AFGHANISTAN: A NEW START?

Transcription

1 CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE AFGHANISTAN: A NEW START? WELCOME AND MODERATOR: JESSICA T. MATHEWS, PRESIDENT, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE SPEAKER: KAI EIDE, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE IN AFGHANISTAN, UNITED NATIONS ASSISTANCE MISSION TO AFGHANISTAN MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008 Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

2 JESSICA MATHEWS: Good afternoon. My name is Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment. I want to welcome you all here and thank all of you who braved the who swam here today to join us. I m very pleased to welcome you to the latest in a series that we ve been having of discussions about the future of Afghanistan, a subject that is of central important, not only to that country itself but to so many other U.S. and Western interests and world interests. Prior to the NATO summit in Bucharest, we heard from Dr. Abdullah, former foreign minister of Afghanistan, and from Dr. Jalali, the country s former interior minister. And this afternoon we are very honored to host Ambassador Kai Eide who was recently appointed by the secretary general to be his special representative for, and head of the mission of assistance mission to, Afghanistan. Ambassador Eide previously served with the U.N. as the secretary general s special envoy to Kosovo in 2005 and special representative to Bosnia in 1997 and 98. In addition, as a member of the Norwegian foreign service, he has served as Norway s special advisor on the Balkans, ambassador also with special responsibility to Croatia, has been the perm. rep. to NATO and ambassador to the OSCE. Ambassador Eide, it s clear from your experience why the secretary general would have turned to you for this enormous responsibility. A deep and acute knowledge of how NATO works, real experience, firsthand experience of U.N. operations in the field, an experience with the comparably complex political situation in Bosnia and Kosovo all of that seems to be a resume made to order for this particularly difficult job. And there can be few more vital roles on the foreign-policy stage in the next few years than yours. Almost seven years after 9/11 now and after the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, that country s future remains very much in doubt. The Taliban is resurgent. President Karzai s hold over Afghan polity has been considerably diminished. And the impact of Pakistan s recent elections has yet to be felt. And that s just the beginning. And while there appears to be a consensus of rhetoric among the international community, the role and objectives and strategy remains unclear, lacking in coordination particularly on the civilian side, which will be your responsibility. And the real willingness to act and make a commitment is very much in doubt. So, all of these issues are very much on our minds here in Washington. We re eager to hear how it looks now from your new position. And we thank you very much for joining us today. KAI EIDE: Thank you very much for inviting me. I must say then from the outset that I ve been in my current job for one month, out of which I spent half traveling abroad, so that means about 15 days on the ground. This is an area where you do not become an instant expert, as you know. But I have also, in my previous capacities as political director of the Norwegian foreign ministry, and also as a NATO ambassador of course, visited Afghanistan a number of times. What are the tools that I have available mainly when I took up my job now? First of all and this is important I do feel that I have the broad confidence of the international

3 community. I have been traveling in Europe for a week, to London, Paris, Brussels, and to Berlin. And I did feel that very strongly. And I feel it perhaps even more strongly here with the kind of program that I really have here in Washington over the next couple of days. I do believe that there is a strong support for the job that I, and the mission, will now do, and that there is a strong support for an expanded U.N. role, which means also that we have to look at our own mission and see how we can make sure that UNOMA, the U.N. on the ground, has the resources required to carry out that job And second, I must say I feel that I have the strong confidence of the Afghan leadership and the Afghans. And the president, President Karzai, and members of the government have received me all very generously and in a very open way. That is one important tool. If you do not have that, then it will be very difficult. But then, also, I must say on the other hand, following the discussions at the U.N. in March, there is also now a sharper mandate. It s a mandate which highlights a number of issues and, in a way, sets the priorities for the mission and for me. And perhaps I should spend a few minutes going through what I see as the most important issues that are highlighted in that mandate. First of all, coordination and everybody now talks about coordination, which is good. But what I see also is that more and more countries talk about their readiness to be coordinated. And that is a breakthrough; that is a breakthrough. If we can prove in the weeks and months ahead that that readiness is there, then I think we can get quite far, because what is happening today? We have a very fragmented international community strong and fragmented international community meeting a fragmented and weak Afghan administration. That is not a recipe for success. We have to bring the international community together through greater aid effectiveness, through more coherent policies; and then, we have to help the Afghan government get their act better together in a more coherent policy. That will certainly be heard. But it s for me one of the first priorities that we face. And therefore, we are also going through the coordination mechanisms that we have on the ground. And you know how it is. Once such mechanisms are put in place, they very easily become bureaucratically cumbersome with I don t know how many contact groups and working groups under the structures that are put in place. And all of a sudden, it becomes a process-oriented consultation process and not a delivery-oriented process. We have to get away from that. And we are now working on how we can make the structure as lean and as mean as possible with regard to bringing countries together around what must be the focus of our work. Coordination is one: delivery-oriented consultations and coordination. And then the civil-military coordination. There is an impression, of course that the military has their campaign and have their strategies, and the civilians theirs, or perhaps many, and that there are so many national agendas and NGO agendas out there in the field across the country. We have to bring these together. And particularly, the relationship between the civilians and the military that is also one of the most prominent parts of my mandate. You can imagine that with 11 years behind me at NATO, and four of them as permanent representative, that is very much my instinct: to move towards the greater

