Next Steps for Darfur

Good morning, everyone and welcome to this Brookings Briefing on Next Steps for Darfur. I am Roberta Cohen, a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and a Senior Advisor to the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement. The Project, which is co-sponsoring this event, works closely with the United Nations, in particular, the representative of the U.N. Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons. The Project seeks to promote better solutions for people uprooted in their own countries by internal conflicts. This is Brookings' fourth briefing on Darfur over a three-year period. The purpose is to keep attention focused on one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world and also to stimulate solutions to the crisis. It has become commonplace to note but it nonetheless horrifying that hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur, 2.5 million are uprooted from their homes, and 4 million people are totally dependent on the international community for survival. The conflict has also spilled over into Chad and the Central African Republic bringing more displacement and death in its wake, and it threatens to upset implementation of the North-South Peace Agreement in Sudan and the integration of millions of displaced people in the South. Allow me to recall that at our first briefing in 2004, we asked three questions of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Senator Jon Corzine, and Ambassador Francis Deng. What should the United Nations and the United States do to effectively stop the killings and displacement? Beyond diplomatic pressure, would sanctions and military actions be effective in this case? How can the international community best engage the government of Sudan in a political process to resolve the conflict? These questions still remain pertinent today. Among the recommendations emanating from the 2004 briefing and from a subsequent one in 2006 with Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, were the need for political settlement, for a strengthened African Union force but also for its transition into a United Nations force, the need for increased U.S. financial and diplomatic support especially in engaging China and the Arab League, and for the appointment of a full-time U.S. envoy on Sudan and Darfur. There has been movement on some of these proposals, but the security and humanitarian situation which improved in early 2005 has worsened with military operations going on right now, with large areas inaccessible to the United Nations, and with relief workers under attack. Today's panel presents an opportunity to look at what steps the United Nations and the United States should be taking to fulfill the international responsibility to protect the people of Darfur. Carlos Pascual, Vice President of the Brookings Institution and Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program will moderate the discussion. On behalf of the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, thank you so much for coming. Roberta, thank you and thank you for the leadership that you personally have shown and that the Internally Displaced Persons Project has shown in focusing attention on Darfur. The two speakers that we have today are really in a unique position to help us address the issues of Sudan and Darfur and gain a better understanding of what the options and solutions might be. One of the grand frustrations of Sudan and Darfur has been that there probably is no humanitarian crisis throughout the world that has been more roundly condemned by the international community and where it has been so difficult to achieve a meaningful peace and to address humanitarian concerns to stop the killing and to help people go back to some sort of normalcy in life and to have some sense of hope they can actually have a better life. In this issue, both the United States and the United Nations really do have a common cause and a common interest to see how we can cooperate with one another and the international community to help achieve meaningful change in the security situation and achieving a viable peace and to help begin to restore some sense of stabilization and reconstruction of people's lives. To begin our discussion, we are going to have U.N. Under Secretary-General for the Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie GuŽhenno. Jean-Marie GuŽhenno has been in that position since October of 2000. Currently, he is managing at least 75,000 U.N. forces that are in the field, another 25,000 police and civilians, one of the largest U.N. deployments around the world that has ever been experienced, and managing the second largest international deployment of troops beyond that which is being managed by the United States. Prior to his time at the U.N., Jean-Marie held a number of senior positions in the French Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Service including being the head of their policy planning staff and Ambassador to the Western European Union. Together with Jean-Marie GuŽhenno will be Andrew Natsios. Andrew was appointed in September of 2006 as the U.S. Presidential Special Envoy for Sudan. Previous to that, many of you know Andrew as having been the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and in that capacity also playing a role as Special Humanitarian Coordinator and Special Coordinator for International Disaster Assistance. Andrew was previously the Vice President of World Vision. He held senior positions in USAID. He is a politician from Massachusetts and brings with him knowledge of both local politics and international development, which is probably going to be critical in addressing these issues as well. So, without further adieu, let me ask Jean-Marie to please begin and help us understand some of these issues from a U.N. perspective. Thank you, Carlos, for those kind words. I am very happy to be at Brookings today because this institution certainly has I think played a critical role of putting the issue of Darfur and the plight of Darfur on the map so that it would have the attention that it needs to have. And I am glad that I am on this panel with Andrew Natsios. We were together in Addis Ababa just a