, the NIH. Nobody can
do it alone.
You have reached out from your very first briefings at
State, in that first meeting in Africa, and starting long
before that have and are rapidly becoming, and are, I guess,
already are an in-house expert on this overall challenge. I am
delighted to see in the budget, which is the focus of our topic
today, that the President's budget does provide increases to
the Agency for International Development for activities to
combat global HIV/AIDS, a welcome development, and I look
forward to working with you and the administration on the
details.
The Chairman and Senator Kerry and I and others on this
committee put forth the Global AIDS and Tuberculosis Relief Act
of 2000. Last year past, Congress doubled our foreign
assistance appropriations for AIDS, all of which is real
progress. More needs to be done in terms of funding. We need to
redouble those efforts.
But funding itself, as you well know, is only part of the
solution, and it is going to take United States leadership of
the President, other senior officials, if we are going to
really adequately deal, and appropriately deal with this
crisis.
The foreign policy, the international economic implications
of the AIDS epidemic demands high-level engagement, and you are
at that highest level. It is going to have to be by the
Department of State, elsewhere in the administration possibly.
A specific Secretary-supported function might well serve to
focus all of these U.S. foreign policy developments, and would
help coordinate the interagency efforts that are being made on
behalf of Labor, on behalf of Health and Human Services, DOD,
USAID, as well as State, all of which have mandates and
budgets, and that really leads me to my question. How do you
see the administration, and I guess more specifically the
Department of State, dealing with what has to be a coordinated
and focused approach in response to this international HIV/AIDS
crisis?
Secretary Powell. Thank you, doctor, and I agree with
everything you said with respect to the nature of this crisis
that is before the world. It is an economic crisis, a health
crisis, a security crisis, the destruction of families,
cultures, tribes, nations, all of that is there, and the more
time I spend on this, the worse it gets, and one country that I
know just slipped your mind, or one area where it is going to
get even very, very much more difficult is close to home, and
that is in the Caribbean, where it is really starting to pick
up, and so all of that is true.
I am looking at how we are organized. I have taken one
person, a trusted agent of mine, and said, this is your job.
Find out how we are organized for battle against this within
the Department. Come forward, show me what we are doing,
because it is everywhere. It is all over the place. Show me
where it is, how do I pull it together, how do I give it focus
so I can see it all the time, and then from that launching
point I can then figure out how the rest of the administration
should also join this in a very, very direct and coordinated
way.
I see the problem in the same terms you do, Senator.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I have loved
working with you, and looking forward, I think we can make real
inroads by pulling the partnerships together.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Torricelli, last but not lest.
Senator Torricelli. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
Mr. Secretary, welcome. I would like, if I could, to
present you with three issues, and with no thread through them,
and if you would then respond to each of the three.
The first to raise with you, ironically, given that you are
America's most famous soldier, and I have never had the honor
of wearing its uniform, we all feel very saddened by what
happened with the U.S.S. Greenville. It was a terrible tragedy,
with a needless loss of life. The President of the United
States has apologized, the Secretary of Defense has apologized,
I know you have apologized. I think all Americans are very
saddened.
I was surprised that added to the board of inquiry was a
Japanese admiral. If there was fault by American servicemen, I
know they will be held accountable. Every American would expect
no less. I believe the record of the United States for being
responsible for our misdeeds has historically been very good,
is particularly good in comparison with some other nations that
have not ever accounted for their histories.
I believe this is a troubling precedent, and as much as I
want to see justice done, I do not believe that American
servicemen and women should ever be cannon fodder for dealing
with a diplomatic problem. I do not know if there is precedent
for such actions, but I believe it is a troubling situation,
and casts some questions of credibility on the outcome of these
proceedings, given that there was a foreign national who was
participating, even if on a nonvoting basis. I leave that with
you, and would invite your response.
On two other issues, Senator Hagel noted that we are
clearing the underbrush in dealing with American sanctions. I
think we all recognize the Congress' intentions that there be
no American financing of exports to Cuba, this, of course, not
being the underbrush, but a virtual giant redwood, I assume we
have nothing to fear from the administration revisiting that
issue. The Congress has been clear that, while there would be
food exports, we would not use American taxpayers' dollars to
help underwrite the Castro Government.
And finally, while otherwise pleased with the beginning
weeks of the foreign policy of the Bush administration, I would
like some clarification of the joint press conference with Tony
Blair in which the President said, and I quote, ``I am going to
wait and be asked by the Prime Minister with reference to
American involvement in the peace process in Northern
Ireland.''
I would hope the administration would be considering having
a mediator to succeed Senator Mitchell, and have the United
States fully engaged in that process, because I believe that we
have been so helpful.
And while I promised that was my last point, I simply want
to identify myself with Senator Kerry's comments with regard to
the North Korean arrangements from 1994. I think the promise is
so great, with that rather peculiar regime, for a breakthrough,
at least there is a potential, that our credibility must remain
paramount. While any issue can be revisited on a mutual basis,
I hope there will be every effort to make sure that we keep to
the letter of the agreement on the 1994 understanding with the
North Koreans, so they can provide a framework for going
forward to other and even more important arrangements.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, Senator. On your first point,
the Greenville, from my own experience, and knowing nothing
about how they formed their court of inquiry, I am absolutely
sure that any accountability or any judicial action or any
nonjudicial administrative action that would come from this
would be solely in the hands of American officers, and not the
Japanese admiral.
His exact status there, I really think I need to provide an
answer for the record from the Secretary of Defense, and not me
speculate on.
Senator Torricelli. Mr. Secretary, could we be assured,
however, that this judgment was reached by the military alone,
without State Department or other U.S. Government involvement
by the United States, to invite the Japanese admiral?
Secretary Powell. I will ask the Secretary of Defense how
that judgment was reached. I was never involved in it, and I do
not think any of my staff were involved in it, or if they were,
they did not tell me about it. We would not have pressed the
case in that way. But we will give you a complete answer for
the record.