4 civilian-military coordination. But it must be as civilian-military coordination, which is not based on security-related issues. It must be built on the political vision of where we want to go. It cannot be so that the civilian-military relationship is the military carrying out their campaign and asking the civilians where are you now to fill in after us? We have to be able to draw up a plan for that kind of coordination, which is political in nature and not securityrelated in nature. And I would like do that. But I must say also, while doing so, we must remember that the U.N. and NATO ISAF has two very different roles. And I do not want our role our political role in any sense to be compromised through that relationship with a closer relationship with the military. We have to have a relationship, which inspires confidence with the military, but also inspires confidence with the NGO community, with the development community, with the humanitarian community, so that we can through our cooperation with the military also contribute to expanding that humanitarian space that is so important. And one other element in this: The U.N. mission may at one stage be called on to play a political role in support of the Afghan government in political processes that may lie ahead of us. And in order to be able to do that, we have to be seen as a mission with a distinct and independent political mandate. Is it possible to do both these things at the same time? Yes, I believe it is. And I believe it is absolutely necessary, and that we will manage. There was, of course, as you will remember when there was a discussion about Padeshtun (ph), the question should he wear one or two or three hats. I have one hat. And I am very comfortable with that one hat. And I believe to have three hats is really too cumbersome to be able to do the job that we should do. With three hats, I think that other players in the international community, other components of the Afghan society will always ask which hat does he have on now? Is it the U.N. hat, the NATO hat, or the EU hat? There must be no doubt that I wear one hat, and that is the U.N. hat. And I think politically for the U.N., for NATO, for the humanitarian community, this is right. We can have three people wearing different hats: a U.N. hat, NATO hat, EU hat. But they should be different people and with the U.N. in the lead. And that, I believe, is what is also recognized broadly by the international community today. In order to do this, in order to play a greater role in the civilian and military relationship, we also have to look at how can we expand the U.N. mission across the country. Today we have eight regional offices and nine provincial offices. We do intend and we are today studying where can we expand and how can we expand? Of course, we will do so with due regard to the security situation. But also with regard to identifying how and where can we be most useful? But I foresee that in some time from now, the U.N. mission will expand further beyond where we are today. We want to expand our role in the field and be more useful in the outreach program around, across the country. Governance we re supposed to support the Afghan government in governance issues, creating good governance. There, I must say also, a good start has been made through the creation of what is called the independent directorate and local government last year. And it s already making progress and we see that on the ground in replacing governors and also in modernizing the structure of the administration at other levels. We certainly

5 want to support that and do our best to build up under what is happening today under the leadership of Mr. Poppel (sp) who is the head of the IDLG. And I come back to this because we need to go beyond this part of governance. But this is one of our roles. Then, with regard to humanitarian assistance, we also have to play a role as part of our mandate. We are today in a situation where we do not know what the humanitarian needs are across the country, partly because of security reasons, but partly because of lack of capability in the international community. We want to build up a stronger capability to assess what the humanitarian problems and crisis are, so that we can address them more effectively together with other international agencies. And we have seen that very recently, and you see it in other countries. The food problem the rising food prices are also a serious problem for Afghanistan. And we have to help them address it. But it will need short-term, medium-term, and long-term solutions. And on the short term, of course, getting the food required into Afghanistan, be able to assess what the needs are, and to distribute to those who need the most. This is an acute problem that we have to address. Then, let me mention also the reconciliation program. It s being mentioned more and more often and it will be an issue that we have to address more profoundly in the period ahead of us. And let me say on this, we are asked to play a role in our mandate in support of the Afghan government. There are certain principles that must lie at the basis for any such process, and that is, first of all, it must be led by the Afghan government, and with the support of the international community. The international community can never play a leading role in this respect. It is as with the military campaign. It is not the internationals who will win hearts and minds of Afghans; it is the Afghans themselves. That we must understand; and I am not sure that it is fully understood everywhere. That is the first principle. And then, second, it must be based on the constitution and what we have achieved over the last few years. We cannot see a reconciliation process where we are entering into discussions, which will compromise all the important things we have achieved with regard to the participation of women in society, with regard to girls being able to go to school, with regard to progress on the media, and so on. That cannot be compromised. And then, the third, we do often when we talk about reconciliation, we talk about Taliban commanders. I think we must have a much broader nationwide perspective when we talk about the reconciliation process. And finally, it is a process that cannot be a replacement for a military engagement but must be based on a position of strength, so the two must go hand in hand. And of course, as you understand, it must be politically driven, not driven by security or intelligence considerations. These are some of the most important elements in our mandate. There are others. And I ll come back to that. And I ll do that in the context of what I now see as the most immediate challenges that we are facing. And that is, first of all, the Paris conference, which will take place on the 12 th of June in Paris, obviously.

