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25 February 2003

U.S. Outlines Humanitarian Assistance Plans for Iraq

(Extensive interagency effort underway) (8170)
The Bush administration, at a White House briefing February 24,
outlined plans for humanitarian assistance -- food, medicine and
supplies -- to the people of Iraq during and after a potential
military conflict.
For the last several months a U.S. government inter-agency effort has
been planning ways "to prevent or at least to mitigate" adverse
humanitarian consequences if military action becomes necessary to rid
Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, Elliott Abrams, the
president's senior adviser for the Near East and North Africa at the
National Security Council, told reporters.
The inter-agency strategy for humanitarian relief, he said, has six
key principles:
-- to minimize displacement, damage to the infrastructure, and
disruption of services;
-- to rely primarily on civilian relief agencies;
-- to have effective civil-military coordination;
-- to facilitate the operations of international and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs);
-- to preposition relief supplies;
-- and to minimize disruption of the Oil-for-Food ration distribution
system in effect in Iraq.
At the start of any conflict, the U.S. military may be needed to
"facilitate early secure access" to areas so that civilian relief
agencies can fulfill their humanitarian mandates, Abrams said.
"There will probably be circumstances where there is no U.N. agency or
NGO or civilian capability of any kind at a very early moment if
conflict happens, he said, and there, "the military may be actually
required to provide limited relief because there's no alternative."
Abrams said even before any war, the humanitarian situation in Iraq is
precarious due to the international sanctions imposed more than a
decade ago after the Gulf War, with 60 percent of Iraqis completely
dependent on food rations. An estimated 750,000 refugees already have
fled Iraq and 800,000 have been displaced from their homes but are
still in the country, he said.
Speaking along with Abrams were officials from the Defense Department,
State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID).
Andrew Natsios, administrator of USAID, said "we're planning for about
2 million internally displaced people and refugees," and "contingency
planning is what this is all about."
The U.S. government, he said, is training a 60-person civilian
Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) that would enter liberated
areas of Iraq in coordination with military forces to assess
humanitarian needs and coordinate U.S. government relief actions with
international organizations and NGOs.
"[T]here has been massive pre-positioning of supplies already in the
region, in four different countries, in large warehouses that we've
rented," Natsios said, and there have been "extensive conversations,
extensive coordination" with relief organizations.
Natsios said $26.6 million has already been spent on prepositioning of
supplies and "another $52 million is in the procurement system right
now being spent."
"[W]hat we tend to do in the disaster business is plan for the worst
and hope for the best," he said. "Very few disasters -- and I've been
involved in dozens of them over the last 14 years -- have ever come
out to be the worst case scenario."
However, he admitted that Saddam Hussein could do some very terrible
things. "It could happen. I don't think it's going to happen, but it
could. And there is contingency planning that goes into that," he
said.
"But in terms of the normal course of events that would take in these
emergencies, I think we are very well positioned."
Gene Dewey, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population,
Refugees and Migration, said "the center of gravity of the
humanitarian effort is the multilateral system." The U.N. agencies
"have been in country for a long time, for years and years. They have
systems set up. And they have systems that are particularly
appropriate for emergency action," he said.
The State Department, Dewey noted, has provided $15 million to the
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and $100,000 to the International
Organization for Migration towards this effort, and is attempting to
get the rest of the donor community also to contribute.
Ron Adams, Deputy Director of the new Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance in the Defense Department, said the office was
set up to "facilitate and expedite the work that these U.N. agencies,
NGOs and others will be doing to best benefit the Iraqi people and to
achieve the strategy that Elliott outlined ... with emphasis on the
six key points that he made in his presentation."
Joseph Collins, Deputy Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations,
said that if President Bush orders military action, the Department of
Defense is prepared to support humanitarian relief during combat and
to support reconstruction efforts after combat.
But he added: "What all of us have been talking about here is not
occupation, it's liberation. And, ultimately, creating a democracy
inside of Iraq."
Abrams said in terms of preparing the Iraqis for self-government after
the conflict, the general principle is to try to establish Iraqi
responsibility for Iraq as soon as it is possible.
"[I]t's our view," he said, that at the local, provincial, and
national levels, the more responsibility Iraqis can take, the better
off they'll be and the better off the coalition forces will be.
Following is the White House transcript:
(begin transcript)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
February 24, 2003
PRESS BRIEFING ON WHITE HOUSE INTER-AGENCY HUMANITARIAN RECONSTRUCTION
ISSUES
BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS, NSC SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA;
ANDREW NATSIOS, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT; GENE DEWEY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE BUREAU
OF POPULATION, REFUGEES AND MIGRATION; RON ADAMS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF
THE PENTAGON OFFICE OF RECONSTRUCTION AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE; JOE
COLLINS, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR STABILITY
OPERATIONS; ROBIN CLEVELAND, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
PROGRAMS
Room 450 Eisenhower Executive Office Building
3:40 P.M. EST
MR. ESKEW: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Tucker Eskew, Director of
the White House Office of Global Communications; thank you for joining
us this afternoon. We've got a great panel for you -- "you" being
members of the White House press corps, the foreign press and other
specialty and beat reporters are welcome this afternoon.