[The following response was subsequently received:]
JAPANESE PARTICIPATION IN USS GREENVILLE COURT OF INQUIRY
Question. Why did the membership of the USS Greenville Court of
Inquiry include a Japanese Admiral? Was the State Department or any
other U.S. Government agency involved in the decision to invite
Japanese participation on the court?
Answer. U.S. Navy and Department of Defense regulations governing
the conduct of Courts of Inquiry permit inclusion of non-U.S. advisors
to the court. The Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, following
consultation with the Department of State, invited the Government of
Japan (GOJ) to appoint a senior Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces
officer to serve in this non-voting capacity during the Greenville
inquiry. The invitation was extended in an effort to enhance the
court's transparency, to address GOJ questions about the incident, and
to mitigate subsequent criticism of the court's findings.
Secretary Powell. We are not reviewing our policies with
respect to exports to Cuba, and the third point, Northern
Ireland envoy, we are following the developments very closely
and identifying somebody in my Department who will take this on
as a primary additional duty, and be ready to serve in a
communication role and keep us in touch with what is going on.
I am not clear yet whether we think there will be a need
for somebody like a George Mitchell, but that certainly is
something we can keep under advisement if the situation moves
in the way that suggests it takes that kind of high-level
special envoy involvement.
Senator Torricelli. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Secretary, you have done well. It is
always good to see you.
Senator Biden. Mr. Chairman, may I have 30 seconds before
you close, not even that?
The Chairman. Sure.
Senator Biden. Is it appropriate that we can submit some
questions in writing?
The Chairman. Oh, absolutely. I think you expected that.
Secretary Powell. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. We have a lot of committee meetings working
on crucial things, otherwise there would have been a 100
percent attendance this morning, and I am sure that there is
going to be a lot of questions filed for you in writing, and I
know you will respond to them forthwith.
Let me say that I appreciate the administration's strong
comments opposing the International Criminal Court, and I will
have a further comment with you about that. But in general it
has been good to have you with us this morning, and if there be
no further business to come before the committee, we stand in
recess.
Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the committee adjourned.]
----------
Additional Statement Submitted for the Record
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE FOURTH FREEDOM FORUM
NEW STUDY DETAILS ``SMART SANCTIONS'' PROPOSALS TO DISARM IRAQ
Secretary of State Powell testifies on Iraqi sanctions today before
Senate committee
Washington, DC.--A new study that examines options for
restructuring U.N. sanctions in Iraq \1\ may preview coming Bush
administration policy initiatives intended to minimize hardships for
innocent civilians and strengthen controls over Iraqi weapons programs.
An advance release of the study comes just as Secretary of State Colin
Powell is due to testify today before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ This study is available via Internet at: www.fourthfreedom.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new report by the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Joan B. Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre
Dame, and originally set for release Monday, proposes a narrowly
defined and tightly implemented set of ``smart sanctions'' focusing on
weapons and military-related goods, as an alternative to the current
faltering comprehensive sanctions regime.
The study's authors, who have met extensively during the past four
months with government officials and international experts from the UN,
U.S. and allied nations, write that a modernized sanctions regime would
need to be sustainable over the long term through the support of key
United Nations Security Council members and frontline states. It would
remain in effect until such time as Iraq complies fully with the
relevant Security Council resolutions and fulfills its disarmament
obligations, the study says.
High among the expectations for Powell's testimony is the new
administration's position on weapons inspections in Iraq. Last week,
during a trip to the Middle East, Powell suggested changes in U.S.
sanctions policy toward Iraq. Meanwhile, Vice President Richard Cheney
and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in separate
interviews published in the past few days that the return of U.N. arms
inspectors in Iraq was not a critical part of continued U.S. pressure
on Iraq and that the U.S. has no choice but to push for a new sanctions
policy.
Fourth Freedom Forum and the Joan Kroc Institute, two leading
research centers that focus on economic sanctions and weapons control
as a means of preventing international conflict, sponsored the study,
written largely before Powell's trip. The full report will be available
shortly at www.fourthfreedom.org. Among the conclusions the study
reaches are:
Embargo Arms, Not Trade
Revamp current embargo in favor of a sharpened sanctions
system aimed at two key targets--the control of financial
resources generated by the export of Iraqi oil, and the
prohibition against imports of weapons and dual-use goods;
Maintain strict controls on Iraqi oil revenues and military-
related imports, but permit trade in civilian consumer goods to
flow freely;
Contract out to commercial companies the responsibility of
certifying and providing notification of civilian imports into
Iraq;
Permit the ordering and contracting of civilian goods on an
as-required basis rather than in 180-day phases.
Maintain UN Financial Controls
Continue to channel all Iraqi oil revenues through the UN
escrow account;
Contract with an independent multinational oil brokering
firm, through which all records and payments for permitted oil
purchases would pass, to manage the sales of Iraqi oil and
monitor any illegal payments or surcharges;
Establish a new compensation mechanism to provide economic
assistance to neighboring states and begin paying Iraq's
external debt;
Freeze the personal financial assets of Saddam Hussein and
his family, of senior Iraqi political and military officials,
and of those associated with weapons production programs.
Strengthen Verification and Monitoring
Tighten land-based monitoring by establishing at major
border crossings into Iraq fully-resourced Sanctions Assistance
Missions, modeled on the UN sanctions experience in Yugoslavia;
Establish a system of electronic tagging of approved dual-
use imports;
Create a special investigative commission to track down and
expose sanctions violators;
Assist member states in establishing effective penalties for
companies and individuals that violate the ban on exporting
weapons and dual-use items to Iraq;
Require Iraqi-bound cargo flights to submit to UN
inspection.
``No single element of this smart sanctions package stands alone in
wielding sufficient coercive clout,'' the study says. ``But linked
together such controls provide a tightened sanctions regime.''
To discuss the findings of the study or for comment on ``smart
sanctions'' proposals, please call:
David Cortright, Fourth Freedom Forum President and Joan B.
