05 June 2003
U.S. to Review Ban Against Direct Aid to Palestinian Leadership
(Bush administration favorably impressed with Abbas government) (3340)
The Bush administration plans to examine the prohibition against
sending direct financial support to the leaders of the Palestinian
Authority (PA), and could soon approach the U.S. Congress to seek
changes, according to a senior administration official.
The official, speaking on background June 5 aboard Air Force One en
route to Washington, said that while the Palestinian people are
currently receiving help for their most immediate needs, it will be
important that the Palestinian leaders under Prime Minister Mahmoud
Abbas have "the means to help their own people directly."
"I think everybody is very impressed with this Prime Minister,
impressed with his team, impressed with what the finance minister is
trying to do with a transparent budget," said the official.
"[W]e want to go back, we want to take a look, we want to talk to the
Congress about what the new conditions now mean for when it might be
appropriate to do direct support to the leadership of the Palestinian
Authority," the official said.
The administration has "been able to see the promise" of Middle East
peace, the official said, "and the President has been willing to seize
the moment."
Turning to Iraq, the senior official praised the work of Ambassador
Paul Bremer, saying he has been "actively involved in trying to help
the Iraqis get civil society moving again."
According to the official, Bush told Bremer that help for building
Iraqi civil society has been offered by the leaders of the G-8
countries, Arab leaders, and by the United States. "And so mobilizing
that help will be important," she said.
The official added that President Bush had spoken with General Tommy
Franks, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, who felt there was "an
increasingly stabilizing situation in most of the country," although
he said there are still some Baathist strongholds.
"[E]verybody understands that we have not been at this very long. When
you look at a country that was under the most severe totalitarian
dictatorship for 30 years, the last 12 of it under international
sanctions and with a regime that was getting increasingly brutal, it's
quite remarkable what has been achieved in this period of time," said
the official.
Following is the transcript of the background briefing aboard Air
Force One:
(begin transcript)
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
June 5, 2003
BACKGROUND BRIEFING BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TO TRAVEL POOL
Aboard Air Force One
En Route Washington, D.C.
1:30 P.M.(L)
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay, I can answer whatever
questions you got at the moment.
QUESTION: The Amir, right?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If you would like to hear about the
Amir, I'm happy to talk about the Amir.
Q: I thought you had something.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I didn't. I just came back to
answer question if I can start to --
Q: The overflight and whether or not you guys have decided to do this,
and if the President decided to do it and what the President was
doing.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'll let my colleague do those
questions about the overflight. You can ask me foreign policy
questions. You can ask him the travelogue questions.
Q: Where were you during the overflight?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Travelogue questions. I was looking
out of the window at the beautiful rivers and thinking about the
infrastructure and thinking that this is a country that has a lot of
assets to have a great future, really. It should have a great future
because it has a lot -- when you look out at it, it has a lot of
assets, the river-ways. And you could see that there are roads and
infrastructure. It should have a great future.
Q: The President, when he was speaking to the reporters yesterday, he
indicated that prior to the fighting in Iraq he made some promises to
the Arab leaders about the Middle East issue, and that was one of the
reasons why the meetings went so well, and he turned his attention to
it when he did. And he was kind of indicating that he followed through
on that commitment. And I was wondering if you could talk a little
more about that and what he had said to those leaders before and
after?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure. The President had always said
that when there was an opportunity to advance the peace process, he
was prepared to do it and to do it with great vigor. The
administration has been involved in this process from the very
beginning. But new conditions have begun to emerge that make this an
opportunity that has more promise than we've had in quite a long time.
The President had talked with, I think, all of the Arab leaders who
were there in the run-up to the Iraqi conflict that he thought that
just as in 1991, the Gulf War had led to a kind of opening for peace,
that that might be the case after the Iraq War. And in fact, he gave
that speech at the American Enterprise Institute, which said precisely
that.
He also, though, believed that the other and, in fact, more important
ingredient was that you were getting changes in the Palestinian
Authority with the selection of a prime minister who was devoted to
ending terrorism and starting the direct process with the Israelis in
a constructive way, that now the time had come. And he had told the
Arab leaders when they had that interlocutor on the other side, when
there was an interlocutor on the other side, the United States was
going to try to push the process forward. So a number of things have
come together over the last couple of months that lead to better
opportunity. And the President, yesterday and the day before, by
coming to the region, by talking to these leaders now in group -- he's
had many meetings with them and many phone calls with them over the
last two and a half years -- but now talking to them in a group, and
then going on to meet directly with the parties, signaled his personal
commitment, signaled that he expects everybody to live up to their
responsibility by putting a mission on the ground with a senior
diplomat who can help push the process forward. He said he's going to
have lots of people in the region. He thinks it's a hopeful time.