6 We don t have much time available. This conference will build on what happened in Bucharest, which was a conference with the participation of NATO, of course, and troop contributors of the U.N., of the World Bank, and the European Union. It was a conference where, for the first time, the security issues were placed in a broader perspective. Now, we must move from there and to the Paris Conference. That conference will be mainly focused on civilians issues on development and political questions that we have to address. And the centerpiece for that meeting will be the new Afghan national development strategy, which is now being launched. After much work and after consultations with thousands of Afghans, and also with the assistance of the international community. That will be the centerpiece together with the Afghanistan compact, which was adopted in London in February And what must we do? We must demonstrate in Paris a clear commitment to support the Afghan national development strategy. What does it mean? It means more resources are required. More resources are required. And we should go to countries who are potential donor countries but who today do not contribute perhaps what we could expect, and ask them to be more generous in supporting the government of Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan. That is one element. The second is greater aid effectiveness. We have to spend the resources that we have better than we do today. It is almost amazing that after so many years, we still duplicate to an extent that is almost unimaginable sometimes. And we discover examples every day. We still spend the money in a way that does not create Afghan capabilities, capacities, but that bring in consultants, and bring in capacity, and lift them out again, making the projects that we put in place almost unsustainable. We must spend our money in a way that leaves more of it in the country and not as much as today is the case in the donor country. And we must have less tied aid. Yes, I know that much of this is difficult because the situation is such on the ground that corruption is there. There is a lack of accountability. So it is difficult, of course, for nations to tell their parliaments to ask for permission by the parliaments to use the money in the way that we now seek. But I do believe that we are moving in that direction. And I think also the visit that took place by the administrator of the USAID about a week ago, Henrietta Fore, and a couple of other ministers of development who went in the right direction. I believe that there is a growing understanding and a growing commitment that assistance has to be used more according to Afghan plans and priorities, more in a way that leaves capacity on the ground, and more in a way where we use the resources available from Afghanistan rather than importing resources from the outside. Just to mention a timely legal example, timely unimportant example but very few countries today make use of Afghan mineral water, which is perfectly good. But still, most of the donor countries today import water from the outside. It s a tiny little thing, but why not try to move in the direction where we make use of what the Afghans can offer instead of importing everything that we need to do our work? So, greater aid effectiveness is important. Better coordination, I mentioned that already. Better ability to monitor the assistance and when we now restructure the U.N.

7 mission, we will try to put up there a component whose task it is to monitor aid effectiveness and see to it that we from the international community and the Afghans spend the money in the best possible way so that we can avoid waste, avoid duplication, and ultimately save time and serve the Afghan people better than we do today. But then, of course, there has to be another component that this is not only the international community that has to do things differently. It s also the government of Afghanistan. We need to see a stronger emphasis on combating corruption inside Afghanistan. It is important. We need to see a greater willingness to demonstrate the right level of accountability from the Afghan side. If not, we will not be able to turn the international community around and to spend the resources the way they want to do: clearly in line with Afghan plans and priorities. And then, let me say one thing at the end on this particular topic. We all need to take more of a national perspective. Today, we have a situation where one country is focused on one province where they have their military forces, another on a second, and a third on a third province. And very few have a truly national perspective. Now, what is the result of that? Some of the provinces that are perhaps among the poorest provinces are provinces who do not grow poppy or stopped growing poppy, and perhaps also have new and better and more competent governors still are not given their fair share of the aid. That means we do not use the time and our resource in a way that can immunize those provinces against potential future problems. We should all have a nationwide perspective on what we do. At the Paris conference, we will also in addition to supporting the ANDS and supporting the Afghanistan compact, real progress has been made, but you know there are still serious shortfalls. In addition to doing that, we have to set certain priorities. And what are these priorities in my view? The one is the police and justice system. With regard to the ANA, the army, it is not going badly at all. And we heard the declaration, the announcement by President Karzai when he was in Bucharest, that from this autumn, the ANA will take responsibility for Kabul. That is an important step in the right direction. But with the police and justice system, we are still lagging seriously behind. The United States is putting immense resources in behind the police training project. But I would like to see the Europeans also do more. We have today a relatively modest European police training program. And I would appeal and have appealed to the Europeans to do much more, to raise their level of ambition on this critical issue. And I do believe from visits we ve had a week and a half ago to key European capitals that there is a growing understanding that this has to happen. And I hope that this will materialize in concrete policies over the next weeks and months. And then, in addition to having more trainers, we must be sure that we do the same thing, that we have a common purpose, a common program, with regard to how we train the police. It is absolutely required if we are to make the headway that is urgently required. And then, of course, on the justice system, where the situation is even worse than it is with regard to the police and let me say from experience, you mentioned the Balkans