Kroc Institute faculty fellow, at (800) 233-6786 [please
contact his assistant Ruth Miller at extension 10];
George Lopez director of policy studies and senior fellow at
the Joan B. Kroc Institute, at (219) 631-6972; (219) 315-7118-
cell
Alistair Millar, Fourth Freedom Forum Vice President, at
(202) 393-5201--work, (202) 716-4716--cell.
The Fourth Freedom Forum's goal is a more civilized world based on
the force of law rather than the law of force. Through scholarly
research, public education, dialogue with policy experts, and media
communications, the Fourth Freedom Forum explores options for the
nonviolent resolution of international conflict and brings these
concepts to the forefront of mainstream debate.
The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the
University of Notre Dame conducts educational, research, and outreach
programs on international peace. The Institute's programs emphasize
international norms and institutions; religious, philosophical, and
cultural dimensions of peace; conflict transformation; and social,
economic, and environmental justice.
----------
Additional Questions Submitted for the Record
RESPONSES OF SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY SENATOR JESSE HELMS
TRADE AND BUSINESS ISSUES
Question 1. When does the Bush Administration plan to seek fast
track negotiating authority?
Answer. The Administration has been consulting with Congress,
business, NGOs and others regarding trade promotion authority. Although
timing has not yet been decided, President Bush has stated that he
would like to show progress towards gaining trade promotion authority
in time for the Quebec Summit of the Americas meetings in April.
Question 2. Will the United States support inclusion of a
``democracy clause'' setting representative democracy and respect for
human rights and the rule of law as a condition of participating in the
FTAA process?
Answer. The Summit of the Americas has been a process for promoting
democratically elected governments from the beginning. Leaders
reiterated that at the Santiago Summit. We support a more explicit
affirmation of that commitment at the Quebec meeting for the entire
Summit process, which includes the FTAA.
Question 3. What steps will you take, in conjunction with other
agencies, to make sure that the interests of U.S. companies, in
particular their patent rights, will be protected?
What will you do in cases where there is a clear TRIPS violation,
as in Argentina and the Dominican Republic?
Answer. In international fora and through our embassies, the
Department of State works to ensure that foreign governments provide
adequate and effective protection for intellectual property. We view
compliance with TRIPS obligations as a benchmark in this effort.
However, in multilateral and bilateral negotiations, such as the
ongoing Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations, we encourage the
adoption and enforcement of intellectual property protections that go
beyond the minimum protection requirements afforded by TRIPS.
With regard to Argentina, WTO dispute settlement consultations have
been initiated to address the government's inadequate protection of
patents and test data. We also are reviewing Argentina's protection of
intellectual property rights through the annual Special 301 process.
With regard to the Dominican Republic, we are encouraging the
Dominican Government to revise patent legislation to conform to its
TRIPS obligations. We are also reviewing the Dominican Government's
protection of intellectual property in the Special 301 process.
HAITI
Question. What will you do to press the de facto Aristide
government to comply with the eight conditions set by the outgoing
Clinton Administration? What specific steps will you take to bolster
the opposition and other democratic elements in Haitian civil society?
Answer. Our policy on the eight points was articulated in President
Bush's February 13 letter to President Aristide. This correspondence
called the eight points a ``starting point,'' conveying our expectation
that President Aristide would exceed them if necessary to address our
concerns. We have also made clear that the U.S. will not fully
normalize relations, nor support restoration of assistance to the
Haitian Government by the United States and international financial
institutions, until the eight conditions are met.
Through our programs we actively back the activities of Haitian
journalists, labor unions and NGO's and diplomatically support the
mediation effort of civil society. Through capacity-building measures
that would be made available to all Haitian political parties, we
intend to assist the opposition once a meaningful negotiation process
has begun.
ANDEAN REGION: PLANS FOR ASSISTANCE
Question. How will the Bush Administration assist all of our allies
in the Andean region--not just Colombia--to prevent a return of illegal
drug cultivation and to bolster their weak democratic governments?
Answer. We are developing a coordinated assistance plan for the
entire region, including Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama,
Peru and Venezuela, to prevent traffickers from simply shifting
operations in reaction to Plan Colombia and to help these countries
deal with varied threats. This initiative recognizes that the problems
confronting the Andean region--threats to democracy, weak economies and
narcotics trafficking--are linked and must be addressed in a
coordinated manner. Sluggish economies produce political unrest that
threatens democracy and provides ready manpower for traffickers and
illegal armed groups. Weak institutions, corruption and political
instability discourage investment, contribute to slow growth and
provide fertile ground for traffickers and outlaw groups. The drug
trade has a corrupting influence that undermines democratic
institutions, fuels illegal armed groups, and distorts the economy,
discouraging legitimate investment. None of the region's problems can
be addressed in isolation. All need to be addressed comprehensively,
and be accompanied by appropriate public diplomacy initiatives, to
advance our goals in the region.
ANDEAN AND DRUG ISSUES
Question 1. What are your views on President Pastrana's current
strategy of engaging Colombia's narco-terrorists by granting them large
tracts of land in exchange for peace? Should the United States support
an unpopular, unsustainable policy that grants safe-havens to the
narco- terrorists, allowing them to expand their drug production and
other illicit activities with virtual impunity?
Answer. We have fully supported President Pastrana's efforts to
negotiate a solution to the Colombian conflict. We share President
Pastrana's assessment that Colombia's problems cannot be effectively
resolved while illegal armed combatants continue to wreak havoc upon
Colombians and that Colombia's civil strife cannot be won by military
means.
With respect to the advisability of the FARC demilitarized zone
(``despeje'') or of the proposed ELN demilitarized zone (``encounter
zone''), we have deferred to the Colombian Government on the utility of
these specific mechanisms to advance peace discussions. Fundamentally,
the management of the Colombian peace process is something to be
negotiated between the Government of Colombia and the illegal armed
groups.
Nevertheless, we will not support any Colombian peace agreement
that would impede our ability to conduct counternarcotics operations in
Colombia. We have told the Government of Colombia that our support for
the Colombian peace process is contingent on whether it satisfactorily
addresses our counternarcotics concerns. To date, the existence of the
FARC ``despeje'' has not interfered with our counternarcotics efforts
in Colombia, including our support of the ambitious Plan Colombia
strategy in southern Colombia.