Q: What's your role and Secretary Powell's role? That announcement --
is that just a further way that he wanted to demonstrate that at the
highest level of his administration, the attention would be there
ongoing, and that was your kind of part of it?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He said to Secretary Powell and to
me, I want you to make this one of the highest priorities. In fact,
because he believes it's a time of great promise, to make it extremely
high priority. The Secretary of State, of course, will always go to
the region as Secretary of State, has been doing so, will continue to
do so. What he said is that from time to time, when it is appropriate,
he'll ask me to go as his personal representative and to try and help
the parties, too.
But this has been a really great time for the administration because
we've been able to see the promise, and the President has been willing
to seize the moment. And it's been really a great time for all of us,
I think, that have been involved.
Q: The question on Bremer in your meeting today: Can you talk to us a
little bit about what led to the decision to have this appointed
council, how long you think that will delay the Iraqi Interim
Authority? And then, what Bremer -- this was the first face-to-face
assessment Bremer has been able to give the President, what he found
when he got there and what he thinks needs to be done? Can you give us
a sense of that?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, actually, David, Bremer has
been able by teleconference to speak to the NSC on another occasion.
So this was the first human contact, but we've, in fact, had updates
from him before.
On the Interim Authority, we're moving toward the establishment of an
Interim Authority. It was always the case that we believed that events
and conditions on the ground were going to have to dictate the timing
of the creation of an Interim Authority. The Council will help toward
that process. But Ambassador Bremer is doing a really terrific job of
getting out, meeting people, expanding the circle of people with whom
he's involved. He told us about his meeting with, I think, 50 plus
women -- 50 plus women, I guess, last week. He's been actively
involved in trying to help the Iraqis get civil society moving again.
And so he's very much on top of this. But everybody remains committed
to getting into a situation in which the Iraqis can take control of
their own future. Obviously, this is a country that has not had a
horizontal political dialogue for a very long time. It's all been
aimed at the top. And so taking some time to engage people and talk to
them while working with Iraqis that we have gotten to know, as well as
those that we've known for a long time, to get Iraqi advice on what is
going forward, that's really what Bremer is doing.
Q: The Council is not in the initial plan that we had all discussed
earlier --
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The flexibility to do what is
necessary on the ground is what the President emphasized with Jerry
Bremer when he first met with him. I was there when he first met with
him. And he said, we've done a lot of planning. We've done a lot of
thinking about this. But obviously, you're going to get on the ground,
you're going to see what conditions look like, you're going to see who
your interlocutors are. And you'll need to make decisions based on
that.
I think he believes that this is just an important step in moving
toward the Interim Iraqi Authority. But he talked a lot about -- not
just the Interim Iraqi Authority, which he is completely devoted to,
but about the importance pretty soon of getting started on Iraqis
thinking about their own long-term political future in terms of how
the constitution will look, what the institutions will look like, and
the like.
Q: The President said he expected within days to see the start of some
of the implementation of some of the promises made yesterday. What are
we likely to see first -- from the Israelis and from the Palestinians?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, the first thing is that the
parties committed in a very strong fashion not just to words but to
deeds. And the Prime Minister said that he was going to begin to
remove outposts. We expect that that will begin to happen. The Prime
Minister of the Palestinian Authority -- his first priority was to get
results in terms of security, organization, reorganization, training.
So we expect that to begin to happen. Prime Minister Sharon has also
already begun -- even before the Aqaba meeting -- with goodwill
gestures of prisoner releases, with beginning to open some of the
closures, with issuing more work permits. So those are the kinds of
important steps -- these are steps that will signal the commitment of
the parties. But they will also improve the lives of people. And
that's going to be very important. But security is extremely important
here. And a lot of the conversation yesterday between the President
and the Prime Ministers, as well as among the delegations when the
President and Prime Ministers was outside, was how to get moving on
the security reform, how to get moving on the consolidation of the
security forces, who could help with that. Because everybody
understands that the security dimension here is extremely important
for almost everything else we want to do.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let's try to do just a couple more
if you want to get this down to the filing center before they leave.
Q: What did Tommy Franks tell the President today about the situation
on the ground, what he needs in the way of troops? More, less, what?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, he talked about the fact that
they are in the process of deploying and redeploying forces to deal
with conditions as they find them on the ground. Again, everybody
understands and believed that there would have to be flexibility once
you got on the ground to deal with specific circumstances. Clearly,
the need to bring other forces in, international forces in is being
pursued with our partners and also with others who, since 1483 was
passed in the UN have been very forward-leaning in being willing to
talk about brining other forces in. Tommy Franks talked quite a lot
about what he sees as an increasingly stabilizing situation in most of
the country. There are still pockets that were Baathist strongholds
that they're going to have to deal with. And he understands that and
said that to the President.
