Paul Wolfowitz Online

The Challenges of Global Development

2006-05-31T06:55:00.000-04:00

Speech by the President of The World Bank, Dr Paul Wolfowitz, at the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Germany:

... Korea is a country which, like Germany, has achieved remarkable progress over a short span of time. Of course, Germany did it by rebuilding on the foundations of an already successful economy. The Koreans started literally from nothing 50 years ago. Indeed, only 40 years ago, Korea stood where many countries in Sub‑Saharan Africa stand today. Back then, Korea - now the world’s 10th largest economy - was one of the poorest countries in the world. Some observers looked at that small poor country, and they said, to use an English slang expression, that Korea was a hopeless basket case.

There’s an expression in English - I do not know if you have it in German - Oriental fatalist. It used to be heard quite commonly. It expressed the view that in the Orient, in the Far East, life had been miserable for centuries, and it would continue to be miserable for centuries in the future. There was no reason to hope, there was no reason to work hard, there was no reason to invest, nothing was going to change.

You hear that phrase much less often today, because the Oriental fatalists were wrong.

Today as I said, South Korea is the 10th largest economies in the world. It is the most wired economy in the world. It is a country where 100% of the schools are connected to the Internet. It is a full member of the OECD. For every Afro-pessimist today, there was an Oriental fatalist 40 years ago. And I strongly believe that Africans can and will prosper if they and we confront the development challenges that have long held back stability and growth in that part of the world. And if international donors and most importantly, the private sector support countries that are creating the right environment for growth ....

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Good Governance and Development: Time for Action

2006-04-11T06:56:00.000-04:00

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz today outlined a comprehensive strategy for tackling corruption, a serious impediment to development and effective governments. Speaking in Jakarta, Indonesia, he laid out a three-prong plan for expanding the World Bank Group’s work on governance and anti-corruption at the country level, in Bank projects, and through partnerships with various stakeholders:

Twenty years ago this month I arrived in Indonesia as the American Ambassador. Little did I know at the time that I would become so attached to this wonderful country, and so deeply moved by the kindness, passion, and courage of your people. I am privileged to have enjoyed warm and deep friendships with many of you, friendships which have left a profound mark on my professional and my personal life.

It is great to see many of those old friends in the audience tonight, and perhaps it is not surprising that the words that best capture my feelings today are in Bahasa: "pulang kampung." I am thrilled to be back home in Indonesia once again.

I would also like to express my heart-felt thanks to the two sponsors who have worked so hard to make this event possible. Tempo needs no introduction to this group, led by brilliant and brave people, including my old friends Bambang Harymurti, Gunawan Muhammad, and Fikri Jufri, it has stood at the forefront of Indonesia's struggle for freedom of expression for a generation. Bambang's recent victory in the Supreme Court safeguards values that are so important to the people of this country, and it is an honor to be here to help celebrate 35 years of remarkable perseverance and achievements. CSIS has played an active in Indonesia's intellectual journey over the past three decades. It has maintained the very highest standards of intellectual integrity, even when this was costly.

Indeed, change in Indonesia over the past 20 years has been breathtaking. Your population has grown from 166 million when I first arrived as Ambassador, to 212 million today. In the last 20 years, Indonesians have seen their average incomes double, and the percentage of people living in extreme poverty, that is, people surviving on a dollar a day or less, has dropped dramatically, from 28 percent 20 years ago, to about 5 percent, although we must recognize that still represents 11 million people, far too many.

These gains are impressive by any standards. They are all the more impressive when you consider the economic crisis that swept this country 8 years ago. The financial collapse of the late 1990s was a crushing setback to the Indonesian economy. In one year alone, from 1997 to 1998, GDP declined by 13 percent. By conservative estimates, the collapse cost Indonesia some $40 billion. At the time, many people believed Indonesia would take a long time to recover. Some even questioned whether it would survive as a unified country. Instead, Indonesia got back on its feet with a strong economic recovery, and, indeed, experienced a truly extraordinary and peaceful democratic transition.

While significant problems persist and the economy still has far to go to fulfill its real promise, the past few years have shown Indonesia's ability to rise above enormous challenges. You have passed a key milestone in democratic development, that is, two consecutive free and fair presidential elections. As Bambang and Jusuf both noted, when I left here at the end of my term as Ambassador, I made an appeal for greater political openness in this country and expressed my belief that not only did the country need it, but it was ready for it, and that changes in that regard, though they took some time to come, have been dramatic. The press which used to operate under severe censorship is now free, bringing all the blessings and the challenges that come with such openness, and I have my sympathy for colleagues in the Indonesian government. Sometimes it is tough, but it makes your job ultimately better.

The Parliament which used to be a subservient arm of the Executive is now a vigorous forum for debate, and an important check on Executive power. And just as important has been the emergence of a strong civil society that encompasses national religious organizations, the pesantren (traditional Islamic Boarding school) school system, a press that was vibrant even under censorship, and a deeply rooted spirit of cooperation that is captured by the Javanese expression gotong royong.

Yet there are enormous challenges ahead. Investment remains low. Indeed, it has fallen from 30 percent of GDP, to 20 percent since the crisis, far lower than your fast-growing Asian neighbors. More jobs are needed, particularly for young people, one-third of whom are unemployed. And the quality of education, health care, and infrastructure is poor ...

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Trade - the Missing Link to Opportunity

2005-12-07T07:37:00.000-05:00

Speech by the President of The World Bank, Dr Paul Wolfowitz, at the National Press Club, Washington, DC, USA:

There are certain occasions when it's -- you're speaking and you've been given an introduction that's so lavish that it's good to call to mind Lyndon Johnson's comment when he was once introduced, and he said, "I wish my late parents could be here. My father would have been so proud, and my mother would have believed it." (Laughter.)

This isn't that kind of introduction. (Laughter.) But I do want to thank you nevertheless for an introduction that I would say is reasonably fair and not balanced. (Laughs.) (Laughter.) If it were balanced, you would have included all that stuff you left out. And I do thank you for that. (Laughter.)

It's fun to be here. I was thinking as we were eating, partly by Myron Belkin's comment -- I guess he spent quite a bit of time in Japan with the Foreign Press Club there, and I've spoken at the Foreign Press club in Tokyo and the Foreign Press Club in Paris, and this group, and I think those are the three of such composition that I've addressed. Myron did have experience in India and I guess with a similar group in India. And the striking thing, and something that needs to be worked on, is that there are clubs like this in Tokyo and in London and in Paris and in the United States; there aren't enough of them in the developing world. And India, in this respect, is an exception, but hopefully it's an exception that will set a model for others in the future. I'll say a little bit more about that a bit later ...

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Time to Deliver

2005-09-14T07:34:00.000-04:00

Remarks by the President of The World Bank, Dr Paul Wolfowitz, at United Nations 2005 World Summit:

Five years ago, a remarkable vision was laid out in this very hall. A vision which spelled progress and hope for humanity. Leaders from rich and poor nations alike made a bold promise to make history in the fight against hunger, poverty and disease.

The Millennium Development Goals created a metric of accountability for which humanity will hold us answerable. It also placed in our hands a vital tool for measuring progress.

But measurement alone will not bring results.

Rapid progress has put many countries on track to meet the MDGs. But let us be honest. Many of the poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, will not meet the targets on time. We must develop realistic plans to get them on track.

It is time to deliver.

This calls for developing countries to improve performance and developed countries to fulfill their promise to increase aid. It calls for dismantling trade barriers and ending subsidies that hurt farmers and small businesses. And it calls for strengthening the private sector and encouraging a vibrant civil society in developing countries.

Rich and poor countries alike share a responsibility to fight corruption, and improve governance and accountability.

The Story of Beatrice Gakuba

In Rwanda I met a remarkable woman whose hard work and determination symbolize the talents and dreams of millions of Africans.

Beatrice Gakuba left a comfortable life in the West to start a flower-growing business in her native Rwanda. Against enormous odds, her small farm grew, creating jobs for nearly 200 rural women.

When I asked Beatrice why she decided to take on such a daunting challenge, she replied "I came here to grow beautiful flowers on the ashes of genocide."

Her biggest obstacle to creating even more jobs is not a lack of skilled workers or entrepreneurial spirit; it is a weak infrastructure that makes electricity unreliable and transportation unaffordable.

Through sound policies, Rwanda has come a long way from its years of pain and conflict, averaging more than 6 percent annual growth. Some other African countries are on the right track. But to transform Africa into a continent of hope, they need our help.

Conclusion

The responsibility for doing more and doing better cannot be left to the developing world alone. It demands more than high profile summits. It demands urgent results.

The World Bank is developing an Africa Action Plan with 25 initiatives to improve education, roads and power, with measurable goals.
Today, we have a choice.

We promised here five years ago, to help bring hope, dignity and opportunity into the lives of the poorest. We promised to measure and achieve results.

As we gather here today, let us not forget the Beatrice Gakubas of the world, who stand poised to transform their countries.

Today, we stand accountable to them.

India: Women have learned by helping one another

2005-08-18T01:11:00.000-04:00

Press Conference With World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz at the Conclusion of a Meeting of Women’s Groups, Jubilee Hall, Hyderabad, India.

The idea of these poor women able to speak in such an articulate way in front of a large crowd is something that is really phenomenal and I’m not sure if people here fully appreciate it. I do as someone who taught university students for many years and I know what a special skill that is to be able to express yourself in public.

I think one of the reasons they’re so good at it is because these are the chosen leaders of a group that – if I understand correctly – includes some eight million women in the state of Andhra Pradesh. And that’s another thing that’s remarkable is the sheer scale on which this is being done.

I must say when I visited the first little house in a small village this morning, I was very impressed with what I observed from this small family but the first thing that went through my mind was: “Well, maybe this is a pilot project, maybe this is one family they picked out that’s one of the best families.” But as we went through the course of the day to larger and larger and groups and then finally to this group here, I realized that what we saw in that one family in that small village is actually being reproduced all over the state of Andhra Pradesh which, if I have the numbers right, is as big as most countries in Europe.

It’s an incredible achievement and again one of the things that’s very remarkable is that it goes beyond just the material success of the program. I’ve visited some similar programs. as I said to these women, the first one I saw was in Indonesia 20 years ago, I’ve seen some in Africa, I’ve seen some in Bosnia where it’s been demonstrated that if you lend poor people small amounts of money, they are remarkably good at paying back those loans and they make incredibly good use of them and that’s happened in this program.

But something else even more remarkable seems to have happened, which is that these women have learned by helping one another how to give voice to their concerns that go far beyond material concerns and that they have been able to defend their rights as women, to defend their rights as underprivileged classes in society in a way that probably couldn’t have been imagined when this program started 10 years ago.

I feel very very deeply that women have to be included in the development process for the development process to be successful. What I’ve seen here in Andhra Pradesh today is the most vivid demonstration in my travels around the world of how powerful women can be as a force when they are given the opportunity and it is a really remarkable achievement.

As I mentioned to them, the World Bank is participating in this program and the amount of $260 million through the period to 2008. It sounds like a lot of money and it is a lot of money but for a program this big it’s still only part of the contribution and the state of Andhra Pradesh makes the biggest contribution. But speaking as the President of the World Bank, I can say that we are extremely proud to be able to assist in something that is such a wonderful success, as this program is, and one of the things I hope to learn in the coming weeks and months is; is there a way to take this experience, this very successful experience in your state and develop it not only in other states in India but in other countries in the world because it seems to me that these women really have something to teach all of us.