Question 2. As you know, the mycoherbicide technology is a
promising new tool designed to reduce the cultivation and supply of
illicit narcotic crops. Do you support the immediate testing, and
possible deployment, of the mycoherbicide technology in Colombia?
Answer. The United States government has supported research towards
controlling the cultivation of illicit narcotic crops for many years.
Using funds appropriated by Congress in 1990, USDA developed a proof of
concept on the use of biological control agents to control illicit
crops, particularly coca. The Department, after consulting with USDA,
concluded that this would require conducting limited field tests in the
``target'', i.e. foreign, environment where the illicit drug crops are
actually grown. The Colombian Government and the U.N. International
Drug Control Program (UNDCP) are discussing potential cooperation to
conduct these field tests, which are essential to developing definitive
data on the safety and efficacy of these mycoherbicides in their
intended environment. Testing in Colombia will proceed only with the
full cooperation and approval of the Colombian Government. This
approval has not yet been granted, pending the completion of an
acceptable research protocol.
CUBA POLICY--LIBERTAD ACT
Question. Officers in the State Department's Bureau for Western
Hemisphere Affairs (WHA) responsible for investigations under the Cuban
Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 have concluded
that the Spanish firm Grupo Sol Mehia (GSM) is trafficking in property
owned by a U.S. claimant. Under the law, this conclusion triggers an
immediate decision by the Secretary of State to sanction GSM.
Negotiations between GSM and the claimant have been terminated. When
will the State Department provide the Committee a copy of its sanction
determination letter to GSM? The Clinton Administration has routinely
waived provisions of Title III of the LIBERTAD Act citing promises by
Europe to promote human rights in Cuba. Will you review the current
waiver of Title III and comply with the legal requirement that such
waiver genuinely hastens the democratic transition in Cuba?
Answer. The Department of State has a long-standing practice of not
commenting publicly on Libertad Act cases which may or may not be under
review. I would be happy to have Under Secretary of Economic Affairs
Larson meet with you to discuss matters related to these issues.
Regarding Title III of the Libertad Act, I understand that the
Department is scheduled to review relevant factors this action is
appropriate. Certainly we share your commitment to realize a democratic
transition in Cuba. Our goal is to apply the law in a way that builds
international consensus on encouraging democratic and economic change,
and respect for human rights.
ECUADOR: EMELEC
Question. The Government of Ecuador has failed to show the good
faith necessary to find a mutually beneficial resolution of a dispute
regarding ownership and operation of Empresa Electrica del Ecuador,
Inc. (ENELEC). Will you instruct the U.S. Embassy in Quito to assist
the American trustees in resolving this case and to notify the
Ecuadorian government that its normal relations with the United States
depend on its equitable treatment of these and all U.S. investors and
property claimants?
Answer. I share your view that the Government of Ecuador should
work with the interested parties to resolve the EMELEC dispute. The
U.S. Embassy in Quito is in fact maintaining close and frequent contact
with the Government of Ecuador and the American trustees to encourage a
rapid and fair resolution of this dispute. U.S. Government officials
have met regularly over the last year with high-level Ecuadorian
government officials, including President Noboa, to keep the Government
of Ecuador engaged on this issue. In these contacts, we have conveyed
the importance the U.S. Government attaches to the prompt and full
repayment of the Export-Import Bank debt.
The U.S. Government is concerned with any case in which the
property of a U.S. national has been or may be expropriated by a
foreign government. However, while EMELEC is a corporation organized
under the laws of the State of Maine, it has been wholly foreign-owned
since it was sold to Ecuadorian citizens in 1992. The American trustees
have not provided us with any indication that the company conducts
business, owns property or employs anyone in the United States.
Nevertheless, while the U.S. Government has taken no position on
the merits of this dispute, we regularly raise this issue with the
Government of Ecuador in order to ensure payment of the Ex-Im Bank loan
and to avoid this dispute possibly becoming a larger problem between
our two countries. We understand that the Government of Ecuador and the
American trustees recently accelerated the pace of their negotiations,
meeting twice weekly in an attempt to conclude a settlement.
VENEZUELA: U.S. POLICY
Question. Recently, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made
efforts to consolidate a great deal of political power under his
authority, express solidarity with radical groups in neighboring
countries, and seek close ties to the People's Republic of China, Iraq
and Cuba. In light of these efforts, will you review U.S. policy toward
Venezuela?
Answer. Since his election in late 1998, Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez has begun a process of radical change in his country's political
and socioeconomic policies. The changes sought by Chavez could endanger
Venezuela's democratic tradition and market-driven economy.
President Chavez has used extreme rhetoric as a political tool to
intimidate his opponents. We are concerned by his effort to concentrate
power in the hands of the executive branch and by his association with
some of the world's most notorious dictators--Castro, Saddam Hussein,
Khadafi.
That said, Venezuela's democratic institutions have thus far proven
sufficiently strong to withstand any attempt to weaken democratic rule.
It must be remembered that Chavez won two elections with large
majorities. Virtually all of the actions he has taken to date have
fallen within the bounds of the Venezuelan constitution, and are
largely supported by the majority of the Venezuelan populace.
We will continue to monitor the situation closely and to look for
opportunities to support Venezuelan civil society organizations
dedicated to protecting democracy.
We continue to urge Venezuela and its neighbors to work through
disagreements peacefully. Expressions of solidarity with radical groups
undermine stability.
Despite our disagreement with President Chavez' foreign policy, we
are determined to protect our vital interests in Venezuela. To this
end, we will remain engaged on areas of greatest importance to the USG:
maintenance of democratic institutions; protection of economic and
commercial ties, including energy; counternarcotics cooperation; and
regional stability.