8 and elsewhere. It is strange to see every time we go into a conflict area or into a country, we suffer the problems that Afghanistan do. It seems that the justice sector comes as the last point on our list of priorities. And it means that we are not able to establish that basis that is so required for the economy to grow, for people to feel safe, for rule of law to be respected, et cetera, as we would have liked. And we see it again in Afghanistan. This is an issue where we have to spend more resources, both with regard to financial resources and manpower resources. That s one priority. The second is governance. I mentioned to you the so-called IDNG that has been set up dealing with sub-national governance. That means the provinces, the districts, et cetera. That is important. And it was a very good step by the president to establish this office with a very competent leader. But governance is much more than what happens at the provincial and district level. We must also attack the problems that we face at the central Kabul level. And we are working with the Afghan authorities and with the government and with the president to see how can we do that? Not only to see to it that more competent people are brought into key positions, but also to see to it that there are training programs for those in the administration to improve their qualification and finally to ensure that we have young people coming in and being trained for the administration, both centrally and locally in order to ensure that the progress we made is sustainable. That is important and I hope that we will see progress on this over the next two weeks and months. And then, my third priority is agriculture. We spend tremendous resources on school education, on health, on water, on roads, et cetera, and all this is good. But we have to build the economy from the bottom. And I do believe that this has not been emphasized sufficiently today. Afghanistan is, and will continue to be for quite some time, an agricultural society. We need to reform and modernize the agriculture. And we have to place that higher on our agenda than we have done so far. It is important for a number of reasons. It is important to feed the people. And as we have seen, that is a problem and it will remain a problem every year in the coming years. We have to do it in order to strengthen the economy as such. And we have to do it as a component in our counter-narcotics strategies. So these are three priorities that I would like to highlight: the police and justice, the governance, and the agriculture sector. Then we face one important event that will come up late 2009 and in And that is the elections. The elections will be a tremendous task for all of us. Afghanistan will need international security support, financial support, and technical support. And even if the elections will only be towards the end of 2009, we have little time. The voter registration will start soon. That will take time and has to take place in a phased manner. And as you know, I m sure, the voter registration process itself requires significant preparations. We have to start today. And this is also a matter of discussion with the international community and with the Afghan leadership pin Kabul.

9 And let me say, the elections in 2005 and 2006 were relatively successful elections. We cannot afford and we know how difficult it is from a security point-of-view but we cannot afford to see elections in 2009 and 2010 that are less successful than they were a few years ago. If that should happen, then I fear that the Afghan people will lose confidence or it will affect the confidence of the Afghan people in the process of developing democracy. And it will affect the sustainability of the support and commitment that we see today in the international community. So that is tremendously important. You mentioned a regional dimension and the discussion with Islamabad, with Teheran, and Central Asian countries. It s also part of our mandate. We intend to go both to Islamabad and Teheran in May, and also to visit Central Asian countries. But if we are to make use of that part of our mandate and achieve something, it cannot only become a meeting every six months. We have to invest much more time and energy in making the regional dimension work. And it is a dimension with many perspectives. Of course, the insurgency perspective and of course with the drug perspective but it also has an important economic and trade perspective, not least within the area of energy. There is a significant potential here, not only for removing the problems that we face, but for building something positive that can tie the region together. And we all know that without a stable Afghanistan, the entire region will not be as stable as we would like it to be. Let me mention one issue that I should have perhaps touched upon already. It has to do with donor visibility and with the Afghanization process. I meet over and over again countries or institutions or NGOs who say we need greater visibility on the ground. We need our own flag, our own emblem, or this or that. I will say there is one flag that is required over each and every project in Afghanistan; it is the Afghan flag. We have to make every use of every opportunity we can find to demonstrate that the Afghan government is able to deliver services, that they are able to perform outreach, political and economically. We have to give them credit by the way we formulate our policies and not claim credit for ourselves. If we do not get that right, then it will take even longer before we have the Afghanistan that we seek. Strategic communication is a buzzword that is often used by so many in the international community. And I agree completely that it is important. It is important to demonstrate that project Afghanistan is not a security project. It is a political project and has to be formulated as such. There we have a tremendous task ahead of us: to turn the public around and make them understand it is not the matter only of military men and military campaigns and operations. It is about formulating a policy that is broad and wide, and where the military component comes in is one, but only one, part of the entire equation. And then, we should understand and this is something I say over and over again there were summit meetings in Bucharest and there were summit meetings before. And there will be an important meeting in Paris. But our commitment to Afghanistan and the future Afghanistan will not be determined around summit tables. It will be determined around kitchen tables, kitchen tables where each and every family sit down and discuss is it worthwhile? Are we doing the right thing? That s where the decisions are being made.