few days ago, last Thursday, and certainly a lot of what I am going to say will reflect the discussions we had in Addis, because certainly listening what you were saying on previous recommendations made here at Brookings, I think what happened in Addis last Thursday in a way is a follow-up to those recommendations and is very much in line with the kind of thinking that was developed here. As we try to find the right answer to the immense challenge of Darfur, of course we are haunted by the memories of Rwanda, by the memories of Bosnia, by the memories of Somalia, too, and how do the right thing. As we discuss, as we negotiate, we see, as you were reminding us, that the situation on the ground has in recent weeks deteriorated rather than improved. Just on November 16th while we were meeting in Addis, there were military operations conducted in the area of Djebel Mara in North Darfur with military aircraft, with gunships carrying out bombing raids. There were also World Food Program convoys carrying lifesaving humanitarian supplies which were ambushed and looted by Arab militia in North and South Darfur. And we have seen the upsurge of violence in Chad and its possible spillover in the Central African Republic. So the situation on the ground is today unacceptable and it is clear I think to everybody who looks at the situation that it cannot be allowed to continue as it is and that it would be even worse when the military buildup that we are witnessing with also additional mobilization of militias, if that were to continue while on the rebel side the NRF would also launch more military operations. That would just mean that we would go from very bad to even worse. And we know that the enormous relief operation that is being conducted in Darfur that has cost some $2-1/2 million already that involves close to 15,000 humanitarian workers, we know that that is not a sustainable answer. So where are we today after Addis? And where were we just before Addis? I think we have to recognize that there are enormous mutual suspicions on both sides. There is obviously on the side of the government of Darfur worry about what is going to happen now with the South, whether unity will be made attractive, whether the spirit that inspired the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement will endure and whether the possible decision of the South to move away from Darfur would just be a prelude then to Darfur and the integrity of Sudan being challenged in Darfur. So there is clearly I think on the Sudanese side a sense that the international community may have what they call a hidden agenda, that there is some kind of process that is threatening the foundations of the country. And certainly on the side of the international community there is a deep suspicion of Sudanese authorities to allow for a U.N. force in Darfur reflects a political choice not to have a strong force, not to have a force that would make the difference that is needed today on the ground, even though the African Union has done everything it could, but that the refusal to have a force is not linked to anything else but their desire to have the international community playing an active role in Darfur. In the background of those mutual suspicions we have had many public statements which in a way have further entrenched the position which makes any solution more difficult because it becomes a zero-sum gain especially if you think in purely institutional terms, the U.N. versus A.U., or more U.N. means less A.U., and so any evolution on that now looks like someone losing face. And Resolution 1706, although it made clear that it invited the consent of the government of Sudan for the deployment of a peacekeeping operation, and I am quoting from the resolution, Resolution 1706 has been presented as a sort of fait accompli that would make the point that decisions are made without the government of Sudan being part of them. So there is that background. On top of that there has been the perception of a divided international community, divided in the Security Council, divided in Africa, divided between the League of Arab States and the African Union, so a sense that there was no unity of purpose and that the government of Sudan could listen to different voices in the international community. I think in Addis Ababa that first day we began to address all those issues, and we began to address them probably because there was a clear sense of urgency. Everybody, as I say, knows what the situation is on the ground. Everybody also was aware that there is going to be a meeting of critical importance of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union on November 24th at the end of this week. And we are just a few weeks away from the end of 2006, and that decisions have to be made on what happens on January 1, 2007, and making those decisions just a few weeks before that fateful date arrives, no time can be lost. That sense of urgency I think helped us focus on the issues, to move away from the purely institutional debate and focus on the issues. The first is obviously the question of the ceasefire which I think was present in the minds of everybody because if you have an ongoing war developing on the ground, it is very difficult to talk of a political process, let alone of the deployment of a peacekeeping force. The meeting in Addis came out with a strong call for a ceasefire, for a stop to the military operations which are ongoing, and for a ceasefire that would involve everybody. One of the big weaknesses of the post-Darfur peace agreement period has been that, as you know, the Ceasefire Commission has not played the role that it should play because some key actors on the ground were not part of the framework, and if you do not have in the structure that is supposed to implement the ceasefire a significant part of those who have begun, you are not going to make much progress. So you do need to have an inclusive ceasefire mission. It is an essential mechanism if you want to make any progress toward a ceasefire. What I would hope is that in the coming days, the government of Sudan which takes the position that its own military actions are reactions to the actions of the NRF, that the government of