As you look at, from an inter-agency perspective, the efforts underway
in the United States government and working with others outside the
government to provide for and provision for humanitarian support in
Iraq in the event of any military action. Today's briefing is on the
record, pen and pad, obviously. We've got six people up here; five
will speak briefly -- and I'll tell you who the sixth is, as well.
Elliott Abrams will open today. Elliott is Special Assistant to the
President and Senior Director for Near East and North Africa at the
National Security Council. Andrew Natsios is Administrator of the U.S.
Agency for International Development. Gene Dewey is Assistant
Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population Refugees and
Migration. Ron Adams is Deputy Director of the Pentagon Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. And Joe Collins is Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. And then
we're also joined by Robin Cleveland, Associate Director for National
Security Programs at the OMB.
Elliott will open with some remarks; four of the other five will have
brief comments and then you can start asking Robin -- (laughter). And
we have roughly until about 4:20 p.m. And I ask everyone, please, to
identify yourself and your news organization so that we can make these
folks understand where your questions come from and who you work for.
Thanks a lot.
MR. ABRAMS: We go into a situation where we recognize that military
action in Iraq, if it is necessary, could have adverse humanitarian
consequences. And we've been planning, therefore, over the last
several months, an inter-agency effort to prevent or at least to
mitigate any such consequences.
We're going into a situation where there are a number of humanitarian
problems. About 60 percent of Iraqis, the U.N. estimates, are
completely dependent on the food distributions of the Oil For Food
program for their food supply, and many other Iraqis are at least
partly dependent. There are roughly 800,000 displaced persons inside
Iraq, and 740,000, it is estimated, who are refugees in nearby
countries.
We also know that conflict can have a number of humanitarian effects.
It can increase the number of displaced persons. It can interrupt the
Oil For Food distribution of food. It can disrupt electricity
supplies. It can lead U.N. and NGO workers to evacuate. Some have
already evacuated. We believe that the International Red Cross will
not evacuate, and stay during the conflict.
How much displacement will there be? How much of an impact on the
humanitarian situation would a conflict have? To a substantial degree,
the answer to that question depends on the regime. Does it use weapons
of mass destruction? Are there efforts against their own oil wells,
such as they did in Kuwait, when they set the oil wells on fire. Other
efforts to cause, deliberately cause flooding. Other efforts to
encourage ethnic violence or to destroy their own infrastructure.
Those are questions we're not going to be able to answer at this time.
We'll see.
But in dealing with them, the strategy we have for humanitarian relief
has six key principles, and I think you've got those before you. The
first is to try to minimize the displacement and the damage to the
infrastructure and the disruption of services. And the military
campaign planning has had -- has been tailored to try to do that, to
try to minimize the impact on civilian populations.
We have what is called the humanitarian mapping program, in which the
U.S. military has gone to very great lengths to work with humanitarian
organizations, international agencies to locate humanitarian sites,
key infrastructure, cultural and historical sites, and to protect them
to extent that that's possible.
We recognize the potential for Saddam Hussein to target his own
civilian population, he certainly has in the past -- and campaign
planning has aimed, to the extent possible, to deny him that
capability. We hope to discourage population displacement through --
partly through an information campaign, and partly by efforts to
provide aid rapidly and restore public services rapidly -- for
example, electricity, water supply, the Oil for Food Program, itself,
and I'll come back to that.
Second principle, to rely primarily on civilian relief agencies. And
civilian agencies and personnel are in the lead in all the
coordinating and planning that we've been doing for about -- I'd say
about four months. As a kind of offshoot of the deputies committee,
Robin Cleveland and I have co-chaired an interagency group that has
been doing this relief and reconstruction planning.
We want to rely primarily on civilian international organizations,
which is the standard practice in situations like this: U.N. agencies;
NGOs; other governments and their civilian agencies. OFDA, the Office
of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and the Refugee Bureau at State, PRM,
have been meeting with representatives of the international aid
community for several months now.
These organizations -- the U.N. agencies, the NGOs -- have enormous
expertise and capacity. And we're going to try to facilitate and fund
their efforts to the greatest extent possible. We welcome U.N.
planning -- and there has been a considerable amount of U.N. planning
by the specialized agencies to play a key role in Iraq, as they do
generally, when there are humanitarian crises. And we will be trying
to support and facilitate their activities.