Thank you, I can take a few questions. I’d like to stay on this subject because I’ll be meeting the press in New Delhi on a whole range of questions, but the real topic today for me in this incredible self-help program.

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Srebrenica "must never be repeated"

2005-07-11T00:53:00.000-04:00

Speech by the President of The World Bank, Dr Paul Wolfowitz, at the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mothers of Srebrenica, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Es salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu – Peace unto you and God’s mercy and God’s blessing

We’re here today for many reasons, but most of all we are here to remember and honor the victims of the worst act of genocide in Europe since the World War II. Equally we are here to console the survivors and to commit ourselves to do everything we can to help them to rebuild shattered lives.

The brutal way in which wives were separated from husbands, and mothers were separated from sons have left scars that will never heal. Two years ago I was here at this cemetery and spoke with a mother who had survived and who said that at her age she should be waiting for her grandchildren to arrive. Instead her one hope was that the bones of her husband and her two sons will be recovered and the work here to recover remains is an important commitment we have to the survivors.

We are also here to renew our resolve not to let such atrocities scar this land again. Criminals who did this act are the ones who bear responsibility, but it is a stain upon the conscience of the entire world, that we did not do more to prevent it. Those who perpetrated these crimes must be brought to justice. This is not only to deter future crimes, but it is a critical precondition to begin the healing and the reconciliation among the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the region of South Eastern Europe.

It is hard to be optimistic in this place, but finally we are also here to express our hopes that all citizens of this country will use this opportunity not only to reflect on the past but to commit to building a brighter future. I am deeply impressed with the progress that Bosnia has made in the past decade in the face of massive tragedy.

Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting with a group of young people in Sarajevo -- young people of all ethnic backgrounds and mixes of ethnic backgrounds, but there was literally no difference in the desires that they expressed. They all hope for better education, for better jobs, for the ability to know the wonderful continent of Europe on which they live and the rest of the world.

I am proud that the World Bank has been able to participate in building a better future for this country and I appeal to everyone here today to stand together to make the dreams of this young generation a reality. Let us draw strength and determination from a resolve that the horrible events which we are commemorating here today in Srebrenica must never be repeated.

Africa: Every corrupt transaction has two parties

2005-06-23T01:03:00.000-04:00

Speaking at the banquet of The Corporate Council on Africa, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz addressed the issue of corruption.

Mr Fountain, thank you very much I appreciate that introduction, I think it counts as the most unusual one I have ever had, because you only went about - back about four weeks as I counted and usually they start in grade school and tell you where you went to college; I appreciate that.

Lieutenant Governor Steele, as one of your constituents, a resident of Maryland, and as a former dean of John Hopkins's University, it's good to be back in Baltimore. I have to confess it wasn't that that attracted me, it was the Corporate Council on Africa, but I am glad they showed such good judgment in being here. John Watson, thank you for those remarks and to both of you - you already conveyed in a powerful way what I sense is real excitement about the change that's taking place in Africa, a real sense of opportunity and I particularly appreciate, Lieutenant Governor Steele, your comments about the historical significance of this against the background of centuries of tragic history.

I was honored to be selected as president of the World Bank, but as they say, the honor lasts five minutes. You make a mistake if you take a job like this for the honor of it. I took it with an enormous sense of responsibility and a special sense of responsibility about Africa, because I knew that the World Bank is critically needed in Africa and that the bank as an institution has a unique role to play in Africa.

And I really began in a sense from the reference point of six or seven - I guess it was about six years ago, when we met with then Governor Bush in Austin to discuss the contents of an upcoming foreign policy address he was going to make and I had been reading a lot in preparation about conditions in Africa and statistics that still stick with me are statistics about the number of children who were orphaned by AIDS, and other statistics of tragedy and misery and need. And there is no question that there is an enormous compelling moral urgency to the conditions of Africa and there is no question that there are needs, but what was the pleasant surprise for me - it really was a series of pleasant surprises as I began to prepare for this job and as I assumed the job on June 1st -was to realize that there is a lot more going on than just need, that there really is a sense of change underway. Africa may be on the verge of becoming a continent of hope and that would be a wonderful thing not just for Africa and Africans, but for the whole world because the world can't afford to have 600 million people left behind as the rest of world moves forward. It's not only morally wrong, it's incredibly short sighted.

One of the first things I learned after I was unanimously approved for the job and, since it's no secret the appointment was slightly controversial, I thought the fact that people could agree unanimously on my appointment must show that people are prepared to agree about difficult issues when it comes to promoting development. I have seen that in just the short time I have been here. And I learned that on July 8th in Scotland and Gleneagle there will be summit of the so-called G8 countries and that the British prime minister - the British government - have put Africa funds on the agenda.

I have to tell you my first reaction to that news was, "Oh, boy, five weeks into the job and I am expected to be delivering at that level," but then I thought about it some more and I said, "What a fantastic thing to have Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and following their lead, the G8 countries, focusing on my first priority which is Africa." It couldn't be better. And I have to say after coming back, we started this trip last week in London at a meeting of the G8 finance ministers where major progress made on a debt relief/debt cancellation package for some of the poorest countries in the world including in Africa. And an agreement that that cancellation would not come at the expense of resources for the World Bank and other development institutions. You have got to realize I like that a lot, but it's good news for the poor people who benefit from the multilateral institutions that there was agreement on supporting the strong efforts of the government of Nigeria in fighting corruption and trying to move through the Paris Club to help Nigeria with it's debt backlog. So it was a good sign.

There were some other good signs. When the World Bank had it's spring meetings here in Washington, I had the privilege of meeting with the 44 African governors of the bank, most of them finance ministers. I was truly impressed by the quality of the discussion, the very high level of the insights presented, and most of all by something that I am quite sure would not have been heard around the table 10 years ago and that was a common concern about corruption and fighting corruption.

Corruption is a disease. I have seen it attack Indonesia where I had the privilege of being ambassador for three years. It's a threat to development everywhere in the world and I think in the past it's done enormous damage to Africa's development prospects, but to see African leaders saying it's a problem and not just saying it's problem but doing something about it is one of the major reasons for feeling that we are in a new era and at a turning point.

But then I was also enormously heartened to read the report of the Commission for Africa that Prime Minister Blair had commissioned. It's an excellent report and full of a lot of detail and it's a big heavy book. I confess I read the executive summary; that's the honest truth. But what is again to me so heartening is the recognition that Africa's development is going to depend on a lot more than just official development assistance. Yes, official development assistance is important and I'm going to say more about it. It is critical, but in the past sometimes people thought it was the only answer. Today, people realize it's only part of the answer and not even the biggest part of the answer.

To be effective, it depends on performance by the recipient governments, meaning performance in combating corruption, performance in improving standards of transparency and accountability. It means, perhaps most important of all, and that's one of the reason's why I feel particularly privileged to have a chance to speak to this group, the development of the private sector in African countries, because the record of the last 50 years could not be clearer that the countries that have developed successfully have developed strong private sectors. Not every one and in all the same ways, and certainly the private the sector in China, for example, is unrecognizable compared to the private sector here, but anyone who knows the history of China will tell you it was a decisive turn when the Chinese realized they had to have a thriving private sector too. And I am seeing it starting to happen in Africa and I think the activities of the Corporate Council can help.

Of course, the real goal is not just foreign investment in Africa; it's domestic investment in Africa. The real goal is not just foreign corporations operating in Africa; it's African companies growing from small businesses, to medium size businesses, to big businesses. It's something that I believe will happen out of partnership and it's critical to success.

And the fourth thing that the Blair commission report recognized was the need for trade. You could say trade, not aid. Well, a little bit of aid doesn't hurt, I was just in Burkina [Faso] - let's hear it for Burkina. (Applause.) There is clearly a little Burkina claque out there. And if I could digress for a moment, one of - I could digress for a very long time if I took you through all exciting memories that I have from this trip. One thing that really struck me about Burkina was to learn - (applause) - you have got to let me finish, guys - was to learn there are 64 languages in that small country, there are major populations of both Christians and Muslims and yet the country has, as you can see back here, a strong sense of nationalism somehow over all of those ethnic and religious differences and has preserved real national unity. And President [Blaise] Compaoré explained it to me in terms of Burkina's centuries of history of resisting both Arab conquest and European conquest and I don't know exactly the explanation, but I do know this: that that kind of national unity and peace and harmony among ethnic groups and religious groups is a true national treasure - an undebatable blessing.

Oil, unfortunately, can sometimes be a curse rather than a blessing. I was very encouraged at some of the comments that Mr. Watson made about his hope and my hope that African governments are going to use their oil resources wisely, but it is an incredible blessing to be able to have that kind of national unity they have in Burkina.

So that sense from the Blair Commission that's reflected in the international community, that it - a multi-dimensional approach, if I can use that sort of World Bank term, is required to address these problems. It's not going to be done with just one single line of approach, but in encouraging the private sector, providing good conditions for the private sector, I have been delighted to learn what the World Bank private sector arm, the International Financial Corporation, has been doing, even in very small countries in Africa, to develop particularly credit facilities and particularly for small and medium sized businesses.

So I went on my first trip and I - Mr. Fountain picked out the right point: I wanted to send a message by where I went on my first trip and that was part of the reason for going. Another part of the reason for going was I have a lot to learn about Africa and there is no better way to learn than being there on the spot. And I was hoping to encounter good news, but I came away feeling that I had encountered something much more than good news: real excitement, real movement. As President Obasanjo of Nigeria said to me, Africa is a continent on the move and I sensed that in all four countries that I visited.

Earlier this week, I hope some of you had a chance to watch the film, "Africa: Open for Business," which I believe the World Bank helped to produce or produced, and in there you would see several examples of entrepreneurs who are starting up new ventures and creating jobs. If you would look at the numbers on growth in Africa, you can see signs of hope: since the mid 1950's, 15 countries have seen annual GDP growth in excess of 5 percent. For several of these countries, including Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana and Senegal that higher growth has been accompanied by diversification of their economies and exports. Also, there are a few countries like Botswana and Mauritius that have succeeded in growing rapidly. I love it - succeeded in growing rapidly in periods in excess of three decades to become middle-income countries.

Many of you have seen this growth first hand and your investments are showing that you are putting your money where your mouth is. A report by the U.S. Trade Office last month in fact showed that the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act has been a remarkable success in increasing two-way trade between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa and diversifying the range of products being traded. Exports from the 37 African countries eligible in AGOA jumped by a remarkable 88 percent in 2004 to $26.6 billion and at the same time U.S. exports to the region increased 25 percent to $8.6 billion. And African labor costs are highly competitive: a shirt costs 12 cents to manufacture in Ghana less than half of 29 cents it costs in China. Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya and Lesotho, could all produce the same shirt for under 20 cents. Those numbers are an encouraging story, but the most exciting thing for me are the people who I met on this trip: people from four presidencies, one of them remarkable leaders and I was privileged to have a good deal of private time with him, as well as discussions with our team.

In terms of privilege, by the way, I just have to mention, the most privileged 45 minutes of the trip for me was a chance to meet Nelson Mandela. He is truly an incredible human being, and when you try to tell him how incredible you think he is, he comes back at you in the spirit of this quote that I saw on his house in Soweto that I guess he said in 1970, that there is no limit to what a man can achieve as long as he doesn't give a damn who gets the credit, and you try to give him credit - and he says, anything that's accomplished in public life is accomplished by a collective and you have to remember you are just a spokesman for the collective, but wow what a spokesman.