Sudan will take the initiative in stopping military operations so that there the onus would be on those rebels who have not joined the ceasefire agreement. There are signals that can be sent there, and that would certainly help the Peace and Security Council at the end of the week. But clearly a ceasefire is not going to last, is not going to be sustainable if there is no serious political process. I think there it was important in Addis, and it was significant, that the A.U., the U.N., the League of Arab States, the P-5, the government of Sudan, all agreed that if there is no solid political process in Darfur, just throwing a force at the problem will not stop the problem, that force is an important part, a credible, effective force and I am going to come to that, of the solution in Darfur, but it is only a part. If that force is deployed without a credible political process going on, it will not work. You can have an A.U. force, you can have a U.N. force, you can have a 10,000 force, a 20,000 force, or a 30,000 force, considering the size of Darfur and the fragmentation in Darfur, if you do not have a process that limits the influence of possible spoilers, then everybody is a spoiler and the force will not be in a position to really bring real progress. When you look at the political process, when you look at the reasons why the Darfur Peace Agreement is not today an agreement that has a wide following, you see that there are essentially three issues that stand out. There is the issue of compensation, how much money and how is that money provided to the victims. There is the issue of the region of Darfur versus the free states of Darfur. And there is the issue of the presence of Darfurians in Sudanese state institutions. When you look at those issues, then you see that there is space for diplomacy and the political process, and there again some positive signals can be sent, because clearly signals that the amount of compensation in the Darfur Peace Agreement, the government of Sudan committed for a first down payment so to speak of $30 million. That is a small amount of money. That needs to be complemented, that needs to be augmented, and it would be a signal that things can move on in a positive manner. How do we get all the relevant people around the table? As I said, there is a Ceasefire Commission, but there has to be a political process. It was recognized in Addis that this process has to involve the key players, the United Nations and the African Union. At the moment there is an ongoing negotiation, actually it is supposed to restart I think today in Asmara between the Sudanese delegation and various rebel movements. One of the difficulties of negotiation in the past few months is there are several tracks, it is very compartmentalized, and different people say different things to different interpolators, so you do not have a sense that there is one unified vision. If you do not have that, then the negotiations go nowhere. Obviously, for the negotiation on the political track to make progress, one will have to address the broader regional and international context. The regional context is the issue of relations between Sudan and Chad, the mutual allegations that elements coming from Chad help the rebels, and particularly the JEM in Darfur, and of course from the Chad standpoint, the incursions of armed Arab militias in Chad and the threat that they can represent for the authorities in N'Djamena. So long as that is not addressed, the risk that the Darfur crisis and the Chad uncertainties feed into each other in a very dangerous is very high. So in such negotiations, it will be important that key regional stakeholders be part of them. And it will be important that the international community stand together. I said at the beginning that before Addis Ababa there was a sense of a sometimes not so harmonious international community. It was striking to see in Addis actually how the international community came together, and probably one of the reasons why there seems to have been progress in Addis is the sense that we have reached the stage where there is a broadening understanding among all of the P-5, in the Arab League, in the African Union, that not making a strategic shift now in the way one addresses the crisis in Darfur can only lead to a complete breakdown and to tragedies where essentially events will be in control rather than rationality, and that is something that everybody wants and should want to avoid. It was interesting to see, for instance, in Addis how China was very helpful in steering the discussion in a way that will help create common ground between the various viewpoints and bring them closer together. Having a solid political process that provides the foundation for the force, and having a ceasefire that allows for a political process is not enough. There will be a need in Darfur for a credible force. There is an urgent need for such a force. What we focused in Addis was rather than the institutional envelope of that force, its capacities what is needed, there was agreement that initially what we call a light package of support to the African Union force would be put in place expeditiously, and we are doing that. We need some cooperation from member states for some aspects of the package, but we are doing that. There was agreement that a heavier package including more police and civilian personnel close to a thousand people, should also be put in place expeditiously. There the government of Sudan made the point that its implementation should be facilitated by the existing tripartite mechanism that has been agreed to, that is the mechanism between the United Nations, the African Union, and the government of Sudan. We have no objection to that because we want to be transparent, but it has to be clear that such a mechanism is a mechanism to implement. If we all agree that a political process is the answer to the situation in Darfur, a credible, inclusive political process is the answer, then we should all be agreed that a credible, effective force is part of that answer so that the government of Sudan and all the stakeholders in Darfur should accept that the force that is to be deployed has to be an effective force and has to