The role of the U.S. military is not to take a lead role in
humanitarian relief activities. It is to facilitate early secure
access, to create a humanitarian space, to provide information for
U.S. civilian teams -- civilian relief agencies -- to fulfill their
humanitarian mandates. There will probably be circumstances where
there is no U.N. agency or NGO or civilian capability of any kind at a
very early moment if conflict happens. And there, the military may be
actually required to provide limited relief because there's no
alternative. And with the guidance and assistance of USG civilian
relief experts, they'll have to do that. We're going to anticipate
that any such period would be short, and that civilian relief agencies
would be able to get into those areas quickly.
Third principle, effective civil military coordination. We have been
training and preparing a 60-person DART team, disaster assistance
response team, which is really about the largest we've ever had. And
it would enter liberated areas of Iraq in coordination with U.S.
military forces, to, first of all, make an assessment of what are the
-- what is the humanitarian situation, to coordinate then U.S.
government relief activities that try to resolve whatever problems
there are. They will be capable of immediate, in the field grant
making. And their job is also liaison with the military, other donors,
NGOs, international organizations.
The DART itself is made up of professionals in the field of
humanitarian emergencies from several U.S. civilian agencies. And
we'll have -- there will be a number of DART teams in the field.
Andrew Natsios can say more about that. There are other coordination
structures, humanitarian operations centers and civil military
operation centers, being established in the region with the
cooperation of several neighboring governments.
The government of Kuwait, for example, has made available a large
facility to support a humanitarian operation center in Kuwait City.
The job there is information sharing coordination, deconflicting
efforts between U.S. military and Kuwaiti officials, U.S.-civilian
representatives, U.N. agencies, international organizations, NGOs,
coalition partners. The job of the humanitarian operation center is to
gather them in one place so they can all coordinate what they are
doing.
It is not a replacement for the U.N., which has its own coordinating
structure through OCHA, the coordinator for humanitarian affairs. But
it is a supplement to that. Fourth principle, facilitating IO and NGO
operations. We will provide civilian experts to be the liaison with
international organizations and NGOs, and to support and staff these
coordination centers -- the humanitarian operation center in Kuwait
and the civil military operation centers
-- so that they are -- this is a customary pattern for NGOs and
international organizations to work with the civilian side of U.S.
government and they'll continue to do that.
And one of the things that our civilians can do by their own
connection with the U.S. military is to provide information about
access to particular geographical locations, security in those areas,
and information about the populations in those areas that the U.S.
military may have found. The DART staff is the primary contact for
international organizations and NGOs in the field.
NGOs have raised the question of licensing, because due to the
sanctions regime that are in place -- the U.N. sanctions, the U.S.
sanctions on Iraq -- it has been difficult in some cases for them to
undertake the planning they want to do. For example, they may want to
go to Iraq. And we've had cases where they have been slowed down, so
we have been streamlining the OFAC, Office of Foreign Asset Control,
licensing procedures to expedite the issuance of licenses to NGOs so
that they can operate inside Iraq.
State and USAID now have blanket licenses that cover agencies, NGOs
that have received grants from them, from State or AID. And NGOs
working in areas of Iraq that are not controlled by the Saddam Hussein
regime and those who are only conducting assessments in the country
will also have an expedited registration process.
We've given money, we have provided funding to relief agencies so that
they can plan, hire staff and pre-position supplies. The Refugee
Bureau at State has provided over $15 million to international
agencies for pre-positioning and for contingency planning. Most of
that to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
AID has provided over $9 million to a variety of agencies for
contingency planning, including $2 million to UNICEF and $5 million to
the World Food Program. AID is in discussions with international
organizations to provide an additional $56 million soon.
We've also encouraged other donors. And a number of governments have
come forward to pledge millions of dollars to -- mostly to U.N.
agencies and to some NGOs.
Fifth, pre-positioning U.S. government relief supplies and response
mechanisms. We have been stockpiling blankets, water, ladders, shelter
supplies, medicines, other relief items at this point to serve about a
million people -- the material in question worth about $12 million.
And we're trying to forward-deploy those stockpiles into the region.
One example, there are 46, 40-foot long containers of relief supplies
en route to warehouses in the Gulf. We are stockpiling and
pre-positioning humanitarian daily rations. You may remember those
from Afghanistan and previous situations. This is a ration for one
person for one day -- the equivalent in calories of three meals. And
we're getting up to about 3 million of those pre-positioned.
And we are preparing to undertake immediate rehabilitation and
reconstruction efforts to deliver essential services to the Iraqi
people. And that means critical infrastructure, health facilities,
water and sanitation systems. And electricity is key in all of those.
Finally, sixth, support the resumption of the ration-distribution
system. That's a very important item. As I noted at the beginning,
about 60 percent of Iraqis depend on it for their food. It is an
immensely complex system that is run very competently by the U.N. and
by the Iraqis. There are at the ground level about 55,000 ration
agents. Iraqis get a ration booklet which tells them which day of the
month their family should go to the distribution point, usually a
local grocer, to pick up their rations for the month. We will make an
effort to get that system up and running again if there is a conflict,
and if we are in that situation.