10 Therefore, to communicate the story the political story in the right way is so tremendously important. Finally, I have been asked is the expectations that I have met over the last weeks make me feel uneasy? And then my answer is not at all. I feel the expectations are just right. And why is that, because I take it for granted that if there are high expectations, that reflects a high level of commitment from those who have the expectations. We all know that this cannot be a matter of one person or one organization. It is an inclusive effort where we have to do the job together together, but under the Afghan leadership. Therefore I am pleased to be here and I am pleased to experience the confidence and support that I do experience from the highest authorities of the U.S. administration. Thank you very much. (Applause.) MS. MATHEWS: Okay, we have about half an hour for questions. I want to just mention for members of the press who are here that there is going to be a special press availability at 1:30 where you ll have a chance to ask your own questions on camera, et cetera. So I am not forbidding any here but just asking for consideration for the civilians in the room. But perhaps we ll be able to get to everybody. Please wait for a microphone and introduce yourself. We ll start right here. Q: Thank you very much. Raghubir Goyal from India Globe. Great presentation, Mr. Ambassador. My quick question is, like you said, NATO must do more than what U.S. is doing there. Question is that there have been a number of attacks against the government, even yesterday against President Karzai, and ongoing attacks there, even though we have so many military force there in the international community. What do you think that the new government in Pakistan will play the role as far as those attacks and terrorism problems? You think that this will reduce under the new government? MR. EIDE: I prefer we take many questions at a time because then I can ignore those that I find (Laughter.) MS. MATHEWS: All right, we ll do three at a time if that s comfortable for you. The gentleman right there. Q: Hi, Alex Their, from the U.S. Institute of Peace. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on what you feel UNAMA s role should be in the political negotiations with the Taliban. You talked about the principles for a reconciliation process. But I wonder what role do you think UNAMA and particularly on the political side should have in negotiations, if any? MS. MATHEWS: Anybody else who is ready to go? Right here. Q: Hi, Anne Richard from the International Rescue Committee. Thank you for holding this, Jessica. It s very interesting. The International Rescue Committee, as perhaps you know, works at the local level in Afghanistan on the national solidarity program, which

11 gets development started very much at the grassroots level. My sense is that on Capitol Hill, congressmen are focused on the role of the provincial reconstruction teams in development, which is a military not fully military effort but a military-led effort or organized effort. As you start your job, I m sort of curious about your evaluation of these different methods, including also private contractors. Thanks. MS. MATHEWS: Okay, why don t we start with those three and then we ll do another round. MR. EIDE: Thank you very much. With regard to the regional dimension, I understood you wanted my does it work? That you asked me about. I will see when I come to Islamabad. I have hopes and I have expectations that we will enter into a constructive dialogue on these matters and that will apply particularly in Islamabad which, of course, is the most important capital to have a dialogue with here and also then with Tehran and the others. I don t think it s very wise of me to go into detail two weeks before I go to Islamabad, but I look forward to a constructive and good dialogue with the authorities of Pakistan. And because there was already last year a border jirga, which was a successful event, and that led to some optimism. And perhaps the time has come to look at this again and to move forward with another of these events. And in order to also to try to institutionalize it so it becomes a more constant dialogue. I think that will be a helpful step. But then there are also many other elements that we ll have to discuss and I look forward to that. You mentioned the attacks against the military parade. I think it demonstrates clearly that the security environment is challenging, is particularly challenging in some parts of the country, in the south. But as we ve seen, it can also apply to Kabul. I was there myself on the 14 th of January when the attack against the Serena took place. I fortunately left the Hotel (inaudible) not 22 seconds before the first explosion. And I heard it a little bit down the road. But these incidents cause illustrate how unpredictable the environment can be, no doubt about that. But I must also add that, for those who say that the security situation is constantly becoming more difficult, I don t agree on that. I don t agree on that. A major part of the country is relatively stable. There is a significant level of crime, yes, but I do believe that the security situation is not worsening and that, in fact, in some parts of the south, we re also making progress. And what we see from the insurgency in shift of tactics is also a reflection of is also a reflection of the fact that they understand they had to move to a more defensive isn t the expression of being on the defensive? On the defensive, in my view. Nevertheless, it s serious. That kind of attacks are serious. And asymmetric warfare do inspire terror and do inspire fear and has its effect, no doubt about that. On UNAMA, in general, as I said, I want to see UNAMA spread more across the country, participate in political outreach trying to do what I fear we don t have today, which is a clear strategy for the various components that we need on the economic side, on the political side to make it work together with the Afghan authorities and this new idea al (inaudible) has been created.