be deployed in full transparency with the government of Sudan, but that transparency should not mean that its deployment is delayed by administrative actions, but that its deployment is made in full cooperation with the government of Sudan. That is the third point that was discussed and agreed in principle in Addis Ababa, the deployment of an effective force in Darfur. The Sudanese delegation made very clear that the size of the force, the exact command-and-control arrangements, would have to be checked with the authorities in Khartoum. Of course, these are important decisions that may need to be taken at the highest level. But our own position is very clear, for that force to be deployed, for that force to be financed by the United Nations . committed to make that recommendation, and it is not for him to make that decision, to make that recommendation to the organs of the United Nations, and that would be a momentous decision for the U.N. to fund the force that will not a fully U.N. force. For that recommendation to be sustained, the membership of the United Nations will want to have some guarantees. It will not be in a position to approve such a force if that force is not credible and if the membership of the Security Council is not convinced that that force is going make a real difference. So in terms of its size, it will have to be a force very much like the force that is described in the report of July 28 this summer made by the Secretary General, essentially the middle option in this report. That force will have to have command-and-control structures that are effective, and there there is a structure that exists in the United Nations that is ready to support that force and to provide the kind of backstopping command-and-control support that is needed for that force to be effective. There the discussion is really not of a technical nature. The technicalities hide the fundamental strategic choice that now has to be made, whether we now engage in a political process which is the fundamental interests of all those who want the suffering in Darfur to end and the government of Sudan has to be part of that. If that strategic choice is made, then a number of decisions flow from that, including having a significantly stronger force. We will in parity look at troops from the African Continent, but clearly already the African Continent is contributing to many peacekeeping operations, many under the U.N. flag, and we know that it may well be that beyond the African Continent there will be a need for non-African troops from traditional peacekeeping countries like the countries of South Asia which have always made a contribution to peacekeeping. We will need probably to add some non-African forces to the force and we will need to put into place robust command-and-control structures that will be in the best interests of the political process that we all agreed on. If we do that, I think that for the first time there is a real hope that we can begin to see the end of the immense suffering in Darfur. For that to happen, a lot of concrete actions will need to be taken in the coming days and weeks. The Peace and Security Council on November 24th of course will have to take critical decisions on what is the mandate of that force because that force will need to clearly put the protection of civilians at the center of its mandate if it is to play a useful role. Intensive preparations and discussions will have to take place between the U.N., the African Union, and the government of Sudan so that we all clearly agreed on the timing and nature of the deployment that we are going to have to make expeditiously. Last but not least, intensification of the political process needs to happen quickly. We committed to having a meeting in the next 2 weeks with the nonsignatories of the Darfur Peace Agreement. That is essential because if again we do not have that foundation, we will not succeed. I will stop there by saying that there are three points that are really fundamental for us. The situation on the ground has to improve immediately. Hence the need for an effective ceasefire. The political process has to be reenergized, and the United Nations is ready to take its responsibility alongside the African Union to help that political process, and that was one of the key conclusions in Addis. And lastly, we are now I think closer to deploying an international force which would be a hybrid force. The detailed institutional packaging of that force is yet to be worked out, but I think what is not in doubt is the need if there is a credible political process to have a credible force to support it. Thank you. Now, I am going to ask Andrew Natsios, the President's Special Envoy on Sudan, to address us. Andrew, as I said, has been deeply involved in issues for Sudan for a long, long time and will give us a perspective of what his mandate is and what the American strategy is to complement what the U.N. is doing. Andrew, thanks. Thank you very much, Carlos. What I first want to say is that my mandate from the President and the Secretary of State is for all of Sudan, not just Darfur. It is for the East. There is unrest in the Nubian in the North over some water issues and certainly in the South where I have been involved for many years. I do want to, though, just add a few comments about historical context. My first trip to Darfur was in 1991 during the first Darfur War, not the first in history but the first in the last 20-year cycle that we are going through. It started at the end of the Great Sahelian Drought of the mid-1980s. It was between the Fur and the Arabs and it started in 1985, 1986 and ended about 1991. I estimated then that about 20,000 people had died but mostly from hunger because there was a drought and a war at the same time, and in many developing countries, if you combine war and drought, it is usually a recipe for a lot of deaths. Fortunately, one good thing this year - about the only good thing in Darfur - is that there was a good crop, good rains, good crop, which actually has been atypical in the last couple of decades. The second war took place between the Massalit and the Arabs from 1996 to 1998. So that was the second war. I was in the NGO community at that