We want to disrupt that system as little as possible, and get it back
on its feet as soon as possible. And that is something that a lot of
U.S. agencies are thinking about. We recognize that that is a critical
aspect of -- a critical aspect of the humanitarian situation in Iraq.
Let's go down -- I've forgotten what the order is. I think -- we're
skipping you, so Andrew.
MR. NATSIOS: I'm Andrew Natsios from AID. Let me first mention that
this planning exercise has been going on now since late September. So
I've been involved in emergency response now for almost 14 years. We
have never had nearly five months advance time before a major
emergency, should it happen. And so the amount of time that has gone
into this, and the amount of staff that has gone into this has been
enormous within AID, and the interagency process.
There are 60 people from the DART team, which comes out of the Office
of Foreign Disaster Assistance, which I headed in the first Bush
administration. There is staff from Gene Dewey's office and the
Refugee Office in the State Department, and the Public Health Service
in HHS are on that team, as well. There are another 140 people working
in AID who are technical staff back in Washington, on the planning
exercises necessary to make sure all of this happens the way it's
supposed to. And the areas that we focus on are first those basic
humanitarian requirements that keep people alive and reduce human
suffering in any emergency. One is health and medicine, the second is
water and sanitation, which are critical issues, particularly in Iraq.
Third is food and nutrition. Fourth is shelter. And a fifth is to
internally displaced people and, of course, there could be refugee
movements, as well, cross border.
And so the amount of time, the amount of preparation, the amount of
planning we've done, the amount of staff working on this has been very
substantial. I might also add that this is not new -- working with the
military in conflicts is something that the U.S. government has been
doing for a very long time, since even before the end of the Cold War.
You may recall that we had a refugee emergency with about a million
Kurds up in the mountains in northern Iraq. There was civil affairs
units and military units, AID sent its largest DART team at that time
-- in 1991, of 30 people -- that was sent in to work the relief effort
there.
We've been in Bosnia and Macedonia and Kosovo, in Haiti, in Panama --
after Noriega. You can go through a list of instances where this has
happened before. So this is not a new thing. It's been done before.
The mechanisms for coordination within the international institutions
have actually been established, they've been tested and they do work,
I have to tell you. They've been refined. There are manuals on how the
inter-connection between the NGOs, U.N. agencies, the ICRC, military
operations and the DART team work in these emergencies. And that is a
very important thing because, once again, we're not testing something
that's new here.
And so the three fundamental things we're doing is to assemble the
team, train it -- they're going through very extensive training --
getting everybody's job descriptions down and duties down. We've
actually done some test operations. Secondly, pre-positioning the
stockpiles that Elliott mentioned. Many of those stockpiles are
actually in the region now, simply waiting should they be necessary.
And, third, establishing these coordination mechanisms that I
mentioned earlier.
The team will also do assessments, rapid assessments to determine what
is needed. We do planning based on scenario building. But the reality
is on the ground that you always have to actually see what's happened.
And the assessments are then done and then decisions are made about
the disposition of relief commodities and resources.
So I think we're in good shape, in terms of the effort that we've put
into this exercise, given the amount of time that we've had to think
through it. I might also add, we don't know what's going to happen,
but contingency planning is what this is all about. Whenever we see
something may happen, we try to plan for it. Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks.  Gene, I think you're next.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: The center of gravity of the humanitarian
effort is the multilateral system. And that's the case for several
reasons. One, the U.N. agencies have been in country for a long time,
for years and years. They have systems set up. And they have systems
that are particularly appropriate for emergency action.
For example, for the water sector, which is always the most critical
sector, the system for that which works best, which is recognized as
best, is UNICEF working with NGOs such as Oxfam-UK and other NGOs with
the expertise in water. There are other systems for immunization,
systems for food distribution. So this is another reason.
The U.N. agencies, as Elliott mentioned, have been very cooperative
and forward-leaning on this for several reasons. One, it's
humanitarian that we're talking about, as much as that can be
separated from political questions. Secondly, it's prudent planning.
It's the way you have to do it. In the possibility of a contingency,
it's only prudent to do what the U.N. agencies are doing. And then a
third reason is this planning is being done without any presumption of
the inevitability of military conflict.
And so these have all contributed to a very smooth planning,
preparing, pre-positioning effort on the part of the U.N. agencies
working with their NGO implementing partners, in terms of
coordination.
The principles that we're working, aside from multilateralism, include
what has already been mentioned, and I can't stress it enough, that is
the need to avoid population displacement, or to minimize it as much
as possible, because that's one of the most costly, both in material
and human terms, that can occur in any contingency, when people leave
their homes and have to undergo the expense of being at the mercy of
the international community for an extended period of time, and then
the cost or maybe the impossibility of ever getting back to their
homes again.