And it's interesting that if you think about individuals who individually change the course of history, there aren't very many and here is the one and he did it because he recognized that you don't do it all alone. It's a kind of paradox of leadership, but the man is a real leader and I think a real symbol that Africans and those of us who care about Africa need to keep in mind as we face the challenges ahead. But not just a great statesmen, not just presidents, not just ministers, although we met some very impressive ministers, one that we are particularly proud of at the World Bank because she is one of our alumni, Minister Ngozi, the finance minister in Nigeria is leading a very dynamic - she is amazing and I guess there are people here who already know that. She is leading a very dynamic economic team that is not only implementing an ambitious program of economic reform, but perhaps even more ambitiously tackling some really tough cases of corruption and very senior officials in the Nigerian government, including a chief of police, are facing criminal charges over corruption. It takes both political and physical courage to do that kind of thing, but I take it all the way down to poor farmers, and school children I met whose parents were sacrificing a large fraction of their meager income so that these kids could have the benefit of a good school that was half public refunded but half private.

There are so many stories, if I am not careful I will just over use my time, but let me just mention one, that impressed me very much. It was in Rwanda. I think the reason there aren't more of them back there is because so many people have gone back to Rwanda to rebuild that country, including this woman - that I am about to tell you about. She also, by the way, is a graduate of the World Bank. Many years ago she left the bank and she has become a very successful private businesswoman, and she could have stayed in the United States quite obviously and had a very comfortable life, and instead she went back to start a flower farm, a rose farm that is producing very high quality roses that fetch a good price on the European market. They are hard to get to market because of Rwanda's remoteness. She faces a lot of challenges because the electricity goes out periodically and she loses water or she loses refrigeration and loses 5 percent of her production, but in spite of all of that her farm is progressing. It's an impressive place. The quality of the labor force is impressive. Their enthusiasm for their work is impressive, but she herself most of all is impressive.

And I asked her why she started the business and she said well a reporter asked me that, couple of weeks ago and I will say this same thing to you I said to him. I came here to grow beautiful flowers on the ashes of genocide. It is amazing what the Rwandans are doing on the ashes of genocide: truly amazing. (Applause.) That's the kind of perseverance, hope, and determination that I saw throughout my visit.

The more I traveled through Africa in those six days the more I felt that sense of opportunity and what I would call, using American slang, a can-do attitude. You all have longer experience in Africa than I do, so you know that Africa is an exceptionally diverse continent, but the theme that unites these four very different countries is a sense of self reliance, of people who are taking charge of their future, of people who feel that - today is a little better than yesterday and therefore tomorrow can be a little better than today. And that kind of realistic optimism builds confidence, builds self-reliance, and I think it is one of the critical keys to progress.

As I said, the private sector I think is the most important engine of this development, but it's also clear the private sector can't do it on its own. There are critical things that have to be done by the public sector and that's the principal area where the World Bank interacts. I have visited, as you can figure, two landlocked countries, Burkina and Rwanda, where the challenges of infrastructure aren't just national, they are regional. The difficulty of getting products to market is enormous, and alsothe challenges of energy - reliable energy for that flower farm or just affordable energy for those hopeful textile factories in competitive African countries. If we manage to bring energy costs in Africa down to the level of China's, wage (bills?) in Kenya would drop by 35 percent, in Zambia by 23 and Nigeria by 22. As entrepreneurs, you know how significant that is. So governments and donors need to increase their efforts to include the business community in policymaking decisions and to use your expertise and experience in making the right policy choices for a good business environment.

One last thing I would like to touch on and that is the challenge of trade. "Trade, not aid" is a pretty solid slogan and unfortunately in too many cases the products that Africans are producing or could produce face enormous obstacles in the international markets, including the challenge presented by highly subsidized agricultural products from the United States and Canada and Europe. I think if we are going to tackle this problem, and we must tackle this problem, we have got to tackle it on a global basis, and there is an opportunity in the Doha trade round - a challenging opportunity, but one I hope we will seize - to begin substantial reductions in subsides worldwide and reduction of the obstacles that prevent African products from getting to market. Speaking for the World Bank, we stand ready to help Africa with our advice, lending, technical know how, and support. We currently are funding 334 projects in Africa worth a total of $16.6 billion. And they are (no big ?) investments. I am happy to say that today I had a meeting with President [Teodoro] Obiang [Nguema Mbasago] of Equatorial Guinea. Those of you who know what's happened on the oil front in Equatorial Guinea might wonder why he is coming to the World Bank. He doesn't need our money anymore. I am happy to say, he came asking for our technical assistance, so they can manage their newfound wealth, manage it according to the standards of transparency and accountability that will ensure that wealth goes to benefit the people of Equatorial Guinea and, as I said to him, I hope we can help you to set a gold standard of how a country manages its oil revenues and lets its people know what's happening to them. I think it's a terrific opportunity and I was very impressed at his leadership and his government's leadership.

We concluded our trip in South Africa and arrived there just a couple of days after. I wish I had visited 44 countries to see - but I would never had made it back on time for tonight, so - President Mbeki, as most of you know, had dismissed his deputy president not because the deputy president had been convicted of corruption but because his closest financial advisor had been, and as I understand it the logic was a matter of political responsibility whether or not there is legal responsibility. I don't want to get the World Bank embroiled in a South African political disagreement, but let me just say, whatever you think of President Mbeki's decision, I think you have to admire the political courage behind it and the courage to face up - to this disease of corruption.

And so let's, especially those of us from so-called the rich countries, developed countries, let's hold a mirror up to ourselves and remember every corrupt transaction has two parties. If I can coin a term there is a corruptee and there is a corruptor. And if the African people and their leaders are stepping up to the challenge of dealing with the corruptees, we, if I can speak as a citizen of a developed country - those of us in the developed world, in fact anywhere in the world, have responsibility to address corruptors as well. And to help African countries, as the Nigerians are seeking to do now, to recover some of the stolen wealth that is sitting in bank accounts where it doesn't belong.

I might just conclude with one more anecdote and there are many, many. I made a brief reference to it earlier, just outside Ouagadougou, the World Bank cooperated with the government to build the facilities for a private school. It's a very poor village, but I was incredibly impressed at the attitude of the students first of all, but secondly even more impressed that their very poor parents worked hard to scrape up $100 a year so those kids could go to school. It's really impressive what people around the world and people around Africa will do if they have a chance to give their children a better future. And I think the private sector has a real opportunity to extend that opportunity to so many more parents and to so many children, and I think in doing so, as I said, you will not only help Africans, you will help all of us, because leaving Africa behind would be a formula for failure, but we don't have to leave Africa behind.

As President Obasanjo said, Africa is on the move and it's exciting to be able to move with it.

Wolfowitz Points to Urgent Development Agenda

2005-06-01T01:45:00.000-04:00

Paul Wolfowitz, the new head of the World Bank Group, says the upcoming G8 summit of the world’s richest countries could mark a new beginning in development assistance for the world’s poor countries, especially in Africa.

Wolfowitz, who assumed leadership of the World Bank Group today, underlined the urgent need for action on the development agenda.

The July G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, of world leaders – from Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia - he believes should be an important step in generating this momentum.

He says he hopes Africa, in particular, is at a “turning point” and that five years from now, people will look back and see a significant number of countries on a path of sustainable development.

Wolfowitz’s comments were made in an interview for World Bank staff to mark his official first day on the job at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington DC. “We have a very busy agenda this year,” Wolfowitz says.

“We go straight into some major events starting with the G8 summit in Gleneagles and a lot of expectation, which I think is appropriate for having this be a new era, particularly in terms of development in Africa, where a lot of things seem to have an opportunity to come together.”

The new president says the Bank should play a crucial role in the next few years in helping African countries on the path to sustainable development. “There is no other institution that can fill that leadership role the way the Bank can,” Wolfowitz says.

In taking over the helm of the organization, Wolfowitz praised the work of his predecessor, James D. Wolfensohn, saying there was no question Wolfensohn had made a difference in the way he mobilized the energy and resources of the institution.

“I really look forward to the opportunity to try and lead this institution and build on the legacy that Jim Wolfensohn has left, which is a great legacy, and try to take the Bank to an even higher level and really do something about reducing poverty in the world and helping countries that are not yet on the path of sustainable development to get there.”

Wolfowitz says he had been “pleased and excited” upon learning that he had been unanimously confirmed by the Bank Group’s Board of Directors to become the 10th Bank Group president.

“I sometimes joke that it’s not a secret that my nomination was controversial,” he says. “That the Board agreed on it unanimously was, I think, a very good sign. And quite seriously I think it’s a sign that development is a unifying mission.

“People agree on the importance of poverty reduction and promoting development and this is the world’s leading institution for doing that.”

Wolfowitz says he hopes his tenure at the head of the World Bank Group will see a significant change in the landscape for African nations in particular.

“Most of all I would hope that we can look back five years from now and say this really was a turning point for Africa – that some significant number of African countries really got themselves on a path of sustainable development and that their example began to lead others who weren’t there yet. And that the world mobilized the resources necessary to help those countries on that path. And that the Bank played a crucial catalyzing role in all that.

“And I must say, if five or ten years from now, we can all look back and say this was the year when the whole world got on a path of sustainable development and this trend in the reduction of poverty extended beyond Asia and Latin America to encompass everyone. That would be truly satisfying.”

In his first official day on the job, Wolfowitz will hold a global Townhall Meeting with Bank staff. The meeting will be connected live -- via video streaming -- with a number of the Bank’s country offices, representing all the Bank’s regions.

Go to World Bank archive for video and audio files.

Tribute by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

2005-04-29T01:27:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, The Economist magazine had an interesting take on the job of deputy cabinet secretary. It wrote, "Most deputy secretaries live lives of quiet frustration. They get stuck with all the grunt work, while their bosses swan around in the limelight. And they have to sit mutely while the best ideas are either buried or stolen.”

And then there's Paul Wolfowitz.

History is not always generous to the men and women who helped to shape it. Great abolitionists like John Quincy Adams and Frederick Douglas would not live to see full equality for African Americans that they had envisioned and fought to bring about. Many brave East Germans were shot as they tried to breach the Berlin Wall and would never see the wall crumble under the weight of lies and pretensions that built it.

But sometimes history is kind, and it gave President Harry Truman, for example, and George Marshall the chance to see the fall of the Third Reich and the fulfillment of their charge to rebuild Western Europe.

And it allowed Corazon Aquino, with the help from a young Assistant Secretary of State, Paul Wolfowitz, to see the triumph of people power in the Philippines - the dream her husband had nurtured and for which he was cut down before it was fulfilled. And although it may not always have seemed to Paul, the fact is history has smiled on Paul, as it should.

So he leaves us today with the good fortune of seeing so much accomplished - or being accomplished, I should say - he helped bring to fruition or things that he helped set in motion:

-- Reform and the modernizing of America's defense establishment;

-- The dispatch of dangerous regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq;

-- The spark of freedom and self-government that is finding oxygen in the Middle East.

Paul now will add one more title to all the titles that Pete Pace listed, and it's a heady list.

When I stood with Paul at his welcoming ceremony at the Pentagon way back in 2001, more than four years ago - it seems like eight - I noted that this was Paul's third tour in the Department of Defense. I told him we were going to keep bringing him back until he got it right. Well, he got it right this time.

The activities he has been involved with over the past four years are extensive. He has helped craft four defense budgets and supplementals. He has helped bring new technologies to protect our troops. And he has helped to reconfigure a number of Cold War systems and organizations to help us meet the threats of the 21st century.