12 Now, I ve been asked this question about discussion with the Taliban over and over again. And I think the answer I will give I have already given, which is, should the Afghan government decide to initiate a process of reconciliation, then I believe that it should happen on the basis of the principles that I have mentioned and, according to our mandate, if the Afghan government wants our support then we are there to lend them that lend them that support. And this is, as I said, why I insist on while working with the military, we must protect the integrity of our U.N. mandate in order to be able, should the time arrive, to play a political role. That s all on this end. On the PRTs versus the NSP, we are in a situation where PRTs are almost only delivery vehicles for development assistance in certain parts of the country. So there is no way other than to have them do it. Is it an ideal solution in the long term? I don t think so. And I was at NATO when the PRT concept was put into place. But I do believe that as we move towards more stable, a more stable situation, and where we have the more stable situation, that we should have a division of labor between the military and the civilians which will allow development agencies, NGOs, et cetera, to do more of the job than we perhaps see today in some parts of the country. And I agree with you with regard to the national solidarity program. It s a very valuable program, has achieved a lot on the ground. MS. MATHEWS: I wonder if I can start this second round. First, I want to thank you and, on behalf of everybody, for an extraordinarily clear and candid discussion. I think it s rare to see a person in your position lay out priorities as clearly as you did or even priorities at all. (Laughter.) MR. EIDE: You mean it s a little bit unwise object? (Laughter.) MS. MATHEWS: No, this is a very genuine comment. I wanted to take advantage of it a bit, though, to ask you, you made very clear in your theme throughout all of your remarks that you wanted to Afghan government to be in the lead, to be placed first, to be the lead actor. You also make clear the need for efforts to combat corruption and to governance reform in a number of areas. There s obviously a tension there because nothing is more invasive of sovereignty than help on rule-of-law reform and governance reform, et cetera. Talk to us a bit about how you see how do you attack that tension? MR. EIDE: Let me first say, Afghan government in the lead, yes, because I do experience quite often that the very development projects are undertaken sometimes without the knowledge of the Afghan government. So how can the Afghan government, with its plans, with its priorities, succeed if we don t respect them? And where PRTs or other plays on the ground, get there and think and say to themselves, we have some ideas here about what to do. Now, if we want to succeed and spend our money wisely, that is certainly not the way to go about it.

13 We have to show greater respect for the Afghan priorities that they have set. And they ve set them with the assistance of the international community, so they should be respected. I think one important thing to put in place over the next weeks and months would be a unit which can trace aid. Where does it come from? Where does it go? And we should trace it on the international side and on the Afghan side. I m not saying that we should trace each and every project. That is unachievable. But perhaps we should be able to conduct more spot checks in order to also create a certain deterrent effect among both the internationals and the Afghans with regard to how they spend their money. I think that would be wise and is something that the Afghans certainly want. Yes, there is tension here when you have the level of corruption that you have. Therefore, I am always saying to the Afghans, if you want us to spend more money through your core budget or through Afghan trust funds, which we should, you must also demonstrate a greater level of accountability. You must demonstrate that you re ready to combat corruption more than you are today. The two go hand in hand. But then you have a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. You cannot expect to develop Afghan capabilities if you do not trust them more than you do today. I think the time has come to trust them more than we actually do today. There will always be this tension and we have to live with that tension and try to put into place mechanisms that enable us to control it and handle it as best as we can. But if you spend money via the trustfund mechanisms, then you do also have a certain accountability mechanism there via the World Bank. So this should be a mechanism which enables us to follow Afghan priorities and, at the same time, have a decent level of international assurance and accountability. So there are ways and I think we should use them more. And, as I said, I detect now among the development community and the big donors a greater readiness to look at how we can do that and spend money more through their budgets or through these trust funds. It s the right way to go. MS. MATHEWS: Yes, please, and if you would just introduce yourself. Q: Jonathan Landay with McClatchy Newspapers. It s good to see you again. You talk about needing to have an arrangement where the military is just one the security and military aspect is supposed to be just one aspect of the overall Project Afghanistan, as you called it. But at least until now, for the most part, the military aspect has been the predominant effort in Afghanistan and we see where that s gotten. My question is, have you discussed with the Bush administration or will you discuss with the Bush administration some kind of arrangement that will give you some kind of assurance that military, that U.S. military and NATO military commanders are going to be prepared to give you equal time, as it were, to give you the opportunity to raise your effort to their effort or subsume them in your effort? I m not clear about how you re going to achieve that aspect of it. MR. EIDE: And that I understand well because I think that challenge is a difficult challenge, is a difficult challenge. You have on the ground 50,000 troops, 50,000 troops