The purposes that we're dealing with are to relieve hardship and acute
human suffering, but at the same time, prepare the way for almost
immediate movement to rehabilitation and reconstruction, and to
facilitate that next step.
The populations of concern that our bureau, the Population, Refugee
Immigration Bureau is most concerned about include refugees -- those
refugees that are already the charge of the U.N. high commissioner for
refugees outside of Iraq, but those that will also be displaced
outside the country in the event of any conflict and those that will
try to seek asylum outside the country but may be clustered on the
borders. Those two groups are going to be a primary concern for us.
But we also have a concern for the internally displaced, those that
are already internally displaced -- as mentioned the 800,000 that are
internally displaced. We have an arrangement with USAID which we
recently negotiated as to how we divide up the effort for internally
displaced persons. Normally those that are dealt with unilaterally
through NGOs, AID will take care of those needs. And we coordinate on
those that are serviced mainly by the international community, and
those agencies would include the International Committee of the Red
Cross.
And in the case of Iraq, since there is no U.N. agency that is
specifically tasked with the responsibility for internally displaced
persons, the Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA,
will be playing a prominent role in coordinating the assistance to the
internally displaced.
Keep in mind, too, that other agencies, such as UNICEF, will be
working on sectors that cut across the needs of the internally
displaced. UNICEF's work with immunizations, with mother-child health
care, with health needs IN general and water and sanitation, that will
be very important. We'll also be working with World Food Program for
those needs and with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies.
Basically the functions of our bureau will be to help make
coordination work. Our core expertise is the multilateral system.
We'll do our best to make the humanitarian operation center and the
civil military operations centers just that, civil military and not
military operations centers. And we'll be doing our best to bridge
those cultures between the civilians and the military, planners and
implementers if implementation becomes necessary.
We were first out of the box in terms of providing funding for
pre-positioning and preparedness, we gave just about all we had, the
$15 million that we've given to the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees and $100,000 to the International Organization for Migration.
We did it, though, also to try to leverage as much as possible the
efforts of the rest of the donor community. This is slow going. It's
heavy lifting, but it is going to be one of the major efforts that can
assure success in the humanitarian field to get as much burden-sharing
contribution as we can before the contingency is actually upon us.
Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks, Gene. We have actually done that. We have actually
sent cables out and also raised this a number of times in bilateral
meetings, requests for other governments to step forward and do
whatever they could by way of contributions to NGOs and U.N. agencies.
Ron Adams is deputy director of the new Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance.
MR. ADAMS: Thanks, Elliott. I'm Jay Garner's deputy. And we're
participating in the interagency process that Elliott outlined for you
earlier. It's our job to operationalize or to implement the plans that
are being developed by the interagency process and by our coalition
partners in support of the Commander of U.S. Central Command and the
coalition forces that would be involved.
I want to emphasize a point that's already been made a couple of
times: our organization is a civilian-military organization --
predominantly civilian. And it's made up of representatives from
federal government agencies and departments. Some are represented
right here. Many of Andrew's people and Gene's people are involved in
our organization. And these are the kinds of people, experts that
you're used to seeing being involved in these kinds of activities.
These are the people who have worked on the ground with international
organizations, nongovernmental organizations, U.N. agencies across the
gamut.
Our job then is to, we hope, facilitate and expedite the work that
these U.N. agencies, NGOs and others will be doing to best benefit the
Iraqi people and to achieve the strategy that Elliott outlined later,
with emphasis on the six key points that he made in his presentation.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks. Dr. Joseph Collins is Deputy Secretary of Defense
for Stability Operations. Joe.
DR. COLLINS: Thanks. Elliott, I came here prepared to say ten things.
All of them have been said twice, so let me repeat only about seven of
them for the third time.
If the President orders military action, the Department of Defense is
prepared for military contingencies, but it's also prepared to support
humanitarian relief during combat and to support reconstruction
efforts after combat.
Some of the key things that we are able to do in those areas have been
mentioned. The first, humanitarian mapping and careful targeting to
avoid excessive damage to the civilian population. Secondly, during
the combat phase the Department of Defense is ready to assist AID and
State in providing humanitarian relief to the people of Iraq.
Thirdly, and if necessary, DOD is ready to provide special services
and supplies, such as the famous humanitarian daily rations. Fourth,
on the reconstruction effort, DOD is prepared to assist State, AID,
NGOs and the United Nations to help the Iraqi people in
reconstruction. And also -- and, perhaps, most importantly -- to help
them prepare for self-government. And I think that's the key point to
remember here. What all of us have been talking about here is not
occupation, it's liberation. And, ultimately, creating a democracy
inside of Iraq.