time, and my NGO, World Vision, was not involved in the relief effort, at least I am not aware of it. Maybe it was. I don't think so. We were just in the South. And the third war now is the one that began, depending on whether you follow Alex De Waal and Julie Flint's arguments that in fact this did not start in 2003, but it started in 2002. Without going through a lot of debate about the beginning of the third war, this is clearly the most destructive of the three, in fact, clearly the most destructive in the history of Darfur, and that was because of the introduction of heavy weaponry and the arming of one particular set of Arab militias from the Rizeigat Abbala tribes, the camel-herding Rizeigat of the North of the Darfur. The Southern Rizeigat nazir refused to participate in this conflict. In fact, he has actually protected some of the African tribal leaders and chiefs in the South during this conflict and has refused to participate. So the perception that this is Arabs versus Africans is simply not accurate. This is some Arab tribes versus some African tribes. The reality is that in historical context, the tribes have intermarried. You will frequently find people in tribes that are half-Zaghawa and half-Arab. In fact, there is one tribe that has a new name that is half-Zaghawa and half-Fur and because of the combination of the bloodlines, it has a new name for the tribe. This is very complicated. It is not simple. It goes back centuries. The Sultanate of the Fur goes back to the 1500s. Actually, there are some historical arguments that it goes back to the 15th Century, not just the 1500s. I want to focus my attention, though, on what happened in Addis and complement a few of the comments that Jean-Marie has just made. I do want to associate myself and the United States Government with the perspective and the analysis that Jean-Marie just made. It is not always the case that the United States agrees with U.N. leadership on every issue. I have to say . and everybody should know this - that with respect to Darfur, our perception of what is happening and our broader plan for what needs to happen is coincident with the leadership of the United Nations, with Kofi Annan, with Jean-Marie, and with the other leaders in the U.N. That does not mean we agree on every single issue. There are issues where we are a little hardliner than perhaps they might be and issues that we put a little more focus on, but I do want to commend Kofi Annan. I have watched him over many years, and he was brilliant in Addis. I thought his leadership skills came out, and after many years of leadership in the U.N., he is showing those skills once again. I also want to commend my friend, Chairman Konare, the Chairman of the African Union, for his leadership at that meeting, too. Several things happened in Addis, the first of which is there was a general consensus-building effort. This was not just the United States versus Sudan or the West versus Sudan or the U.N. versus Sudan. It was, I think, a general effort among all of the participants, including the Sudanese, to come to some resolution of issues, many of which are dealt with in 1706. Now, 1706 has become a very provocative term. My government stands behind that resolution; I want to repeat that. But it is interesting to me that if you read the Darfur Peace Agreement, there are many things in the Darfur Peace Agreement that are in 1706. So when we have people condemn 1706 or criticize it, who also support the Peace Agreement on Darfur, there is an issue because there is a lot of overlap between the two. I presume there are just a couple of issues actually within 1706 which are the controversial ones which have led to this divisiveness over the resolution. Now, I want to say that our job between now and the end of this calendar year is to coordinate every closely with the leadership of the United Nations on the diplomacy of the Addis Ababa framework that we agreed to in the last few days because I don't want anyone to get the impression that we are conducting a separate negotiation of separate set of issues. We are not going to do that. My government stands behind the Addis Ababa framework that was agreed to last week. We encourage the Sudanese Government to work through some of the remaining issues. When Lam Akol, the Foreign Minister, left, he said there were several issues I have to bring back to my government. We look with great anticipation and interest on the reaction of the Sudanese Government on those issues, and I will be speaking with Mark Malloch Brown, the Secretary-General, and with Jean Marie on a daily basis to ensure we are coordinated on these issues and that we don't have two separate negotiating tracts because I think one of the reasons that the CPA negotiations were successful is we stopped having multiple negotiations going on at the same time with the Sudanese Government which confuses them and actually made the process last a lot longer. I mean prior to the CPA negotiations starting. I think that is one of the reasons we didn't have an agreement before is we had separate tracts going on at the same time. It was very apparent to me in my trip to Khartoum five weeks ago that there were six negotiations going on simultaneously, and it was confusing everyone, including me, and not very helpful. One of the first accomplishments of Addis Ababa is the agreement there is going to be now a U.N.