So as we bid Paul a warm farewell, I might just say a word or two about the Paul Wolfowitz that I have worked with these past four years.

They say in life people tend to fall into one of two categories - dreamers and doers. Well, our friend Paul is a bit of a "mugwamp," as they used to say in the old days - he's a bit of both, one who lives the creed "Think as a man of action and act as a man of thought."

He grew up in Brooklyn in a household of Polish immigrants for whom names like Hitler and Stalin and words like holocaust were not abstractions or simply pages in a history book. And it should be no surprise to those who know him that one of Paul's early political acts - at the age of 19, I'm told - was to participate in the March for Civil Rights with Martin Luther King.

Paul was a bright young mathematician who drifted into political science, undoubtedly disappointing his father, who I am told would have preferred he pursue a career in a real subject, like chemistry or something like that.

But Paul's analytic talents have been put to excellent use as someone who has grasped future trends and threats for many were able to and before some probably wanted to:

-- As early as the 1960s, he foresaw the dangers of nuclear weapon programs in the Middle East;

-- In the 1970s he identified the territorial ambitions of Iraq as a future concern for the U.S. military; and

-- before September 11th, he grasped that the civilized world could not make a separate peace with terrorists and that our future security was certainly linked to addressing the freedom deficit in much of the Muslim world.

History will see Paul as one of the consequential thinkers and public servants of his generation.

He's worked to ease the burdens of the wounded and their families, as we've seen. And he's departing the Pentagon now, but the legacy that Paul has been a part of, the ideas he has helped to weave into public and private debates, the effects of the policies that he's championed so effectively and with such courage and determination are not going anywhere.

Because they're not found only in this building or only in the department all across the globe. They are found now in towns and villages in Indonesia, where I'm told that pictures still hang in tribute to an American ambassador who put the aspirations of dissidents and ordinary Indonesians above the temporary convenience of power politics.

They're found in Afghanistan today, where a democratically elected government now protects women and imprisons terrorists, instead of imprisoning women and harboring terrorists.

And they're found in a schoolroom in Iraq, where a young girl will learn real history and real subjects instead of lies and tributes to tyrants.

That girl is free, and so are millions like her -- and that, in part, is because of you, Paul. You've been on their side. And as General Pace said, you have never wavered.

The threatened, the oppressed and the persecuted around the world must know in their heart that they have had a friend in Paul Wolfowitz.

You are one of those rare people who, as the Talmud puts it, would rather light candles than curse the darkness.

So I thank you, your country thanks you, and on behalf of the Department of Defense, we wish you Godspeed in your new post, a post of service to the world. The department will miss one of its finest public servants, and I will miss a treasured friend.

Godspeed.

Read on: complete transcript, including questions and answers, here.

Farewell to the US Department of Defense

2005-04-29T01:24:00.000-04:00

Thank you all for coming today. Thank you for braving the weather. Thank you, all of you, who helped arrange the weather so that we could stay outdoors. I appreciate it enormously.

Senator Warner, great chairman of our Armed Services Committee and a good friend all these many years, and particularly the last four years, thank you for being here. Senator Coleman, and so many distinguished guests. You really do me honor to be here.

Secretary Rumsfeld, thank you for those extremely generous remarks. Thank you for an award, which recognizes me, but actually recognizes the work of literally millions of great Americans. Your remarks call to mind something that President Johnson said on a similar occasion many years ago when he said he wished that his late parents could have been alive to hear that introduction because his father would have been so proud, and his mother would have believed it. [Laughter.]

Maybe now is the time to come clean and to thank you for something else. For four years now, I've been telling audiences about what you said about bringing me back until I got it right. It gets a laugh every time. So I want to thank you for that great line. It's been good to me all those years.

And now I'd like to just turn the tables a little bit and trade a story somewhat along the same lines. It may be apocryphal, but it's just too good to check whether it's true or not. It's about how Don Rumsfeld once asked Henry Kissinger if he was planning to come back as secretary of State. And Kissinger said, "No, Don, I got it right the first time." [Laughter.]

So, Don, it looks like we've been in the same boat all along!

Truthfully, Don Rumsfeld has a great sense of humor, that's why I can tease him a bit, too. And he's known for many other things: His determination, his forcefulness, his command of the podium, his charm, and his matinee idol good looks -- yes, he's one of the stars of C-SPAN!

But to be totally serious, what really stands out for me is something that may not be widely known, and that is what a great teacher Don Rumsfeld is. He has sharpened everybody's thinking and raised everybody's standards. And he's taught me an enormous amount. He encourages and cajoles everyone to do better, always for the purpose of making this Defense Department as good as it can be, and to make our country more secure.

It's been my good fortune, Don, to have you as a friend, and America's to have your steady leadership at this demanding helm. Thank you. [Applause.]

I also want to say thank you to so many of my wounded veteran friends from Walter Reed and Bethesda who have braved the weather to be here today. There are so many other distinguished guests and friends and colleagues that if I tried to mention you all and give you the thanks you deserve, I'd just get into deeper trouble. At a time like this, words inevitably fall short, and I'm sure I'd leave someone out. But you don't do a job like this without enormous amounts of help.

So, to each one of you who has been there along the way, just know that I am deeply grateful for what we've shared during this most important chapter of American history.

And I'm particularly grateful to my personal staff, an extraordinary combination of civilians and military, active and reserve, officers and enlisted, who make a difference every day.

Last Friday I was privileged to be present at the White House when President Bush announced his nominee to be our next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There in front of me was an extraordinary team of civilian and military leaders. First, there was our President, whom it's been such an honor to serve. I've been privileged to be there as George W. Bush has made some of the toughest decisions a leader can make. I can tell you that this is a man who understands the true costs of war, and his charge to defend what we hold most dear. We are blessed in this time of testing to have a president who possesses the deep moral courage to do what it takes to protect our country.

Next to him was Secretary Rumsfeld. And there, too, was our Chairman, General Dick Myers. As we wage this global war, Dick's been a leader of quiet, reassuring confidence; a rock of strength and a source of steady judgment and deep concern for those he serves. Dick never forgets that every decision he makes directly affects the individual men and women who serve this country so well.

And it's been my good luck to have as my closest military counterpart most of these past four years, General Peter Pace, our vice chairman. It was a special moment last Friday, Pete, to see you nominated to be the first Marine to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You have the character, the commitment and the courage to do an outstanding job as our top military leader.

I'm delighted that Gordon England, our secretary of the Navy, who has been an outstanding member of this civilian military leadership team, has agreed to take on this challenging job—and it is challenging.

Over the last four years, I've had the privilege of working with perhaps the finest group of Joint Chiefs and combatant commanders that we've ever had. And our many outstanding one- and two-star flag officers promise to continue or even exceed that record of excellence.

But the people who have earned a truly special place in my heart, in all of our hearts, are the men and women whose names don't appear in the papers or on the evening news. They are the ones who serve America quietly and professionally every day—the men and women who wear this country's uniform, and the dedicated civil servants who support them. They are the ones who deserve our special and lasting gratitude. They are represented here today by these magnificent troops and by our wounded veterans. Please join me now in recognizing them for their service. [Applause.]

And let us remember in a special way those who have fallen in service to this nation. They remain in our hearts, each one of them a reminder that our country is blessed beyond all measure. Let us never forget how much we owe them.

When terrorists attacked us so ruthlessly on September 11th, they may have thought they knew who we were. They may have thought we were weak, grown used to comfort, softened by everything we enjoy in this great nation.

But they were wrong. They must have failed to notice that it was by the sweat and blood of each soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine, and each member of the Coast Guard, that America has met every threat throughout our history.

When we needed them, the heroes of this generation stepped forward to defend America from terrorists. In the process, two brutal regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq -- regimes that harbored and encouraged terrorists -- have been removed from power. And as a result, 50 million people, almost all of them Muslims, have also been released from tyranny.

In a region where many thought freedom and self-government could never succeed, those values are beginning to take hold. The tide is turning against the terrorists' brand of totalitarianism. Like Nazism and communism before them, this false ideology is headed for the ash heap of history.

And at the same time that we are facing the enormous task of winning a global war, we've also advanced the president's agenda for transforming the Department. We've made major adjustments in programs such as the Trident Submarine Force, new classes of surface ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, Army artillery and Army aviation, missile defense and transformational communications across the Department. We've introduced a whole new civilian personnel system for the Department. And along the way, we've done four regular budgets, four budget amendments, and at least six supplementals.

None of these decisions was easy; indeed, many were difficult. But in no small measure, because of what seemed, at times, like endless hours of meetings—and no, Don, I'm not complaining—we managed to achieve agreement between the senior civilian and military leadership of DoD.

Senator Ted Stevens paid tribute to that fact this past week when he said, "I've never seen such a relationship between chiefs and the secretary, open discussions, open critique, and really, a give-and-take that was very helpful and very healthy as far as the Department is concerned."

However, as important as these programmatic decisions have been, transformation is most of all about new ways of thinking—about how to use old systems in new ways. During the last four years, the concepts of transformation and asymmetric warfare have gone from being theoretical concepts to battlefield realities, and are even penetrating our vast acquisition apparatus, from the bureaucracy, to industry, to Congress.

But I don't have to tell this audience that all our marvelous machines and technology would mean nothing without innovative and skillful people to employ them. And even then, this Department would be of little value if our people lacked one particular quality: it's the indispensable quality and the most precious one of all: human courage.

In this job, which has been so much more than a job to me, I've seen courage in abundance.

I remember the valor of an Army sergeant named Steve Workman. In the desperate moments after Flight 77 slammed into these walls, he risked his life to get Navy Lieutenant Kevin Shaeffer out of the building and to the medical attention he desperately needed. Sergeant Workman stayed with the badly wounded, burned, officer and kept him talking and kept him alive.

I'll remember the bravery of people like Corporal Eddie Wright, a Marine who was hit by an RPG that ruptured his eardrum, broke his femur and, most seriously, blew off both his hands. In the confusion, Marines who had never seen combat before needed reassurance, and it was Eddie Wright, as badly wounded as he was, who gave it to them, telling them he was fine, giving instructions on his own first aid, pointing out enemy positions while directing his driver to get them out of the ambush zone. Like so many of our wounded heroes, Eddie's moving on in life with the same courage that he summoned in those desperate moments in Iraq.

And I remember October 26, 2003, the day our hotel in Baghdad, the Al-Rashid, was attacked. Tragically, a great soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Chad Buehring, was killed that day, and five others, civilian and military, were severely wounded.

Visiting the hospital that afternoon, I spoke to an Army colonel who was the most severely wounded. I asked him where he was from, and he said, "I live in Arlington, Virginia, but I grew up in Lebanon, in Beirut." So I asked him how he felt about building a new Middle East. He gave me a thumbs-up, and despite his obvious pain, he also gave me a smile. Today Colonel Elias Nimmer is virtually recovered and still on active duty with the U.S. Army.

But courage comes in many forms. Sometimes moral courage, the courage to face criticism and challenge received wisdom is as important as physical courage, and I’ve seen many examples of that.

One such hero I've been privileged to know is Navy Medical Doctor Captain Marlene DeMaio. She was convinced that there was a serious flaw in the way we were designing body armor. In the face of considerable resistance and criticism, she put together a team whose research proved the need to modify the body armor design. She and her team took on the bureaucracy and won. Her moral courage has saved countless American lives in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

There are so many other stories I could share, but I will tell you just one more. Three months ago, I attended a funeral at Arlington for a soldier from St. Paul, Minnesota. Sergeant Michael Carlson had been killed just before the January 30th elections in Iraq. Not long after those historic elections, I received a letter from his mother.