Among the key things that we'll be doing in the reconstruction phase
are things that also have a military flavor, and that would be the
location of weapons of mass destruction and their subsequent
destruction. And, finally, the provision of security and the ensuring
the provision of security throughout the nation. Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks.  Questions?
Q: I have two questions of the briefers. How many refugees are you
planning for? How many IDPs? How many DART teams, and where will they
go?
MR. NATSIOS: Well, just in terms of the number of DART teams, there is
one large team of 60 people that we'll divide into three sub-units.
There will be a core headquarters that will control all of the
operations. So there will be three teams that will be dispatched to
different parts of the country.
I think we're planning for about 2 million, as I recall, internally
displaced people and refugees. What was the third question?
Q: It was IDPs, refugees and how many DART teams  -- 
MR. NATSIOS: Right.
Q: And where would they go?
MR. NATSIOS: Yes.
Q: The U.N. issued a report saying that casualties will be as a direct
result of U.S. bombardment and invasion, about 100,000 civilians
killed; 500,000 wounded. They're talking about maybe a million and a
half refugees, then a half million malnutrition. What are you
accounting for? What kind of figures do you have in your six-point
contingency plan?
MR. ABRAMS: I have not seen that U.N. report. What part of the U.N.
released it?
Q: Could you repeat the question, please?
Q: The question was, they're talking about figures -- you know, killed
and wounded civilians, the direct result of combat. And, in fact,
Michael Allen, the other day, of the Institute -- the Brookings
Institute also --
MR. ABRAMS: The answer is that this is just plain speculation, as is
our number for the number of displaced persons. It is just
speculation. It depends on a number of variables, not least of them,
how long does any potential conflict continue. But one of the other
key variables is not the damage that the conflict does to the
population of Iraq, it's how much additional damage the government of
Iraq does to the population of Iraq. But numbers like those, I think
one is really just pulling them out of thin air.
Q: Do you have any number, any figures in mind?
MR. ABRAMS: No, no.
Q: Could I follow on that? As you know, Refugees International and, I
think, the International Crisis Group has prepared numbers not too
different from the 2 million that you suggested. They suggested about
a million and a half would be put to flight beyond the borders, and
about 900,000 internally displaced.
Is that in the ballpark of what your calculations suggest and, two --
understanding that you respect -- and two, both of these groups have
criticized you, saying that there is not nearly enough pre-positioned
supply, particularly food and medicine, to address that. Can you
respond to that in any way?
MR. NATSIOS: Let me first say, I've heard a lot of comments, and I
find it a little annoying in some cases because the people who have
been making them are sitting in the meetings with us, knowing that
it's not true.
Q: These folks?
MR. NATSIOS: No, I'm not going to mention individual organizations.
We've had meetings every week, for the last two or three months, with
humanitarian organizations to go over this stuff. For months, every
week, and they sit there, and we all go -- or not me, but my staff
from AID goes, and the rest of the agencies, and we go over the detail
planning that we're going through. So they know very well that there's
been massive pre-positioning of supplies already in the region, okay,
in four different countries, in large warehouses that we've rented.
The stuff is there now, and more stuff is on the way.
So it's really not -- it's not the case that -- there has been
extensive conversations, extensive coordination and extensive
pre-positioning of supplies. I might also add, what we tend to do in
the disaster business is plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Very few disasters -- and I've been involved in dozens of them over
the last 14 years -- have ever come out to be the worst case scenario.
And we don't know -- I mean, if Saddam does some very terrible things,
we can't predict that. But in terms of the normal course of events
that would take in these emergencies, I think we are very well
positioned.
Q: On that point, to what extent does the possible use of weapons of
mass destruction factor into contingency planning that you're all
doing?
MR. NATSIOS: There is some of it, but you know, you never can predict
entirely what Saddam will do. You know what he did to the Kurds, in
the infamous Anfal campaign, where he massacred 100,000 to 200,000 of
them. He displaced the Marsh Arabs, one of the richest cultures in the
Middle East, 500,000 people were driven out of the marshes after they
were drained. There were execution squads sent in. The United Nations
rapporteur on human rights wrote a scathing report on the atrocities
committed by the Iraqi government displacing these -- these are among
the poorest peoples in Iraq.
The same thing happened in Kirkuk with the Turkmen population. They
purged them out. They shut off all their food rations. And they're
internally displaced within the country now. That has nothing to do
with the American campaign; that was done by the regime in the 1990s,
over the last five or six years. So some of the displacement we're
going to have to deal with already occurred, and it has nothing to do
with the military campaign; it was the actions of the government.
Q: That's not weapons of mass destruction.  That's what I asked  -- 
MR. NATSIOS: Yes, it was weapons of mass destruction. That's the whole
point. The Kurdish -- the attacks on the Kurds were using chemical and
biological weapons. The first time any head of state or any government
ever used those weapons against their own population.