14 engaged. Of course, they are the dominant element on the ground, no doubt about that. But I do think that also when I discuss this with the military themselves and also in Europe and here in Washington. I m just one quarter through my visit. I do feel that there is this readiness to say, let us look at what we re doing not from a military perspective, but from a political perspective. I do hope that the conference we have in Paris will bring some way in that respect. And we are trying also to sit down with the military and say, look, if this is our common thinking, how do we go about in order to achieve it? It s a tough challenge, but we have to make it. And I looked at the one of the news agencies, big news agencies I looked at a photo file they had one day, 440 photographs. And I skipped through them very, very quickly and I found I guess 380, 390 photographs of military personnel. I found seven or eight or a foreign dignitary visiting Karzai and then there were 20, 25 of civilian projects. How do we turn this around? It s a tremendous challenge, but I seem to think that we have to give the political elements more prominence. What are we doing on the elections side? What are we doing with regard to extending the reach of the Afghan government across the country? How do we do this? How do we improve the police and justice? How do we develop the regional dimension? Those are important pillars in that political story that we have to develop and I think that it s so critical to ensuring the political support that we want for our publics in the future. But, again, I am 15 days into my job, but it is a major challenge, too. MS. MATHEWS: Yes. Q: Tyrand Rabi (ph), Georgetown University Ambassador, it was refreshing to note that agriculture is one of your priority areas. Pakistan is blamed for pushing terrorists into Afghanistan. One thing that really goes into Afghanistan from Pakistan and is not mentioned very much is the wheat that is smuggled in the last year, causing domestic stocks in Pakistan to fall down. So my question is that, in order for Afghanistan to grow wheat, you have to replace the poppy with it, which is already a serious problem. So do you have, within that agriculture-priority sector, do you have any plan how you go about it? And just a 30-second question picking on the earlier question of a supplement question to that is there a possibility in the distant future where you could see NATO forces being replaced by the blue-helmet forces in Afghanistan given the strong rejection that the people of Afghanistan have had against foreign forces throughout their history? Thank you. MS. MATHEWS: We ll take one more. Q: Hi. Richard Weitz, Hudson Institute I wasn t sure if you had given any thought to Iran s possible role as you move forward.

15 back. MS. MATHEWS: Do you want me to take one more or the gentleman in the Q: One of the main sort of issues that MS. MATHEWS: Could you just introduce yourself. Q: I m Steve Amay (ph) and I m a student here in Washington. In the past, one of the issues that the UNAMA has had with the Afghan government has been mostly on appointments at the local level: governors as well as police chiefs, especially police chiefs. President Karzai has shown some sort of has had to accommodate some U.N. opinion on that front, but now, recently, he has shown nostalgia for his past appointments, people who he had to take out of their jobs to replace them with people who were more friendly to the outside world. When you say, Afghanize the process, when you say, support the Afghan government, does this go far enough to just say yes to any appointment President Karzai makes or has decisions in terms of police chiefs and governors? MR. EIDE: Let me start with the latter. When I said great responsibility for the Afghan government, I supplemented that with what we want to see from the Afghan government; it has to go hand in hand. I think the time has come and I think if we demonstrate to the Afghans that we invest more confidence in them that they would also be more likely to act in a manner that would enable us to do that. So I think, again, it s a chicken-and-egg situation, but I do think that there it is the right way to go. And let me also say, they are doing some of the right things in this respect. I mentioned the IDFG, which addresses sub-national government, provincial district level. Things are happening; there s no doubt about that. The head of that directorate has already made rather bold decisions with the full support of the president so things are moving in that direction. But we have to see more. We have to see more. But now do you understand? Afghanization is really something I believe in. We have to, through our rationale, through the resources we spend, demonstrate our readiness to build Afghan capabilities. You know, it s terribly frustrating. It s terribly frustrating when some donor-country institution, civic project, brings in everything it takes, absolutely everything it takes to build the project and leaves again. What s left is the building or this and that and nothing to sustain it. So is Afghanization the right way to go? Well, I would ask the question, is there any alternative if we want to see sustainability of what we re doing and if you want to see Afghans learning to do things the right way? I don t think there is an alternative and we have to draw the consequences from that. And some countries are spending almost all of their money through Afghan channels and it works, mostly, it works. NATO-U.N. is there any chance over there in the foreseeable future to see NATO troops be replaced by U.N. troops? I think the answer to that is no. I think the answer to that is no. I think NATO is in the unique position of having a command structure and a fourth-generation system that is effective and that works. And I think in the current security