Mrs. Carlson wrote to tell me how much it meant to her to see the joy on the faces of Iraqi voters, men and women who had risked their lives for something they believed in. She knew her son shared that same sort of vision, and she sent me an essay that he had written as a high school senior that explained how she could be certain of that. It's a remarkable essay, particularly from such a young man.

Michael had been an outstanding high school football player, but he didn't want to become a professional athlete. He wrote, "I want my life to count for something more than just a game. I want to be good at life. I want to fight for something, be part of something that is greater than myself. The only way to live forever," this high school senior wrote, "is to live on in those you have affected. I sometimes dream of being a soldier, helping to liberate people from oppression. In the end," he said, "there's a monument built to immortalize us in stone."

Men and women like that, men and women like Michael Carlson, do become immortalized because they live on in our nation's soul.

President Reagan used to ask, where do we find such people? And he would answer: “We find them where we've always found them, on the streets and the farms of America. They are the product of the freest society man has ever known.”

On one of my visits to Iraq, I met a brigade commander who told me how he explained his mission to his men. He said, "I tell them what they're doing in Iraq and what their comrades are doing in Afghanistan is every bit as important what their grandfathers did in Germany and Japan in World War II, or what their fathers did in Korea or Europe during the Cold War."

That colonel was right.

It's been a privilege of a lifetime to serve with the heroes of this generation who will be remembered with the same gratitude as we remember those who have gone before.

Nothing is more satisfying than to be able to do work that can really make a difference, and I've been lucky to have many opportunities to do that, but this one was as good as they come.

Now the President has asked me to take on a new mission—that of working on behalf of the world's poor. Although I leave the Department of Defense, I believe both our missions serve the goal of making this world a better place. It's an honor. But I have one big regret: I'll be leaving some of the most dedicated, most capable, most courageous people in the world.

In many speeches over these years, I've been accustomed to ask the good Lord to bless our troops and our country. While I do it for the last time as your deputy secretary, I want you to know that I will always carry these words as a prayer in my heart: May God bless you, may God bless the men and women who serve this country so nobly and so well, and may God bless America. [Applause.]

Delivered at Pentagon Parade Ground, Washington, DC, USA

On nomination to Presidency of the World Bank

2005-03-16T01:17:00.000-05:00

I appreciate Secretary Snow's counsel as I look forward to this remarkable opportunity. I have met with the President and Vice President and am deeply grateful for their expressions of support and confidence.

Yesterday, I had an excellent conversation with Jim Wolfensohn. I know Jim well and think he's done a remarkable job. He leaves an impressive legacy and it is humbling to contemplate following in his footsteps.

I am deeply grateful to have had the chance to serve the President and the nation in my present job for the last four years. If approved by the Board, I look forward to being an international civil servant with the responsibility for heading the world's leading institution of economic development, an institution whose aim is reducing poverty and developing opportunities for all the people of the world to achieve their full potential.

People who don't know me may not understand why I am so eager to take on this challenge.

In fact, I believe deeply in the mission of the World Bank. Helping people to lift themselves out of poverty is both a noble mission, and it is also a matter of enlightened self-interest. Nothing is more gratifying than being able to help people in need, as I experienced once again when I witnessed the tsunami relief operations in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. It is also a critical part of making the world a better place for all of us. It is not just poor people who benefit when poverty is reduced; we all do. It is not just the material side of life that improves; peace and freedom are also advanced when more people can enjoy the benefits of prosperity and human dignity.

I experienced this closely and personally twenty years ago working with the Philippine people in their remarkable transition to democracy, where economic development was as critical as political development. I then spent three years in Indonesia where economic development was the most important issue on the agenda. I saw first-hand what the World Bank could accomplish, working in support of dedicated development professionals in the Indonesian government and from many donor countries.

I also saw first-hand the harm that corruption and weak institutions can inflict defeating development and poverty reduction. That is one of many reasons why I applaud the legacy that Jim Wolfensohn will be leaving at the World Bank. He has deepened the Bank's commitment to poverty reduction, emphasizing such key factors in development as education, health, particularly HIV/AIDS, women, youth, and the environment. Jim Wolfensohn has also brought an important focus on issues of transparency, accountability and governance as critical elements of the economic development agenda and, indeed, as critical elements of human progress more broadly.

I also look forward to working with the extraordinary group of professionals who work at the World Bank. The World Bank is the repository of the deepest understanding of development issues assembled in one place. It's truly exciting for me to contemplate working with such diverse talents, whose noble pursuit is nothing less than improving life opportunities for all humanity.

So, I want to extend these words to the staff of the World Bank, and its related organizations: if my nomination should be approved, I look forward to working with you. I have the highest regard for you as individuals. I have the deepest respect for all you have accomplished. And, together I think we can do great things for the less fortunate of the world and for economic development across the globe.

I also look forward to hearing the views of the many constituencies of the World Bank, borrowers and donors, governments and NGOs, as we shape a common vision of how to continue the noble work of this important institution. In order to develop my own vision, I intend to rely on a lot of listening and improving my understanding of the views of those who have served the world's poor with skill, devotion and compassion.

Delivered at Washington, DC, USA

Why Army Needs Are Emergency

2005-03-03T07:51:00.000-05:00

Putting Army restructuring in the emergency supplemental request for fiscal 2005, makes perfect sense, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Budget Committee today ...

Wolfowitz told the senators that beginning in fiscal 2007, DoD will place restructuring in the budget request. But it was important to begin the process as soon as possible.

“When it comes to restructuring ground forces, the department has made a major commitment to restructuring the U.S. Army, adding $35 billion over the seven years of the FY 2005 to 2011 future years defense plan, on top of $13 billion that was already in the Army baseline budget,” he said.

The restructuring plan will increase the number of Army brigades and convert them into independent brigade combat teams that can conduct operations on their own. The Army will add personnel and equipment to the new brigade combat teams and take assets now at the division level and place them in the units. The Army calls the new units “modules” and the process “modularity.”

The Army effort is a fundamental transformation in the way it organizes and thinks about deploying forces. The changes will mean vast differences in the strain placed on the troops and their families through deployments. The plan will add more deployable units to the Army. On the active side, the number will go from 33 to 43 and in the reserves from 15 to 34. “The most significant consequence of these two expansions is that for any required level of overseas force deployment, active brigades will deploy less often and reserve maneuver brigades will be mobilized much less frequently,” Wolfowitz said.

The 3rd Infantry Division – the division that took Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom – has gone through the process and is deployed back in Iraq. He used that unit as an example of why DoD is asking for funds from supplemental requests rather than budgeting them. “As the 3rd Infantry Division redeployed from Iraq some 15 months ago, we simultaneously reset it from the wear and tear of combat, and transformed it from three brigades to four,” he said.

It was only after the war – and the lessons learned from it – that the proposal came out. It was not planned by the military. If it were part of the fiscal 2006 defense budget request, the proposal could not start until at least Oct. 1, 2006. The Pentagon would lose a good bit of time and place unnecessary strain on servicemembers and their families.

Read on. (By Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service, Washington. 1 March 2005)

Dr Wolfowitz interviewed by Lebanese Broadcasting

2005-02-25T07:38:00.000-05:00

Speaking personally and I know speaking for my government I'd like to express our condolences to the Hariri family and to the Lebanese people for this terrible tragedy and express good wishes for the speedy recovery for Minister Basil Fleihan. This was a terrible blow, but maybe out of -- The response to this terrible blow has been really magnificent by the Lebanese people and the support that is coming from the whole international community. Maybe out of this tragedy something really good could happen ...

In a sense to go back before this terrible assassination in fact Resolution 1559 lined the whole world up, and most importantly my country and France leading together in support of free Lebanon, in support of withdrawal of the Syrian occupation from Lebanon. And now the Lebanese people have come out by the tens of thousands in the wake of this assassination, not just to express their sorrow, but to express their demand for that implementation.

I think you saw during President Bush's trip to Europe this week that he was very strong in expressing his support and the European leaders he met with, particularly President Chirac of France, were very strong in expressing their support ...

I think most importantly our response in many ways that we can find is to support the people of Lebanon.

You know, in some ways what happened here reminds me of what happened in the Philippines more than 20 years ago when I was at the State Department, actually, as the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of East Asia. And in a process that actually began with another horrible political murder of Benigno Aquino, the Filipino people took their own fate into their own hands with a lot of support from the United States and from other countries. But the key thing there was the Filipino people and the key thing here is going to be the Lebanese people.

There are many ways we can support them. We can support them with UN Resolutions. We can support them with pressure on the Syrian government. We can support them with helping other countries to come to their aid, but very clearly, France and the United States are committed to the full implementation of Resolution 1559.

I think it's terrible to say anyone's a beneficiary of something terrible like that. I think the important point is even before this assassination the world spoke with a very clear voice at the United Nations on the need for Syria to finally live up to its obligations in Lebanon.

This is about what's good for the people of Lebanon. If the people of Lebanon get what they deserve, then it will be good for the whole region, and I think ultimately it will be good for Syria as well.

It's time to change course in the whole Middle East. It's time to move forward, not to stay stuck in the past, to go backwards.

Regardless of who's responsible for this terrible murder, clearly the era of assassination and murder in Lebanon has to end. The era of Syrian military occupation has to end. The Syrian intelligence presence in Beau Rivage and Anjar has to end. And there have to be free elections this spring.

The most important beneficiaries will be the people of Lebanon, but I think the whole world will benefit when they benefit ...

The Syrian military has to withdraw. And maybe even more important than the troops themselves, the Syrian intelligence presence has to be removed from Lebanon.

Syria needs to stop interfering in the affairs of its neighbors, and that includes Iraq as well. But Syria will be much better off, I believe, when they concentrate on their own affairs and concentrate on moving their own country forward ...

Clearly ending terrorism in general, and that includes the terrorism that's sponsored by Hezbollah is a very important part of moving the whole region forward. It's an important part of the Arab/Israeli peace process. I think the Syrians, it's very much in the power of the Syrians to effect that change and it's important to them to contribute.

It's very much in the power of the Syrians to stop a lot of the terrorism that's going on in Iraq today. You can debate the percentages, but there's no question that a great deal of it comes out of Syrian territory.

But Syria will be much better off in the future if it will stop this policy of trying to destabilize their neighbors and instead concentrate on stabilizing their own society and moving their own society forward. And I believe if they follow that course they will find the world ready to move with them ...

As a rule we don't discuss future military operations for very good reasons of military security. And I will certainly say that the activity of insurgents in Iraq is a matter of obviously the deepest concern to us.

But once again let me appeal to you. People who want to raise the specter of American military action, it seems to me are trying to distract attention from the much more important thing which is taking place in front of our eyes which is hundreds of thousands of Lebanese with a lot of courage, because the assassination of Rafik Hariri demonstrates how dangerous it can be to stand up in Lebanon and stand for the freedom and independence of Lebanon. But tens of thousands of Lebanese are doing it. Just as 8.5 million Iraqis just a few weeks ago stood up and voted in spite of these horrible threats from the terrorists to murder them if they voted, and some of them were murdered.

That's the really powerful force here. It doesn't mean the United States doesn't have military capabilities, but that's not the way change is going to come in Lebanon ...