Q: Yes, but the question is, what are you planning for now? Tell us
what you anticipate.
MR. NATSIOS: We are anticipating it could happen. I don't think it's
going to happen, but it could. And there is contingency planning that
goes into that.
MR. ABRAMS: Yes?
Q: From where and how, first, you will start delivering the
humanitarian aid? And, two, how much the -- is preparing to allocate
for this haven't aid that's going to be spent on Iraq?
MR. ABRAMS: Two questions -- from where and how much money. I guess I
can ask Gene or Andrew.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: From where the humanitarian aid will be
delivered, of course, there has been stockpiling in country. The
people of Iraq have been asked to have at least a month's supply of
food on hand. So there is something already there. There are
stockpiles, as Andrew mentioned, in neighboring countries which will
be drawn upon.
Q: -- first spot for you deliver this humanitarian aid to Iraq?
MR. NATSIOS: There are about four countries in the region that have
stockpiles, NGO staging areas and U.N. staging areas. They're there
now. And I'm not going to go through which ones have what --
MR. ABRAMS: No, and to go into further detail would take us into the
area of military planning, as well. So, money?
MS. CLEVELAND: We're in the process of developing cost estimates.
We've done our planning based on a series of tasks that we assume,
regardless of what the political management structure may be. And
we've examined health, education, water and sanitation, finance,
telecommunications, and infrastructure, and tried to sort of lay out a
series of expected tasks on a sliding scale. For example, in
education, what would it cost to rebuild 2,500 schools and get all
primary school children back in school?
If we don't need to rebuild 2,500 schools, we can shift it to some
other area. But we've sort of tried to lay out a series of benchmarks.
And we expect to take the overall cost by sector to the President some
time in the next week or two.
Q: -- ceiling that you assumed?
MS. CLEVELAND: No, we've built from the ground up, in a series of
tasks, AID and PRM have sort of identified what they think will need
to be done, and laid out sort of what needs to be done in one -- would
be the emergency humanitarian piece, what needs to be done in six
months -- just as AID plans in any country, in any mission for
reconstruction and rehabilitation.
MS. NATSIOS: We've spent $26.5 million to date, another $52 million is
in process through the procurement system right now.
MS. CLEVELAND: But that's a very preliminary  -- 
Q: That's not what the cost of the budget is, that's the  -- 
Q: Could you repeat that?
MR. NATSIOS: The numbers?
Q: Yes, repeat the numbers.
Q: Please repeat the numbers that you just did.
MR. NATSIOS: The $26.6 million has already been spent. That's what
bought the commodities that are in the Gulf region now, and then
another $52 million is in the procurement system right now being
spent. That's what we have to do for the pre-positioning in the early
work.
Q: The cables that you sent out and the appeals that have been made in
private meetings, have they generated any money from any other
countries?
MR. ABRAMS: There have been -- I can't say whether it was generated by
American cables, but there have been contributions by a number of
governments, in the millions of dollars.
MR. NATSIOS: I have been  -- 
MS. CLEVELAND: Two international organizations, to UNHCR and those
kind of organizations.
MR. NATSIOS: Right. I've talked to at least 10 of my counterparts, the
development ministers in other governments, about what they're
planning to do. We've had conversations and decided what we would do
and how much -- they've told me how much they intend to put in. So
there is coordination going on at the donor level, government level.
Some of that money will go through NGOs, some of it will go to the
U.N. agencies and the --
Q: I noticed that you say you're being very careful as you plan your
military operation to look out for infrastructure and to also look out
for cultural sites. How much of your effort to protect that is going
to be complicated by the fact that Saddam Hussein is already
positioning a lot of his equipment around these cultural sites, around
these crucial points of infrastructure? Is that going to cause you
problems?
DR. COLLINS: Yes. We've had, I think, an extensive effort to map
cultural sites. And we've made tremendous progress in the last few
weeks doing that. It's a well known fact that Saddam has positioned
military equipment, not just near cultural sites, but also hospitals
and other places which one would expect wouldn't be a part of the
military command.
There's an extensive effort here to separate the wheat from the chaff.
And ultimately, the burden will be on the field commander to make
decisions on critical targets where there are compromised situations.
And I have to leave it at that.
Q: Could I just follow up on a budgetary question? In this process,
according to the budget of the President, how long is the time frame?
And drawing on your experience from Afghanistan, how long is a
sensible time frame for humanitarian assistance?
MS. CLEVELAND: One of the reasons that we got started five months ago
was to assure that when and if the President -- or if and when the
President made a decision, that we would, simultaneous with the
initiation of conflict, not only ask for resources for the Department
of Defense, but ask for roughly a year's worth of resources for
humanitarian and reconstruction agencies.