But on the whole, this was a very confident Tommy Franks, a very
confident Jerry Bremer. Because everybody understands that we have not
been at this very long. When you look at a country that was under the
most severe totalitarian dictatorship for 30 years, the last 12 of it
under international sanctions and with a regime that was getting
increasingly brutal, it's quite remarkable what has been achieved in
this period of time. But it is going to take some time. And the thing
that the President most wanted Ambassador Bremer to know is that he
understands that this is going to take some time.
They spent a lot of time on how to improve the lives of the Iraqi
people. They spent a lot of time on how to build civil society. The
President communicated to Ambassador Bremer that he had heard from all
of his G8 partners, from Arabs when he talked to them, and from a lot
of people in the United States that people want to help. And so
mobilizing that help will be important.
Q: He didn't make any specific requests, though?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, in fact, Jerry Bremer was quite
upbeat about the support that he's getting from Washington about his
coordination with the British and the Australians. The Poles are
sending a very senior person who I think will arrive within days. He
was very upbeat about his meeting with Sergio De Mello, the UN
representative. And everybody is pulling together in a very effective
way.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'm sorry to do this. Let's make
this the last one if we're going to get this to the wire call.
Q: During the President's remarks yesterday, he mentioned providing
additional funding for the Palestinian Authority for security.
Currently, you give about $75 million a year, all of it goes to NGOs
directly because of some restrictions that Congress has imposed. Is
the administration planning now to lift those restrictions?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We're examining that, and we're
examining how best to use the funding. I think we'll want to have
conversations with Congress about how to do that. No decision has been
made yet about how to do it. But obviously, the emergence -- and it is
still emerging -- but the emergence of an accountable Palestinian
leadership that has put in place a finance minister and transparency
and accountability measures that I think are starting to give people
confidence that the money would be used for what it's intended to be
used for is another one of those new conditions that we're going to
want to take a look at.
Q: This would be a matter of some urgency, wouldn't it, to give this
money?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I think that if you talk to
the Palestinians they are getting help on the most immediate needs. So
it's not something that has to be done tomorrow. They're getting help
on the most immediate needs. They're getting some help from their
neighbors. They're getting some help from others. But over this next
period of time, as the Palestinian Authority's leadership emerges as
accountable and responsible to its own people and transparent, it's
going to be important that they have the means to help their own
people directly. And so I think that's something we're definitely
going to want to take a look at.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay, thank you.
Q: What developed at the meetings? I mean he seems to having a good
time even when he's driving the golf carts to and from meetings --
yes, even talking to reporters --
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This was a very good set of
meetings. And it started in Poland with a really warm set of meetings
with a Poland that is emerging as an important power in Europe. People
forget that Poland is a big country. And it is a country that's
providing a kind of anchor in Central Europe. And it's a country where
the President said precisely what the Poles were feeling and needed to
have said, which is, there is no conflict between your European
identity and your transatlantic ties. And so it started there; a very
warm meeting with the Russians in which we got a lot of good work
done, exchanged ratification instruments on the Treaty of Moscow; good
conversations at the G8, which were friendly and where people focused
on the future, including by the way, on the future of a world that
needs to deal with problems of weapons of mass discussion and
terrorism. The President had some proposals that people were anxious
to do. They had a good discussion on the global economy; and then
finally, to the Middle East, where I think that the meetings were
terrific in substance. They were, in some ways, even better in the
interaction that took place -- the Arab leaders sitting with Prime
Minister Abbas and saying, all right, we support what you're trying to
do for the Palestinian people, the Arabs saying, we understand that
the culture of terror and violence cannot continue, that there is no
justification for terrorism, and then the really very warm
interactions between the President and the two Prime Ministers and the
King of Jordan at Aqaba. It was just a very, very successful trip. I
think that's why everybody is in a very good mood, but plenty tired.
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Remember your colleagues on the
ground if you're going to get this filed.
Q: You talked about perhaps reprogramming some of the $75 million, or
--
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I said what we want to do is we
want to go back, we want to take a look, we want to talk to the
Congress about what the new conditions now mean for when it might be
appropriate to do direct support to the leadership of the Palestinian
Authority.
Q: Any thought of increasing the amount, any thoughts to supplementing
that?
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think everybody is very impressed
with this Prime Minister, impressed with his team, impressed with what
the finance minister is trying to do with a transparent budget, which
he's presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council, which he's
using to demonstrate to people that the money is going to go to the
right things. We have a long way to go. And they would be the first to
say we have a long way to go. But it is time to take a look at that.
Although this is something we'd obviously have to have extensive
consultations with Congress about.
Okay, thanks.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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