We don't have intentions against Iran. In fact our concern is that Iran seems to have intentions against us and against its neighbors.

Iran is a great country. They are remarkable people with a great civilization and a great culture and a very important place in the world. They shouldn't be pursuing nuclear weapons. That's bad. They should certainly not be supporting terrorism. They shouldn't be destabilizing their neighbors in Iraq or Afghanistan or trying to destabilize the Arab/Israeli peace process. Those are bad policies of a government that I think most of the Iranian people tried to vote out of office some years ago when 75 percent of them voted for President Khatami who was clearly a kind of opposition candidate.

The Iranian people I think want a better government. They deserve a better government. When they have that better government I don't think there will be any issues between Iran and the rest of the world ...

My impression is that Iran has distinguished itself again, unfortunately, in a bad way. It's the only country that seems to have, in the wake of the horrible assassination of President Hariri stepped up and expressed its support for Syria and affected support for Syria's bad policies in Lebanon. It's a mistake.

I can say the same things about Iran I said about Syria. There's a way forward for Iran, it's a way of progress, it's a way of entering the modern world, it's a way of entering the community of nations. It’s a way of having a peaceful Afghanistan and a peaceful Iraq living in friendship on its borders. But it's going to take some substantial changes in Iranian policy to get there.

So much of the world has changed for the better over the last 20-25 years. You see it in East Asia, you see it in the old Soviet Empire, you see it in Latin America. You're starting to see it in important parts of the Middle East. It's really time for this decaying Iranian dictatorship to get with it. Its people clearly want them to get with those changes.

Read on. (Lebanese Broadcast Corporation, 25 February 2005)

We need to support the wave of democracy

2005-02-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

Prepared testimony of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to the USA Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on "Tsunami Response: Lessons Learned":

As you know, this was a double-headed disaster. First was a massive earthquake that registered at 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it one of the 4 or 5 largest earthquakes of the past century. It lifted the ocean floor overlying the thrust fault between the Indian tectonic plate and the overlying Burma plate by up to 10 feet. The earthquake was followed almost immediately, in the case of the northwest shore of the island of Sumatra by a succession of tsunami waves. The region of destruction was extensive, ranging laterally 2000 miles from east to west, and from north to south nearly 500 miles, or 2/3 the width of the United States and nearly half the distance from the north of the U.S. to the south. The tsunami waves created great destruction and disruption in lives and property leaving over 160,000 dead and over 140,000 missing in its wake, over one million people displaced, and billions of dollars in reconstruction costs. To put a human face on this disaster, shortly before I went to the region to survey the damage and review our military relief effort, I met with an Acehnese who resides here in Washington. This one individual lost two hundred members of his immediate family in the tsunami. An aunt and an uncle who live here are his only surviving relatives in the world. The rest of his family was swept away in an instant.

I visited the region three weeks ago, just after the calamity. By that time, however, Thailand was already in the recovery stage. Sri Lanka was still conducting some emergency relief, but it was soon to turn the corner and the U.S. military effort was starting to shift elsewhere. In Indonesia they were still reeling from the enormity of this disaster. As terrible as it was throughout the region, the devastation in Indonesia was incomparably greater. Under any other circumstances the toll of over 8,000 dead or missing in Thailand alone would be devastating. Yet in Sri Lanka the losses of over 35,000 dead or missing is more than four times higher than for Thailand. But in Aceh, one small province in Indonesia, whose population at about 4.2 million is about a fifth of Sri Lanka’s (20 million), the toll of over 114,000 dead and over 127,000 missing was seven times greater than in Sri Lanka (thirty-one times greater than Thailand).

The U.S. Response:

Despite the devastation, there was an encouraging amount of good news—the resilience of the people, the willingness of governments to cooperate to help their people and the readiness of the international community to offer assistance. One of the good news stories concerned the interagency coordination and cooperation within the U.S. government in Washington straight out to the ground level where the execution was occurring. The success in this cooperation and coordination was almost unprecedented, and it benefited directly from lessons learned in previous crises.

However, there is always room for improvement and we are looking closely at our response effort through an after action review. We have already identified, along with USAID/OFDA, the need to establish some common operating procedures and mechanisms to help smooth our coordinated response to future crises.

The ability of the Department of Defense to respond so quickly would not have been possible without the relationships developed over many years with the militaries of countries in the region, particularly with Thailand. An unexpected consequence of the relief operation was the opportunity to work closely and effectively with the Indian military, with whom we are expanding ties, as well as the Indonesian military (TNI), with whom we have had difficult relations in the past, but with whom we have worked well in this crisis.

Thanks to the Department of State, in cases where we required over flight clearances or status of forces agreements we were able to obtain them in a timely manner. This disaster, and our response to it, has demonstrated the importance of having standing agreements like these where possible, as well as bilateral Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreements (ACSAs) to enable us to cooperatively respond to humanitarian disasters. The restrictions that many people feared we might encounter from the Indonesian military and bureaucracy were overcome by the decisive leadership of newly-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his Administration.

Our early relief efforts in Indonesia would have been somewhat more effective if we had more experience working with the Indonesian military (TNI) and if the TNI had better English language capabilities and more modern equipment, but the real point to emphasize is that the Indonesian government recognized immediately the need for help and welcomed all who came forward.

This disaster has no doubt focused the minds of other nations on creating some sort of disaster response capability. The countries in the regional core group were selected to a large extent because they possessed the ability to respond quickly. It is in our interest to expand that capability and the number of our partners in the region who possess it. USPACOM has a program known as the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) to create not a standing response force, but a cadre of individuals who are accustomed to working together on a multinational basis to respond to crises. MPAT experience was put to good use in the response to the tsunami crisis.

The Department of Defense Response:

At the height of the Department of Defense (DOD) effort there were nearly 16,000 U.S. military personnel in the region, 26 ships (including one USCG cutter), 58 helicopters of all kinds, and 43 fixed wing aircraft (mostly transport). The capital investment that the American taxpayers have made in the equipment that made this effort possible reached nearly $30B. With these state of the art resources our extraordinarily capable men and women delivered over ten million (10,124,059) pounds of food and supplies and provided over 400,000 (422,324) gallons of fresh water for the people whose lives were endangered by the specter of starvation and disease. As well, our military medical system provided care to over 2,500 patients, and the U.S. hospital ship MERCY remains off the coast of Sumatra rendering vital medical assistance.

But the real impact can best be measured in the lives saved and assistance provided to the host nations as they tried to come to grips with a disaster of such scope and extent. It can also be measured by the good will it has generated. Conservatively, the U.S. response to this natural disaster saved thousands, and probably tens of thousands of lives, particularly in Indonesia, and provided desperately needed hope to hundreds of thousands of others.

A little more than three weeks ago, as we flew above the northwest coast of Sumatra surveying the damage, the sheer scale of the devastation was overwhelming. The Indonesians were still finding as many as 3000 human remains a day in the rubble … where there was rubble. At the airfield at Banda Aceh, in the heat and humidity, we saw a human chain of magnificent young American men and women loading the helicopters with supplies, food and water. All of them had volunteered to come ashore from the ABRAHAM LINCOLN Carrier Strike Group and make a difference however they could. In those lines were officers and sailors, Chiefs and fighter pilots, aid workers and Indonesian military (TNI) working side by side to get the food and water on those helicopters and out to the people of Aceh.

As a result of this effort, in Aceh the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN and her helicopters have already passed into local legend as the Grey Angels. I had a chance to visit with the crew of the LINCOLN during my visit and to share in their zeal for the relief effort. They were quite proud of what they were accomplishing. As one fighter pilot told me - - and I should say this is quite an admission coming from a fighter pilot - - “we are all helicopter pilots now.”

In Galle, Sri Lanka, we visited a school that had been undermined and rendered unsafe by the waves of the tsunami. In 100-degree heat, Marines and Navy Seabees, working alongside the Sri Lankan Army, operated heavy equipment and bent their backs into clearing the site for a new school. When we asked the teachers what they thought of the Marines and Seabees they burst into smiles and rapid-fire comments of approval.

On the runway at Utapao, Thailand, the young Air Force men and women of the airlift control elements were pressing themselves to the outer edge of their endurance controlling the flow of relief supplies to airfields from Utapao through to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The efforts of our servicemen and women have not only saved lives but also generated unbelievable goodwill throughout the region.

As we pass the baton to the affected governments and international relief organizations, we have an interest in staying engaged. This crisis was humanitarian. It has been said that the Chinese character for crisis represents both danger and opportunity. Here then is a danger that failure to properly address the reconstruction needs, particularly in Indonesia, could harm the affected governments. But here too is also opportunity. If reconstruction is done the right way in Aceh, it could bolster the credentials of the Indonesian government. This is also an opportunity for the Indonesian government to show the people of Aceh the good things that Jakarta can do for them and to use the attention of the world to help achieve a political settlement to the longstanding separatist problem. Similarly, another country affected by this disaster, Sri Lanka, is facing a separatist problem. We hope that the opportunity that has been presented to the people of Sri Lanka can contribute to the long-term settlement of its divisions as well.

Any government would be challenged by this crisis and the burden of recovery. Indonesia in particular finds itself - - as an emerging democracy - - at the time of the tsunami not yet 100 days into the Administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The 1997 economic crisis in Southeast Asia was referred to as an “economic tsunami” and it contributed to the down fall of the Suharto dictatorship. This real tsunami presents an enormous challenge to the still developing democratic government in Indonesia. However, by meeting the challenge successfully there is an opportunity to greatly strengthen democratic government and free institutions in the country that has the largest Muslim-majority population in the world.

We need to support the wave of democracy as it spreads across the Muslim world. The elections held in Indonesia last year, the second democratic elections in the country and the first direct election of a President, are as significant as the elections this year in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. While the new democracy in Indonesia is proving more capable than many thought possible, it must still be nurtured.

President Yudhoyono holds a great deal of promise in terms of increasing good governance, rooting out corruption, and continuing the already significant reforms of the TNI. President Yudhoyono is, by the way, a retired general and a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College through the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program.

We have a strong interest in helping this democracy succeed. One of the first ways we can do this is by ensuring that the job of bringing relief and reconstruction to the people of Aceh is accomplished.

We can also support democracy by strengthening the civilian government’s capacity to manage defense and security matters and by supporting the process of reform in the Indonesian military (TNI).

We all recognize why the U.S. Congress and the Administration have put restrictions on military-to-military relations with the TNI. At the same time, I believe we must take a broad approach to relations with a country as important as Indonesia.

Legal restrictions on assistance we can provide to the TNI have contributed to some unfamiliarity and suspicions between our military forces. These restrictions did not overly limit our ability to respond to most of the tsunami-related requirements of the TNI. For example, we had the necessary authorities to provide spare parts for Indonesian C-130 aircraft.

Nevertheless, I believe that many of the restrictions on our defense relations with Indonesia have outlived their usefulness. We need to look forward. The Indonesia of today is simply a different country, and the TNI a significantly different military, from the one that perpetrated the depredations of East Timor.

During my visit to Jakarta, the new civilian Minister of Defense, Juwono Sudarsono, recognized the need for improved defense relations. He specifically asked for more assistance from the U.S. to assist his efforts to continue TNI reform. We should assist him in this effort.

Conclusion:

Through the hard work of the tsunami victims themselves, the affected nations, as well as the U.S. and the rest of the international community, the situation has evolved to the point at which current assistance needs can now be met by the military and civilian officials from the affected countries in coordination with the UN and relief organizations.