CUBA: SUPPORT FOR DISSIDENTS
Question. Mr. Secretary, President Bush has declared his intention
to keep the embargo on Cuba in place until there are free elections. We
agree on that. I hope you agree also with me that the embargo alone is
NOT an adequate policy--we need to do more. We need a policy of
increased, pro-active support for dissidents on the island--a policy
modeled after President Reagan's decisive support for the Polish
Solidarity movement. Do you agree with that approach? And will you make
full use of your current authorities to increase pro-democracy programs
right now--including additional funding?
Answer. We agree that the embargo alone is not an adequate policy
and that we need to do more. We must also maintain and enhance our
people-to-people program, maintain support for dissidents, disseminate
information and the exchange of ideas and work to increase pressure on
Cuba by other countries and international organizations.
We plan to continue our policy of active support for dissidents in
Cuba. Our funding for pro-democracy programs increased this year from
$3.5 to $5 million. This is a significant increase. As you well know,
the basic problem is that Cuba is a police state. That is why we want
to see change in Cuba, but that situation hampers the international
community's ability to meet and talk with Cubans, discuss transition
and have access to universities and think tanks. We are open to new and
different proposals that can help the Cuban people to create the sort
of civil society that Cuba will need to make a peaceful transition to a
democratic society with a market economy.
TAIWAN: U.S. POLICY REGARDING TAIWAN'S STATUS
Question. Did you mean to imply a change in U.S. policy when you
said, ``Taiwan is part of China'' during your confirmation hearing?
Answer. Our policy has not changed. It has been consistent since
first established in the 1972 Shanghai Communique and then reiterated
in the 1979 Normalization Communique.
It was that policy to which I was referring before the Committee
when I said: ``The United States has long acknowledged the view that
there is only one China. In that respect, Taiwan is a part of China.''
CHINA--ASSISTANCE TO IRAQ
Question. Do we intend to take any action against Communist China
for its efforts to assist Saddam Hussein in building up his air defense
network?
Answer. We have made our views and concerns clear to the Chinese
government, which understands that failure to completely resolve this
issue through ongoing efforts will damage Sino-U.S. relations.
The Chinese government has reiterated its understanding of China's
responsibilities to uphold UN Security Council resolutions and has told
us that it has taken steps to ensure that PRC companies abide by these
resolutions. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and will
work with the Chinese government to properly resolve this issue.
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
Question. How does the Bush Administration intend to deal with the
ICC when it comes into existence?
Will you pledge to work with the Committee to ensure that American
citizens are protected from the jurisdiction of this Court?
Answer. The Bush Administration has taken note of the possibility
that the International Criminal Court may be up and running in just a
few years, irrespective of USG concerns. Now is the time to develop and
begin to implement a strategic plan to pursue effectively our
objectives, including the protection of U.S. citizens from the Court's
jurisdiction.
I welcome an open and frank dialog with the Committee on this
complex issue. I look forward to working with the Congress to achieve
our common goal of protecting U.S. personnel.
RUSSIA: CHECHNYA
Question. Will you meet with the foreign minister of Chechnya when
he next visits the United States? And what will you do to promote a
peaceful resolution to this conflict?
Answer. Department officials have met with members of the Chechen
separatist government before and will do so in the future. We recognize
Chechnya as part of Russia, however, and meet with them as individuals,
not in their official capacity. We met March 26 with Mr. Akhmadov at
the Assistant Secretary level in Washington. That meeting was an
important opportunity for us to discuss his views on the conflict and
urge dialogue, respect for human rights, and an end to terrorist
violence. The Department official who met Mr. Akhmadov has shared with
select congressional staff his impressions from that meeting.
We are working with our allies in a coordinated, sustained
international effort to stop the fighting and move toward a political
settlement; to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need;
and to have those responsible for human rights violations held
accountable.
BELARUS: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Question. How confident are you that the regime in Minsk will allow
presidential elections to take place?
If they do, how confident are you that the elections will be free
and fair?
Answer. We think the elections will take place, but it is an open
question as to whether they will be free and fair. Lukashenko may try
to control presidential elections as he did the October 2000
parliamentary elections. This would be a serious mistake. We have
communicated forcefully and clearly that an improvement in relations
with the U.S. requires a return to democracy and an end to the climate
of fear. Half measures or a continuation of current repressive policies
will only prolong and deepen Belarus' isolation from the international
community.
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
Question. Like President Reagan, I think that, frankly, explaining
American policy and values abroad is important--and remains so today. A
public diplomacy officer in a major European capital told a member of
my staff that she strongly favored consolidation, but that decisions
that took 3 clearances before consolidation now take 23. And someone
working on public diplomacy at the State Department told my staff that
at decision meetings, public diplomacy officers are frequently told:
``We'll formulate the policy and then you figure out how to sell it.''
What do you anticipate doing in the coming months to increase the say
of public diplomacy folks in the regional bureaus, to give them a role
in decisions from the ground floor, and to cut red tape--as the
congressionally-mandated consolidation intended?
Answer. Public diplomacy and the work of the Department's Public
Diplomacy Officers in promoting America's national interests are vital
to the success of U.S. foreign policy. From what I can see so far, the
1999 reorganization is well on its way to achieving the goals you set
out by proposing it, but we can do even better. We not only need public
diplomacy people involved in formulating policy, but we need all our
people involved in winning support for it.
CHILD ABDUCTION
Question. An American delegation will travel to the Netherlands
later this month to attend a periodic conference of parties to the
Hague Convention on Child Abduction. I consider this issue to be a top
national priority, and have serious concerns about the level of
cooperation received from a number of European allies on this matter.
What will the U.S. delegation say and do in the Netherlands to
underline the need for better cooperation on child abduction?
Answer. From March 22-28, the U.S. participated in the Fourth
Special Session on the Practical Operation of the 1980 Hague Convention
on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. As head of
delegation, Assistant Secretary of State Mary A. Ryan made specific
remarks that focused on the importance of improving enforcement of
Hague return orders and ensuring left behind parents have meaningful
access to their children.