But, as you know, AID is -- so that doesn't speak or beg the question
as to what kind of political infrastructure will be there. There's
likely to be some kind of AID support for some period of time, which
shouldn't, as I said, beg the question of what the nature of a
political infrastructure would be. I think we would be anticipate a
year's worth of support for AID.
Q: As we all know, the Turkish government is trying to avoid any crush
of refugees again, as we had it before during the Gulf War. My
question is to Mr. Collins. What kind of cooperation you already have
with the Turkish side?
DR. COLLINS: I'd love to be able to answer you, except I couldn't give
you a good detailed, professional answer because that's really not in
my lane, and I don't know.
Q: In terms of preparing the Iraqis for self-government after the
conflict, how quickly are you going to try to get Iraqi opposition
leaders into the country? And do you intend to appoint an indigenous
interim Iraqi leader before you move to free elections?
MR. ABRAMS: The general principle is to try to establish Iraqi
responsibility for Iraq as soon as possible. This will -- this may
differ in different regions of the country. It may differ according to
the nature of the responsibility -- civilian military, for example,
might be different.
But the general principle is to try to do this as soon as it is
possible. I can't really go much beyond that about what -- how long
will that take. It depends in part on questions that we don't know the
answers to. What will the security situation inside Iraq be if there's
a conflict, at the end of that conflict?
So I can't give you any time lines. But what I can tell you is that
it's our view that if the local, provincial, and national levels, the
more responsibility Iraqis who are currently free, who are soon to be
free, can take, the better off they'll be and the better off the
coalition forces will be.
Q: Elliott, I think this is a question for you. During the Vietnam
War, the U.S. viewed and used humanitarian assistance, not just as an
end in itself, but as having a political purpose as well. The Hearts
and Minds Campaign, which is, you know, is now viewed as tainted
failure to it. That comparison is being made now given that there is a
larger political program for Iraq, winning over people to a notion of
democracy that they'll believe in and that will last. Can you take
that comparison further? Again, there are differences, but the fact
that Hearts and Minds was seen not to have worked last time around,
what's the difference this time?
MR. ABRAMS: I would not take that comparison. I would take the
comparison, really, to Afghanistan. It was the President's instruction
from the outset that we make not only a military effort, but that we
make a large humanitarian effort because the whole purpose of the
involvement was to benefit the people of Afghanistan as well as to
attack terrorist bases.
The effort in Iraq, if it comes to pass, will be aimed at eliminating
those weapons of mass destruction, and the regime that built them, and
freeing the Iraqi people from one of the most monstrous regimes on the
face of the earth. Clearly, the better we can do in this humanitarian
effort, the better off the Iraqi people will be, and the more quickly
they will come to see this intervention by coalition forces as having
changed and improved their lives. So there's no way of avoiding the
fact that the better we do at it, the more positive of political
impact it will have inside Iraq and in the region.
But as in Afghanistan, that's not the purpose for doing it. The
purpose for doing it is humanitarian.
Q: Can I follow up on that?
MS. CLEVELAND: In answer to the question about how long we're planning
-- one of the reasons that we're planning for basically a year is that
we will start the follow-on year budget cycle in December, something
like that. And so what we wanted to avoid was sort of the gaps that we
felt we created by uncertainty in Afghanistan. So it's neither a
presumption about the political structure, nor is a presumption that
it's one year and it would be over in terms of whatever support we
would offer.
Q: I remember a campaign pledge about nation-building. Isn't that what
this is? Maybe the Defense Department representatives can talk about
that? Isn't this nation-building?
DR. COLLINS: I've always been of the opinion that the indigenous
people build their own nations. I'm not sure what the right phrase for
what we are engaged in is. We speak about -- in two different phases,
humanitarian relief and reconstruction. And I would prefer to leave it
at that.
MR. ABRAMS: I think that's right. The responsibility for turning Iraq
into a stable, peaceful democracy falls to the people of Iraq. The
most we can do is get -- if this conflict occurs, is get this
monstrous regime that is preventing them from doing that out of the
way.
Q: This is a question probably to Joe Collins. But others might want
to answer it. A number of the aid agencies in Iraq, or on the border
at the moment, are concerned that once a conflict starts there will be
attempts by some of the displaced people to try and regain homes or
land that was taken from them in the past campaigns you mentioned.
What sort of arbitration system will be immediately set up to deal
with these conflicts, especially as Saddam Hussein's forces have
already installed people in those lands?
DR. COLLINS: I think in a combat phase, if it were to come to that, I
think most of the reconciliation and redivision would sort of fall
under the heading of reconstruction. But during the reconstruction
phase, and prior to that, during the combat phase, the local
commanders have the responsibility to maintain order in their areas.
And any sort of large-scale efforts to create civil disturbances would
also interfere with the military operation. So they would have a great
incentive to ensure that that doesn't happen during the combat phase.
MR. ABRAMS: Okay, thank you very much.
END 4:27 P.M. EST
(end transcript)
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