The redeployment of U.S. military assets does not signal the departure of U.S. assistance, but rather is a direct result of host nation, U.S. government agencies, international agencies, U.N. and other NGOs assessments that U.S. military assets and capabilities are no longer required. This is done in close coordination with the host governments and reflects the transition from direct support to recovery and reconstruction.

The lasting result of U.S. efforts should be that we did the right thing, for the right reasons - regardless of the nationality, race, or religion of those afflicted. That when needed, the U.S. was there to aid in this enormous humanitarian disaster relief effort and we remained only as long as we were needed and could be effective.

Although our military role is coming to an end this week, there is no conclusion to the suffering of the victims of this disaster in South and Southeast Asia. This is no time for short attention spans or donor fatigue. The entire international community has an interest in helping get the tools that they need to rebuild shattered lives. We thank the Congress, and this Committee, for your strong support for this effort.

Read on. (Washington, DC, 10 February 2005)

Five immediate focussed efforts for Iraq

2005-02-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

Testimony as delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee: Hearing on Military Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan: We meet in a historic week in the history of Iraq and in our relations with Iraq. There are some appropriate cautions that people give about avoiding euphoria at this moment. I think those cautions are correct. I think the right way to think of what's happened on Sunday was that it was a major victorious battle in a war that is still not yet won and it is appropriate to celebrate that victory, but it's also important to think about the way ahead ... Mr Chairman, I think, attempting to think about our immediate focused efforts in the next few months, I would suggest there are five ... Read on. (Washington, DC, Thursday. 3 February 2005)

Jan Nowak, Courier from Warsaw, Courier of Truth

2005-02-01T10:36:00.000-05:00

Just four months ago, I was fortunate to visit Warsaw—my own father’s birthplace. It was a beautiful fall day, and a vivid sun shone on Poland—at peace, whole and free. I was fortunate on that occasion to be able to visit Jan Nowak in his apartment in Warsaw, close to the place where he’d lived as a young man. The room’s large windows seemed to invite in the brilliance of the early morning sun. The sunlight filled every corner and brought out the colors of the fresh-cut roses that were spread in vases and vases all around the room. Jan Nowak’s apartment was elegantly simple—almost spare—yet it seemed to overflow with life and optimism and joy. It called to mind the passage with which Jan Nowak closed his account of his World War II experiences. In 1982, with Poland still under the Soviet yoke, Jan Nowak wrote that, “One day, the sun will shine on crowds of singing and dancing people drunk with joy in the streets of Warsaw. The free soul of Poland will survive until that day.” Read on. (Memorial Service, Polish Embassy, Washington, DC. 1 February 2005).

60th anniversary of liberation of Nazi death camps

2005-01-24T23:15:00.000-05:00

The UN General Assembly in New York commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps with a special session today. Although the commemoration also was meant to eradicate the notion that the UN General Assembly is anti-Semitic, the auditorium was less than half full, and just one Middle East country, Jordan, was scheduled to deliver a speech. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz spoke on behalf of the USA:

Mr President, Mr Secretary-General, distinguished delegates, distinguished guests.

Thank you, Mr President for convening this 28th Special Session and thank you to the member states that supported the request for commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

Thank you Mr Secretary-General for your eloquent statement today and for your encouragement of this initiative.

Thank you, Sir Brian Urquhart for your service in the war and your witness here today.

And our special gratitude goes to Elie Wiesel, not only for his inspiring words today, but for all he has taught us with his life. Elie Wiesel has taught us that “in extreme situations when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. It helps the killers,” he says, “not the victims.”

Elie Wiesel teaches us that we must speak about unspeakable deeds, so that they will be neither forgotten nor repeated. Most of all, he offers personal witness to all humanity that in the face of the most horrific oppression, there is always hope that the goodness of the human spirit will prevail.

That is the larger meaning of why we gather here today. We’re here to reflect on the magnitude of the occasion, how totalitarian evil claimed millions of precious lives. But just as important, the member nations attending today are affirming their rejection of such evil and making a statement of hope for a more civilized future, a hope that “never again” will the world look the other way in the face of such evil.

For if there is one thing the world has learned, it is that peaceful nations cannot close their eyes or sit idly by in the face of genocide. It took a war, the most terrible war in history, to end the horrors that we remember today. It was a war that Winston Churchill called “The Unnecessary War” because he believed that a firm and concerted policy by the peaceful nations of the world could have stopped Hitler early on. But it was a war that became necessary to save the world from what he correctly called “the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister … by the lights of a perverted science.”

This truth we also know: that war, even a just and noble war, is horrible for everyone it touches. War is not something Americans seek, nor something we will ever grow to like. Throughout our history, we have waged it reluctantly, but we have pursued it as a duty when it was necessary.

Our own Civil War was one of the bloodiest the world had known up to its time. And it too was fought to end a great evil. As that war was nearing its bloody close, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to the nation hoping that the war would end soon, but saying that, it would continue if necessary “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

Two months after the Battle of Antietam, where the number of American dead was four times the number that fell on the beaches of Normandy, President Lincoln told members of the U.S. Congress that those who “hold the power, and bear the responsibility” could not escape the burden of history, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

Americans have fought often to liberate others from slavery and tyranny in order to protect our own freedom. Cemeteries from France to North Africa, with their rows of Christian crosses and Stars of David, attest to that truth.

When Americans have taken up arms, it was believing that, in the end, it is never just about us alone, knowing that woven into our liberty is a mantle of responsibility, knowing that the whole world benefits when people are free to realize their dreams and develop their talents.

Today, we remember the people who fell victim to tyranny because of their political views, their ethnic heritage or their religion, in places where human slaughter was perfected as an efficient and systematic industry of state. We can only imagine how different our lives would be had those millions of lost souls had the chance to live out their dreams.

Today, we also pay tribute to all the soldiers of many Allied nations who participated in the liberation of the Nazi death camps, for their courage and sacrifice and for the care they provided to the survivors.

We are proud of the role of our own American soldiers, the so-called “young old men” of 19 and 20 years of age, who and fought through their own horrors at Anzio and Normandy and Bastogne and who thought that a world of evil no longer held surprises for them, but who were astonished to the depth of their souls when they confronted the human ruins of Nazi tyranny in the spring of 1945.

Just one week before the end of the war in Europe, the U.S. Seventh Army would reach Dachau. Lt. Colonel Walther Fellenz described what he saw as the 42nd Infantry Division neared the main gate of that concentration camp. It was “a mass of cheering, half-mad men, women and children … their liberators had come! The noise was beyond comprehension,” he said. And “our hearts wept as we saw the tears of happiness fall from their cheeks.”

Sensing the approach of victory, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, was unprepared for what greeted him at the camp at Ohrdruf. As he walked past thousands of corpses in shallow graves and saw the instruments of torture used by the SS, he was moved—to anger and to action.

He cabled Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall words which are now engraved at the entrance of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington: “The things I saw,” Eisenhower wrote, “beggar description … the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering.” He insisted on looking into one particular room that contained piles of skeletal, naked men, killed through starvation. “I made the visit deliberately,” he said, “in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to ‘propaganda.’”

Eisenhower wanted others to see this crime against humanity. So, he urged American Congressmen and journalists to go to the camps. He directed that a film record the reality and that it be shown widely to German citizens. And he ordered that as many GIs as possible see the camps. American soldiers became what one writer called “reluctant archeologists of man’s most inhuman possibilities.”

Jack Hallet, one of the soldiers who liberated Dachau, found that it was difficult to separate the living from the dead. As he looked closer at a stack of corpses, he noticed that deep within the pile, he could see sets of eyes still blinking.

Dan Evers was in the 286th Combat Engineer Battalion at Dachau: “The gas chamber door was closed,” he recalled, “but the ovens were still open. There was a sign in German overhead which said: ‘Wash your hands after work.’”

Another soldier wrote to his parents, asking them to keep his letter, because “it is my personal memorandum of something I personally want to remember but would like to forget.”

From Ebensee, Captain Timothy Brennan of the Third Cavalry wrote to his wife and child: “You cannot imagine that such things exist in a civilized world.”

From Mauthausen in Austria, Sergeant Fred Friendly wrote to his mother: “I want you to never forget or let our disbelieving friends forget, that your flesh and blood saw this…Your son saw this with his own eyes and in doing so aged 10 years.”

Beyond the shock and horror, American and Russian and other Allied soldiers who liberated the camps were also witnesses to hope. Tomorrow, you will have the opportunity to hear an American GI tell one such story. Tomorrow Lt. John Withers, of the all African-American Quartermaster Truck Company 3512, will speak about how he and his soldiers changed forever the lives of two young boys who were rescued from Dachau.

Yet, as proud as we are of the role our soldiers played in the liberation of the concentration camps, we know that we all arrived too late for most of the victims.

Just last week, a great Polish patriot passed away. During World War II, Jan Nowak, who was not Jewish, risked his life to leave Poland to bring news of the Nazi genocide to the West. I was privileged to meet Jan Nowak in his Warsaw apartment just three months ago. He recalled that after the war when he was able to see the records of his secret meetings with Western officials, there was no mention of what he had told them about Poland’s Jews. Nowak put it down to “wartime inconvenience.” He was telling truths that people wanted not to know.

And, despite our fervent promises never to forget, we know that there have been far too many occasions in the six decades since the liberation of the concentration camps, when the world ignored inconvenient truths so that it would not have to act, or acted too late.

We have agreed today to set aside contemporary political issues, in order to reflect on those events of sixty years ago in a spirit of unanimity. But let us do so with a unanimous resolve to give real meaning to those words “never forget.” And with a resolve that even when we may find it difficult to act, we at least have an obligation to face the truth.

Last Thursday, as he began his second term in office, President George Bush expressed his belief that our nation’s interests cannot be separated from the aspirations of others to be free from tyranny and oppression. “America’s vital interests,” he said, “and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.”

Americans remain committed to working with all nations of good will to alleviate the suffering of our time. And we remain hopeful that when generations to come look back on this time they will see that we in it were dedicated to fulfilling the pledge that arose from the ashes of man’s inhumanity toward man: never again.

Never again and never forget. We must keep remembering. We must continue to speak about unspeakable things. So we commend the United Nations for a remembrance of the Holocaust befitting its significance in human history. In doing so, perhaps we can help avoid such inhumanity and the warfare that marches along with it.

Dr Wolfowitz interviewed by Tempo Indonesia

2005-01-24T13:38:00.000-05:00

Dr Paul Wolfowitz met with Tempo magazine reporters Rommy Fibri and Akmal Nasery on 16 January at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta to discuss Aceh, US support for peace in Palestine, and priorities under President Bush's second term:

So, let me ask about the future plan of the lateral relationship between the two countries in President Bush’s second term. Could you explain a little bit to us?

I think that Indonesia is important in its own right. It’s such a big country, and it’s I think made some impressive achievements in the last seven years since this, it was called I think an “economic tsunami” that hit Indonesia, and you started really for the first time in your history a real democracy under the worst possible economic conditions.

Some people predicted that the country would fall apart, and dictators would come back, and here the economy’s starting to grow again and you’ve had two consecutive presidential elections, successful ones. It’s very important I think, from my country’s point of view to encourage that success. But it’s even more important when one stops for a minute and realizes that Indonesia is the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, and at the same time a country that, so there’s an opportunity, among other things, to demonstrate, which I think is important, that freedom and democracy are something that I think are universal values.