Included in the U.S. delegation were Representatives Nick Lampson
(D-Texas) and Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), a staff representative of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, members of the judiciary, and
experts from the private sector, as well as State and Justice
officials. Assistant Secretary Ryan also met with her counterparts from
Mexico, Germany, Sweden, and Austria and raised the specific concerns
we have with those countries' compliance with the Convention.
STATE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONS
Question 1. There are several models for State Department reform
now available, including the Carlucci Report, the Kaden Report and
others.
(a) Which of these, if any, is the preferred model?
(b) Among the recommendations in these many reports, which
are the Department's highest priority?
Answer. All of the available reports share many common themes about
what State needs to do to reform itself, with the Carlucci report
offering the best and most recent synthesis. I take seriously the need
to improve designation of the Deputy Secretary as Chief Operating
Officer. The focus will be on improving our overseas infrastructure
(many posts need to be rebuilt; others need improved security);
bringing State's information technology up-to-date; and obtaining the
personnel and resources necessary to support the expanded duties that
State carries in today's world.
Question 2. When can we expect the State Department's
authorizations request? Congress has not received the workforce
planning report mandated in Section 326 of Public Law 106-113.
According to the cited statute, the report was to have been presented
to Congress on March 1, 2001. Please give the intended date of
delivery.
Answer. The Department looks forward to working closely with the
Committee in order to obtain passage of our authorization bill, and we
appreciate that you are requesting our input. We hope to provide you
with a fully cleared administration proposal in the very near future.
The Department workforce planning report has been completed and was
transmitted to Congress on March 16, 2001.
Question 3. In Section 2303 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and
Restructuring Act of 1998, Congress mandated that ``[the officer of the
Department of State with primary responsibility for . . . personnel in
the Department of State, or that officer's principal deputy, shall have
substantial professional qualifications in the field of human resource
policy and management. Will you ensure that the eventual nominee for
Director General and/or the person chosen to serve as the Director
General's principal deputy meets this statutory requirement?
Answer. We agree that the position of Director General of the
Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources is a critical State
Department leadership position. We can assure you that the person the
President nominates for that position will have the highest level of
qualification in the field of human resource policy and management.
BALKANS: MARCH 31 CERTIFICATION
Question. Should the President recommend certification?
Answer. I evaluated all of the FRY's actions relevant to the
criteria laid out in Section 594 of House Resolution 5526, and judged
that the FRY's actions in relation to those criteria justified
certification.
However, I believe more can and must be done by the FRY and Serbian
governments to implement many of the steps necessary to ensure full
cooperation with the ICTY. We have notified Belgrade authorities that
we expect them to follow through on their stated commitment to full
cooperation. If these promises are not fulfilled, the Administration is
prepared to withhold support for a donor's conference.
CHINA: ARMS PURCHASES FROM RUSSIA
Question. What steps will the Bush administration take to dissuade
the Russians from selling advanced weaponry and engaging in nuclear
cooperation with the PRC?
Answer. This is an issue of serious concern to us. We have asked
the Russians to look into this issue and plan to follow up.
We will continue to closely monitor sales of Russian military
equipment to China, developments in the Taiwan Strait and the
modernization of the Chinese military.
We will continue to raise with Russia our concerns about the effect
of its arms sales on regional stability.
CHINA--FINANCING MILITARY BUILDUP
Question. Does the Bush administration believe it is necessary to
take any steps to slow down the flow of funds to the government of
China--IFI loans, Export-Import Bank loans and guarantees, capital
market offerings--in order to inhibit its ongoing military buildup?
Answer. A number of legal restrictions already limit trade
promotion and development assistance activities the USG may undertake
in China. Regarding the three specific areas raised above, the U.S.
opposes International Financial Institution (IFI) lending to China
except for projects that meet basic human needs. The Export-Import Bank
is an independent agency established by Congress to promote U.S.
exports and continues to operate in China. As for capital market
offerings, it is USG policy not to intervene in capital markets.
THAILAND: THAKSIN'S ECONOMIC PROMISES
Question. New Thai Prime Minister Thaksin's populist economic
promises, if implemented, will almost certainly put renewed pressure on
the baht and may derail the nascent reform process in that country. Has
the administration given any thought to possibly hinting to the Thaksin
government that another bailout may not be forthcoming if Thailand
pursues reckless economic policies?
Answer. Prime Minister Thaksin's government is currently in the
process of formulating its economic and other policies. The cost of its
policies and programs and the possible impact on economic performance
are yet to be determined. As it stands, Thailand's debt is less than 60
percent of GDP, which is better than many developing and some developed
countries. We will continue to engage with the Thaksin administration
as these economic policies take shape.
CHINA--SINOPEC
Question. Does the Administration believe that Sinopec's recent
agreement to invest in Iran's petroleum sector merits sanctions under
the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act?
Answer. This is a question we are now reviewing. Our Embassy in
Beijing has expressed our concerns about this matter to both the
Chinese government and Sinopec, and we raised the issue here with the
recently-departed Chinese Ambassador. We are continuing to seek
relevant information from all available sources. When procedures are
completed, we will be in a position to determine whether sanctionable
activity has occurred, and if it has, what action, under the law, to
take.
INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: APPOINTMENT OF AN AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE
Question. Will you ensure that the position of Ambassador-at-Large
for International Religious Freedom is not merged with another existing
post at the State Department?
Will you ensure that the Office of International Religious Freedom
is properly funded and adequately staffed?
Answer. The question about double-hatting came up in my testimony
to the House International Relations Committee on March 7. With respect
to the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, I said
the position is ``vacant at the moment, and I'm looking for somebody to
fill that position.'' The position of Ambassador-at-Large will not be
merged with an existing State Department position, so that the
Ambassador can focus full attention on the issue of religious freedom.
The Office of International Religious Freedom will be adequately
staffed and funded.
______
Responses of Secretary of State Colin Powell to Additional Questions
for the Record Submitted by Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS TEST MONITORING
Question. One small, but very important, element in your budget is
our contribution to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive
Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). This $20 million (which is
matched by $60 million in contributions from other countries) goes
primarily to build an International Monitoring System (IMS) to detect
possible nuclear tests. The IMS will provide information that can
readily be used with other countries or in public diplomacy, in
contrast to data gathered by National Technical Means.