16 situation, there is no prospect for that kind of a handover from NATO to any other organization. I think and you must also look at the number of countries taking part in the NATO operation in ISAF. I think today there are 40 countries, 40 countries, which means one-fifth of the countries of this globe. I don t think you will find any other military operation with such a representation, global representation. Yes, we would have liked to have some other countries join. Yes, we would like to have perhaps more from other regions of this world, but the change from the one to the other framework I do not think is in the cards in the foreseeable future. On agriculture, do I have any program for agriculture? I think we need a little bit more time to think more precisely about that. You know, I am not an agricultural expert. And, as I said, after 15 days, perhaps it s to ask a little bit too much if I come with a clear agricultural strategy. But I do believe that while it is important to focus on the services such as school and health is tremendously important and we have made significant progress that it is even more important to make sure that there is a functioning basis of an economy present and that is not the case today. When you see the growth figures for Afghanistan, they may look impressive. We re talking about 13 percent last year, 8 percent this year. But what is it reading? It s a relatively modest agricultural sector where it doesn t take much to show progress or developments, to show an effect on the total overall growth index. And then you have the international aid that comes in and the effects on it. And we have to get away from that. Of course we have to do things in other areas also like on the energy sector. And there is a potential at least for domestic concerns. On the mining sector, there is a potential there as well. But I think the basis for it all must be a strong and functioning agriculture sector. And I believe, as I said, that that is an important contribution to reducing also the poppy cultivation. Iran I look forward to my visit to Tehran sometime in May. And I believe also with Iran that it will be possible to develop a relationship of cooperation and confidence when it comes to the whole regional dimension here. And I look forward to that visit. Q: Thanks. Mr. Ambassador, Gary Mitchell from The Mitchell Report. I want to follow up on in a sense, I want to follow up with a question that Jessica Mathews raised, which was she began by saying that you ve been uncommonly clear about what the priorities are from your point of view about coordination and reconciliation and governance, et cetera. I m going to ask you to sort of imagine that we re meeting here a year from today and the message that you re delivering is, we have really made substantive progress. And the question that I d like to pose is, do you have now or do you anticipate identifying some both quantitative and qualitative measures that would allow you to support the notion that we ve made significant progress? And I m not asking for benchmarks today and I understand you re 15 days into it. But what I m struck by is, in another country nearby, for the last five years, we ve been hearing we re making progress; we need six more months, you know, there is light at the end of the it s been a real bonanza for metaphors.

17 And so my question is whether you anticipate that in your work you might be able to, a year from now, identify some quantitative and qualitative that would underscore or support the notion that progress has really been made. MS. MATHEWS: I see a hand. Is it up? Yes, go ahead. Q: Hi, I m Lauren Frieze (ph) with the State Department. I was hoping you could just discuss a little the future of the JCMB. MS. MATHEWS: All right. We ll take one more. Q: Jeff Lunstead (ph) from American University you mentioned in passing a few times counter-narcotics. Obviously, governance, justice, police, agriculture, all of those things effect them, but it works the other way around. You can t deal with corruption or governance or justice or any of these things without dealing with counter-narcotics. Could you speak to that a little more directly? MR. EIDE: Benchmarks, certainly not, and you said that yourself. I remember from Bosnia, one general came from Brussels. I was then the SRG there and had a police mission of 2,000 and 1500 civilians at the time. And this general came to me, of course, impatient and said, tell me how long time you need to finish this and that work. And I said, general, you can tell me how long time it takes to move an armored personnel carrier from point A to point B. I cannot tell you how long a political process takes. It s as simple as that. Therefore, I must say, yes, we should have certain ambitions with regard to how speedily we can move forward, but I am instinctively not inclined to put any deadlines on the efforts that we re trying to undertake. That doesn t mean that I m not impatient and we have to move forward as quick as possible. But the benchmarking in terms of putting deadlines of when we do things, that I m very reluctant to do. But what I hope to do is to develop certain criteria, for instance, with regard to aid effectiveness, with regard to the competence of the Afghan administration, building that up, whereby we can measure progress, yes. And I think that is doable. I think that s doable. And, as I said, I do not want you know, I really I do not intend to seek and this also relates to the question about the JCMB. I do not intend to sit in Kabul and my role as chairman or this or that will be to say, I now give the floor to Mr. X and Mrs. Y and so on. This is not a productive way of moving forward. As I said, a close coordination process is very easily developed into that kind of exercise. What I want to see is that our coordination mechanism are as delivery oriented as they possibly can be. What does that mean in concrete terms? Give me a little bit more time to see how that can be developed. But I think it s important and in order to do that, you have to have at least certain indicators available to you, not least with regard to how we spend aid and how the Afghans spend that aid. So we ll certainly do that.