I think it would have, President Bush has made it very clear we believe it’s an important movement to encourage in the Muslim world as a whole. But, particularly I’d say because Indonesia has such a strong tradition of religious tolerance. Officially you recognize five different religions, it’s, the world needs more good examples of tolerant societies, and this is a tolerant society. We think that’s something that is good for the world and good for my country, so we want to support that.

On the second term, could you elaborate what is the main focus on the next period?

In, clearly one of the important things the President wants to focus on is continuing the progress that’s been made in rooting out global terrorist networks and getting governments out of the business of supporting terrorism. But he also particularly with a very important speech he made in I think it was November of 2003 where he talked about, it’s called the Greater Middle East Initiative, and he talked about the need for supporting democratic reform in the Muslim world and particularly in the Arab world.

And he was, actually as, for President, fairly frank and critical about our failure to do that in the past and our too willingness to accept dictatorships in Arab countries as somehow serving American interests or this was the best that Arabs can do. I believe strongly it doesn’t serve American interests, and I think Arabs can do much better than that. So, and that if you want to demonstrate a better alternative to what the radicals are offering, I think the real alternative is freedom and democracy. I think that President believes that.

Another thing he’s made clear is he intends to put a lot of his own political capital into pushing toward an Israeli-Palestinian resolution. And he’s made it clear for a couple of years now his belief that the solution to that is two states, Israel and Palestine, at peace with one another. But, it’s not much of a secret that Yasser Arafat seemed to be a leader who wasn’t willing or able to agree to anything. And now Palestine has, or the Palestinians, not yet Palestine, but the Palestinians have a new leader with an electoral mandate and I think a willingness to negotiate.

Even Ariel Sharon is taking on some difficult challenges with his own extremists to pull Israelis out of Gaza and out of four settlements on the West Bank. So, that’s, there’s the opportunity there and that’s what the President has said about expending his political capital to try to move forward on that issue. I think those are areas where major emphasis will be placed.

Do you think it will reach a mass-collision in Palestine because you know an up-coming event you know is a road map, so some people say that yes, Arafat is a moderate people, I mean maybe then the new Palestinian leader?

I guess we’ll have to see, but I don’t think so. I mean I think, I think Mahmoud Abbas is, has shown much more willingness to come to some kind of reasonable settlement. I, one hopes that he’s got the strength to do it. You know, it’s, Sharon isn’t the most likely candidate to be promoting any kind of peace. Yet if he does it, it gets done. It’s like Nixon going to China. Sometimes it takes someone doing something that’s politically unusual, but we’ll just have to see. But what I have no doubt about is President Bush believes that the Americans have a big stake in this, and he intends to play a significant role in pushing it.

But yesterday Sharon cut all ties with all Palestinians at all levels.

Things are gonna, you know, go back and forth. This is not something that’s going to be solved simply. A friend of mine once said that nothing in the Middle East goes in a straightforward way. It’s always a zig and a zag, so I’m not going to comment on the latest zig or the zag. And these are difficult issues and sometimes difficult people. Often difficult people.

But, the stakes are enormous, and the fact is that more and more I think people are beginning to say there’s really only one outcome, and you can argue a little bit about whether the border’s 10 km this way or 10 km that way. But, the Palest, I mean Israelis have stopped denying that there is a Palestinian people and with a right to a Palestinian state.

Most Palestinians, I think, are accepting the fact that like it or not, Israel’s going to exist. One of the big challenges is going to be to convince the Israelis that the Palestinians are going to give up or control terrorism. And the problem on the Israeli side is to deal with the problems that have been caused by the, not problems that have been caused, but the obstacles that have been created by all the settlement activity. It’s not simple. If it were simple, it wouldn’t . . .

Yeah, it’s a long way yet, yeah?

Yeah, but there’s an opportunity now, and the President’s made it clear he’s going to try to take advantage of it.

How about the fight against terrorism? Do you think that Indonesia was good cooperation than before? I mean, right now, even our neighbors Thailand say that this is the house of the terrorists, so, what do you think about this?

I didn’t know they say that. I wouldn’t call Germany the house of the terrorists even though many of the 9/11 terrorists came out of Hamburg in Germany. I mean, it doesn’t take very many of these people hiding in a country to do a lot of damage. I think at least ever since the horrible bombing in Bali I think Indonesians have recognized that these people are not just our enemies, they’re your enemies.

I think your government is working hard to deal with that problem. Again, I hate to repeat myself, this isn’t a simple one either, and we, both of us face the challenge that we’re free and open societies. You didn’t used to be, but you are now. And terrorists have to be pursued within the limits of the law. But, I think it’s very important to make sure that they are pursued because these people are out to destroy everything that Indonesians believe in and everything Americans believe in. They would like nothing better than to create societies in which people are taken back to the Middle Ages. It’s just, it’s, they’re very twisted minds.

Excuse me for my question, but I have to make a clarification because some Muslims in Indonesia have the thinking that in the second term in the Bush Cabinet there is another war after Iraq. So, do you think that it will happen during the next period? And, I’m sorry, they accuse you as a man of war. Of course I don’t believe this statement, but they said so because they say that you were behind these wars, just like?

Well, I don’t, I’m, I don’t think any of us feel that the war in Afghanistan was a mistake or that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But, I think they also ought to think about the fact that the war in Iraq was really started fifteen years ago by Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, and he never really stopped being at war with us and with Saudi Arabia, and with Kuwait. Part of that was this support for terrorism, and part of it was the games that he was playing with the U.N. inspections.

It’s still a bit of a mystery exactly what was going on, but he disobeyed one resolution after another. War is a terrible thing even when it’s the right thing to do as it was in Afghanistan or it was in Iraq, and none of us, none of us want wars. I certainly hope that there isn’t another war in the second Bush Administration. But, there are certain terrible people in the world who may sometimes only behave for that reason.

I think that the reason Mu'ammar Qadhafi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction was because he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein. I would never want to reassure people like that that they’re completely safe.

But look, the real way ahead is through what I think is an impressive movement throughout the Arab world toward political reform. You read in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia about people talking openly about democracy in a way they never did before. In places like Morocco, they actually have made real political reforms.

When Iraq succeeds, and it’s going to succeed, in spite of the most brutal terrorism, it’s going to show to its neighbors in Iran and Syria that there’s a much better way to live as Arabs and Muslims than living under terrible dictators, and I think it’s going to have a big effect on them, and a lot of change can happen without wars. A lot of change happened in this part of the world without any wars.

I just maybe end with that when I started getting deeply involved in Asian affairs, it was when I in the State Department twenty-two years ago. And at that time, Japan was the only democracy in East Asia. Think about it. And since that, I’m proud that I had a little bit to do with helping the Philippines get an election that got rid of Ferdinand Marcos. And then, the Koreans had an election that started a democratic government in Korea. And then Taiwan had a democracy, and then somewhere in, I guess you’d say probably the early-90’s, Thailand really ended its coups, and then in 1998, Indonesia became a democracy. That’s a lot of progress and not a single war. So, I think a lot can happen without wars.

Believe me, ... I don’t like wars at all.

Read on. (Tempo Magazine, 25-31 January 2004)

Dr Wolfowitz interviewed by Margaret Warner

2005-01-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

US military assisting in Aceh, Indonesia: I was ambassador there for three years and these are proud people, properly so. And they're people who are very suspicious of foreign militaries from any country, and yet they really open their arms to us. They've taken away all the restrictions that might have applied. They recognize that no country could have handled a task like this -- challenge like this on their own. And there was a little -- an indicator, I think, of Indonesian opinion when one politician came out and said our forces had to leave by March 26. The president himself, when he met with him and with many ministers, partly because it was the right thing to do, but I think also because they were reading. The Indonesian public was saying "Wait a minute. Don't ask the Americans to leave until we're ready to take over." They said "This is a timeline, it's not a deadline," and I think that's the attitude we've encountered.

US restrictions on the Indonesian military: Those restrictions are there because of a real concern about abuses by the Indonesian military. And it's a concern now that -- not only our concern, but the newly elected democratic government of Indonesia shares that concern. And that's part of the context of my remarks is last September they had a remarkably successful free, fair presidential election ... This is a country that's moving in an impressive way, given the challenges they face, toward democracy, and they have a government committed to it. So I think it's important to help that government manage its own military. And now it's even more important to help that government manage this huge challenge of the humanitarian assistance. So I also said -- and I mean it -- this is something we want to consult with the Congress on because the views of the Congress on this are strongly felt, and for good reason.

Iraq and weapons of mass destruction: Nobody was misleading the American public. If we were wrong, it was in no small measure because Saddam was misleading the whole world. This is a consensus. The view that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was the consensus of the Clinton administration, it was the consensus of this administration; it was the consensus of many other countries in the world, including a number that opposed the war ... Look, the same report that they say has no stockpiles says that the Iraqi intelligence service was testing biological and chemical agents on live human beings. They didn't declare that to the United Nations. It's a clear violation and a serious violation of Resolution 1441. And from my point of view, it's more ominous in terms of Iraqi intelligence service working with terrorists than whether there were large stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Read on. (PBS News Hour, 19 January 2005)

A tradition of tolerance and of understanding

2004-11-30T09:37:00.000-05:00

It’s hard to imagine less auspicious circumstances for a transitioning democracy, in the economic condition of Indonesia six years ago. Moreover, the experts will tell you that Indonesia is too poor to be a successful democracy. Apparently, that didn’t stop the Indonesian voters. They didn’t care that they were poor. They chose to make a difference. Read On. (US-Indonesia Society's 10th Anniversary Dinner, Washington, DC, 30 November 2004)

Dr Wolfowitz interviewed by Radek Sikorski

2004-11-23T07:07:00.000-05:00

If a hawk is someone who knows his mind and speaks it clearly, then Paul Wolfowitz, aged 60, is a hawk. But in other respects he fails to conform to the European idea of an American conservative. He has spent most of his career as a forceful promoter of democracy and humanitarian intervention. Read On. (Prospect Magazine, 23 November 2004).

"Courage and Freedom" address

2004-10-05T07:54:00.000-04:00

UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was his 17th—and supposed to be his final—chance. Saddam Hussein chose defiance. He chose to continue to hide his activities from inspectors. He chose to continue to support terrorism. And he continued to torture his country and his people in a way that puts him among the most brutal tyrants of the last hundred years. Read On. (Warsaw University, Poland, 5 October 2004)

The road map for a sovereign Iraq

2004-06-09T01:22:00.000-04:00

After a suicide car bombing killed Iraqi Interim Governing Council President Izzedine Salim and eight others on May 17, one Iraqi put that act of terror into a larger perspective for those who wonder if democracy can work in Iraq. His name is Omar, one of the new Iraqi "bloggers," and he wrote on his Web log: "We cannot ... protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists -- but we can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership 'replaceable.'" Read On. (Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal, 9 June 2004).

Terror is losing

2004-03-19T08:26:00.000-05:00

In increasing numbers, likeminded Iraqi women--and men--are making it clear they expect basic rights. People are listening. Not only did this pressure force the repeal of Resolution 137, but, when the new Iraqi interim constitution was signed March 8, it contained assurances of equal rights--and substantial representation--for women. Read On. (New York Post, 19 March 2004).

Women In the New Iraq

2004-02-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

My second trip to Iraq since the liberation of Baghdad grabbed some headlines because of a rocket attack on our hotel. But a visit to a new women's center in the city of Hillah said more about Iraq's future than did that act of violence. Read On. (The Washington Post , 1 February 2004)