(a) What is the status of the U.S. contribution to the CTBTO
Preparatory Commission in the President's proposed budget for
FY 2002? Will you work to maintain full funding for this
important program?
(b) What is the status of the FY 2001 funds for our CTBTO
Preparatory Commission contribution? Have they been expended?
(c) In January, General John Shalikashvili wrote that:
``Higher funding and intelligence collection priorities should
be assigned to monitoring nuclear test activities.'' What are
you doing to ensure that the U.S. Intelligence Community also
gets the tasking and support that it needs in this area?
Answer (a). For FY 2002, we are requesting the funds needed to pay
fully the estimated U.S. share of costs for the ongoing work
development and implementation of the International Monitoring System
to detect nuclear explosions.
Answer (b). The U.S. contribution to the CTBTO Preparatory
Commission for 2001, $17,598,257, was paid in full.
Answer (c). The Department:
tasks the Intelligence Community through membership in the
Nuclear Test Intelligence, Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence,
and Measurement and Signature Intelligence Committees;
stresses key issues such as foreign nuclear testing in its
participation in interagency bodies overseeing collection
strategies, requirements, and resources for all disciplines
(imagery, HUMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, OSINT);
is participating in the just-begun review of the Nuclear
Detection System aimed at revalidating system requirements and
consolidating funding and support;
chairs the interagency Treaty Monitoring Working Group,
through which it addresses IC budget issues;
informs the Congress, as required by law, when the
verifiability of a treaty is in doubt due to the impending loss
of critical monitoring assets; and
will allocate Key Verification Assets Fund monies (as
available) to help preserve nuclear test detection
capabilities.
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Question 1. What are the Administration's plans for signature and
ratification of the recently negotiated treaty on persistent organic
pollutants?
Answer. The persistent organic pollutants (POPs) treaty will be
open for signature at a diplomatic conference in Stockholm in May. The
Administration is currently reviewing the treaty to determine whether
or not to sign.
Question 2. The President has said that he is convinced climate
change is occurring. With climate change negotiations due to resume
this summer, would you tell us the process by which the Administration
is developing policy on this issue? Has the President given any
direction to that process? What sort of policy proposals are being
considered for those negotiations? Who will lead the Administration's
negotiations?
Answer. The Administration is undertaking a Cabinet-level review of
U.S. climate change policy. This review will consider what policies
this Administration should pursue domestically and internationally. It
will fully examine global climate change issues--including the science,
technologies, market-based systems and innovative approaches to global
climate change. The Administration has not determined who will lead
upcoming climate change negotiations.
INDIA/PAKISTAN
Question. (a) What actions are you considering which would help
make South Asia a safer place?
(b) How will the failure of the United States to ratify the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) affect your ability to get
India and Pakistan to sign that treaty or to take other steps away from
the nuclear brink?
Answer. The most important thing we can do is to develop our
relations with India and Pakistan so that we can exercise leadership
across a broad range of political, economic and security issues. We'll
be looking at ways to do this as we review our policy toward the region
over the coming months.
At the same time, you can expect that the Administration will
continue to urge both countries to exercise restraint in nuclear and
missile matters. We remain firm in our belief that nuclear weapons and
ballistic missiles create serious risks for regional security and also
for global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. We will
certainly encourage both India and Pakistan to continue to observe
their voluntary moratoriums on further nuclear testing. We will also
encourage and assist them to adopt effective controls on the export of
sensitive materials and technology.
We will urge India and Pakistan to create the conditions that will
lead to a resumption of the dialogue suspended as a result of the
Kargil crisis. They have much on the agenda, including Kashmir. We will
be prepared at all times to be helpful but we will not seek a mediation
role.
Regarding the CTBT, every country will make its decision on the
Treaty according to its perception of its own national interests. India
and Pakistan are well aware that the U.S. has long abstained from
nuclear testing. India has stated that it will continue its voluntary
moratorium until the CTBT comes into effect, unless its supreme
national interests are jeopardized. Pakistan has said it would continue
its moratorium as long as India does. Both governments have stated
their intentions to develop a national consensus in favor of signing
the CTBT, although domestic and national security concerns have, thus
far, prevented them from doing so.
AFRICA: DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN KEY COUNTRIES
Question. What emphasis will be placed on working with democratic
elements within countries that have not made significant steps towards
democracy, or have actually taken steps in the opposite direction, such
as Ivory Coast or Zimbabwe?
Should we expect this administration to focus more on trade as a
means of development assistance in Africa? How is this reflected in the
President's FY 02 Budget?
What special programs or initiatives will this administration
undertake to help African governments deal with the impact that HIV/
AIDS has on their countries, and how is this reflected in the budget?
Answer. We emphasize, particularly in transitional countries,
activities to promote the development of democratic principles, the
advancement of human rights and increased access to both the judicial
system and political processes for women and ethnic groups. Experience
over the past decade has demonstrated the value of sustained support of
democratic elements even within countries that prima facie have limited
opportunities for positive political change. South Africa and Nigeria
are examples of countries where the USG commitment to non-governmental
actors contributed significantly to emerging democratic cultures.
Accordingly, we can help countries such as the Ivory Coast and
Zimbabwe, once models of stability in crisis-torn regions, return to
the path of good governance, by strengthening these critical building
blocks of democracy and empowering human rights advocates, women, and
marginalized groups.
This administration certainly favors expanding trade in general and
enhancing our trade and investment relations with Africa. The President
indicated his support for expanding trade with Africa during his
January 31 meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. The African
Growth and Opportunity Act is an important legislative tool to achieve
this goal.
Trade will be a major component of our policy toward Africa since
it is such an important aspect of economic growth and development. In
addition to benefits under the AGOA, we and other donors in the WTO
have been working with African and other developing countries to
reinvigorate the Integrated Framework for coordinated trade-related
assistance. To help them take fuller advantage of trade benefits like
AGOA, we are trying to improve developing countries' ability to
understand sanitary and phyto-sanitary requirements; we are also
working to ensure trade policies are integrated into country assistance
and poverty reduction strategies with multilateral development banks.
I consider the international spread of HIV/AIDS as a critical issue
of concern--USAID remains the lead USG agency in international HIV/AIDS
programs. In FY 01, Congress allocated $340 million for HIV/AIDS to
USAID; a more than three-fold increase from 1999 levels. The current
administration's FY 02 budget includes an increase of 10 percent.
USAID has identified Uganda, Zambia and Kenya as ``Rapid-Scale Up''
countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They will receive increased support to
achieve measurable impact against the epidemic within one or two years.
Additionally, USAID is working to involve local communities through
faith-based initiatives. Finally, USAID's Africa Bureau provides
assistance to various countries to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS; this
will produce long term plans to cope with this decimation.
CENTRAL ASIA: IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Question. Central Asia presents the United States with a
fundamental dilemma. It is a resource-rich area in a strategically
important part of the world. Yet it is ruled by corrupt dictators who
use the specter of insurgency to justify their repression, and this
brutality generates popular support for the very forces it seeks to
stamp out. In Kazakhstan, for example, President Nazarbayev has
virtually eliminated any semblance of an independent judiciary and
freedom of the press is essentially non-existent. There is little
accountability for the government's actions.
(a) How would you propose to maintain U.S. influence in Central
Asia without sacrificing our basic values?
(b) Using your gift for forthright speech rather than diplomatic
jargon, what message on the fundamental importance of human rights
would you send to the leaders of Central Asia?
Answer. I agree fully with your description of the problem we face
in Central Asia. An ``Arc of Instability,'' including such neighbors as
Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and Russia, surrounds the Central
Asian countries. The governments of the region face serious
transnational threats such as terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and
trafficking in arms, including weapons of mass destruction. At the same
time, we see these same governments turning increasingly to autocracy
and repression as tools of statecraft.
Only by remaining engaged on both fronts can we reconcile our
support for enhanced regional security with our effort to promote
democratization and free market economic reform. As we encourage the
Central Asian states to participate actively in the NATO, the
Partnership for Peace and the OSCE, we are also exposing them to the
democratic values those institutions represent. In discussions of
regional and international security, we reserve time to raise general,
and sometimes specific, issues of democracy and human rights. We also
use the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna as a forum for both bilateral
engagement on these issues, and when necessary, public criticism of
abuses by the Central Asian governments.
The message we should send to these leaders is very simple:
Democracy and respect for human rights are basic values for the United
States government and its people. We will continue to press you on
these issues at every opportunity. We think it is in your own self
interest to empower your citizens both politically and economically,
because in the end they will not support you if they do not have a
stake in your country's future.
______
Response of Secretary of State Colin Powell to Additional Question for
the Record Submitted by Senator Russell D. Feingold
ANGOLA: PUBLICATION OF OIL REVENUE PAYMENTS
Question. Earlier this year, British Petroleum made a commitment to
publicly publish their annual payments to Sonangol and the Angolan
government, including signature bonus payments, so that the Angolan
people can begin to have a sense of how much revenue their government
takes in, and thus begin to hold officials accountable for their
management of the budget. Would you support efforts underway to
encourage major American oil firms to do the same?
Answer. The United States strongly supports continuing Government
of Angola efforts to improve transparency. In recent meetings with us,
senior Angolan officials reiterated their pledge to pursue
transparency. We are encouraged by the Government of Angola's
recognition that it bears primary responsibility in this matter. We are
working with the Government of Angola and the International Monetary
Fund to support the progress of the ongoing ``diagnostic'' review of
oil sector revenues. The goal of the review is to clearly trace
revenues from oil production as an important step in improving
transparency and accountability in these accounts. We strongly
encourage all U.S. firms active in the Angolan oil sector to work with
the Government of Angola and the IMF to provide all relevant data in
support of the ongoing diagnostic review.
______
Responses of Secretary of State Colin Powell to Additional Questions
for the Record Submitted by Senator Paul Wellstone
CHINA: RESOLUTION AT UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Question. While strongly supporting the administration's decision
to sponsor a resolution on China at the UN Commission on Human Rights,
I am concerned about the U.S. being the only sponsor again, making it
far easier for the Chinese government to defeat the measure. To exert
serious pressure on China through this process, we will need other co-
sponsors. What efforts are you personally, and the President, making to
ask other governments to co-sponsor? For example, has Mexico, a key
member of the Commission this year, yet been approached? Or Canada? Or
Costa Rica? Or the Czech Republic?
Answer. We are seeking co-sponsors for our China resolution and
active support for our effort to defeat China's anticipated no-action
motion. We are serious in our pursuit of the resolution in Geneva. I am
personally involved in these efforts, and have already underscored U.S.
priorities with other concerned countries. For example, I have urged EU
ministers to support the resolution. It would be best not to discuss
further U.S. interactions with specific governments regarding the
resolution in deference to the confidentiality of government-to-
government discussions and to ensure the best possible atmosphere for
our diplomatic efforts to succeed.
CHINA: RAISING HUMAN RIGHTS WITH VICE PREMIER QIAN
Question. The State Department should be commended for a strong,
detailed and hard hitting report on human rights deterioration in
China. What specific human rights concerns will you raise directly with
Vice Premier Qian when he visits Washington, March 18-24?
Answer. We made clear to Vice Premier Qian our strong commitment to
securing progress on human rights in China. We did not shrink from
candidly discussing differences. We urged the Chinese government to
improve the situation on the ground in China and conform with
internationally accepted standards.
CHINA: GENEVA RESOLUTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS DIALOGUE
Question. If Vice Premier Qian insists the U.S. drop any effort to
censure China in Geneva in exchange for resuming the formal dialogue on
human rights (suspended by China in May 1999), how will you respond?
Answer. We have already announced that we are going forward with a
China resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights. We are committed
to that course. We have also made clear to the Chinese that we are
ready to resume our human rights dialogue without preconditions.