-A.U. process and that our job in the African countries, the Arab League, the European Union, and the United States is to support that single tract. The second point I want to make which is not an agreement that was made, but I think there was a consensus around the issue of timing. Amr Moussa from the Arab League said we are running out of time. I said we are running out of time. Kofi Annan knows we are running out of time because he is leaving office on January 1st. There are three things happening on January 1st. One is there is a new Secretary-General, and it is not that the new Secretary-General is not able, but he is a different person than Kofi Annan. He is going to have different people in positions of authority. There is a transition that is going on in any institution when you change leaders, and we need to be aware of that. We have a new Congress coming into power in my government, January 1st. So, from my perspective, I have to understand that we have basically six weeks to get some agreements done before January 1st because I am clear now where we are. But on January 1st, there is a new Congress and they will be making policy decisions with us, and that may change. With respect to the political process here, we have six weeks. We also have six weeks because the African Union has said that their mandate ends January 1st. So for three different reasons, we are in a very tight timeline. Decisions have to be made. Agreements have to be reached. These are not artificial. They are based, because of the analysis I have just done, on a historical reality, not just one, not just Kofi Annan; it is in our government and it is also in the African Union in terms of their mandate. Now, I want to say also when I was in the aid business and running humanitarian aid operations, the standards that I used to judge development programs and to develop action plans on crises from a purely humanitarian perspective, I had a different set of standards: Are we spending the money rapidly enough? Are people mobilized on the ground? Are we getting kids immunized? Is the food moving? Is the shelter moving? What is the security situation with respect to the people on the ground? I must say I have to reorient my whole thinking about how to judge success from a purely diplomatic standpoint. I can't get my development mind and my humanitarian mind completely out of my head. It is there to stay for the rest of my life. So, constantly in the background, I worry about what the conditions are among the people in the villages and in the camps, both in Chad and in Darfur. But essentially, we are not going to have one breakthrough moment when everything comes together on every single issue one day at one time. What we are having happen now is a series of steps are being taken where there is forward motion. As long as those steps are sufficient to reach a conclusion that is definitive by January 1st, I will be happy. I think we began to do that in Addis. There was a series of things the Sudanese Government announced that they had not announced before. They essentially supported the package that we finished with. There were several issues that were remaining that they need to discuss in their government, but they did, for example, agree to the second package of assistance to upgrade the AMIS Force which is in Paragraphs 48 through 60 of Kofi Annan's report of July 28th, 2006. So, if you see that, they had not agreed to that. In fact, actually, they had opposed it. They clearly definitively said so at that meeting.. Lam Akol said: My government, in principle, has agreed to this. It is a matter of simply the operational details of getting this put in place. That, in my view, was a step forward. So, beyond the consensus-building, it was the second step. The light package had been agreed to before, and Kofi Annan asked us not to debate something that had already been agreed to which I thought was a wise decision on his part. I think it is very important we move along which is Jean-Marie's obligation to do now or his duty to do, and he is in charge of that process. just want to say to you, if you need any help as you move along, please tell us. I think there is a third thing that came out of this meeting. There is a lot of suspicion by the Sudanese Government that there are other agendas at work here, that this is not simply what it appears to be. I want to say this clearly, categorically from my government: The only agenda the United States has in Darfur is a human rights and humanitarian agenda. I hear so many bizarre rumors and stories circulating as to other agendas. It is nonsense. I have been in every single meeting in the inter-agency process from May 1st when I took over as as the AID Administrator because I was called into meetings that were purely diplomatic because of my expertise in Sudan. The only time I wasn't in the meetings was the nine months from early this year until I took over this position in September when I was teaching at Georgetown. By the way, I am still teaching at Georgetown, and I want thank John DeGioia, the President of Georgetown for giving me a little bit more flexibility in my teaching schedule to do this. But during that nine-month period, there were no meetings held that dramatically changed policy. There is no other agenda. There is no hidden agenda. There is nothing else at work in the U.S. Government over any other issues in Darfur. I need to say that because there is suspicion. There is distrust, and that distrust is, in my view, fueling the resistance of the Sudanese Government to a negotiation over the 1706. But now it is a little easier because I think all of these issues came out on the table during Addis Ababa. A proposal was put together to have a joint U.N.-A.U. appointment of the next senior political international official. We would typically call that an SRSG, Special Representative to the Secretary- General, which is sort of the Ambassador of the United Nations, but we are talking about a hybrid now and the hybrid would be an A.U. official and U.N. official simultaneously, jointly appointed who would likely be an African; and then a Force Commander who would also be an African, jointly appointed by the A.U. and the U.N. This was also a general concept that was presented, and I think there was consensus around it, though the Sudanese Government needs to still speak about that issue. It is critically important, from the perspective of my government, for the United Nations regular funding system for peacekeeping operations be used. Now, it can't be used in the traditional sense because this is a hybrid operation, but we cannot use the current system with which the Europeans and the United States have fully funded the AMIS Force. We have to keep going back for special appropriations to our Congress. The European budget for this is empty now to go back and assist AMIS. We are going to have to come up with some money between now and the end of the year to support AMIS during these critical months. But the point is we need a regularized system for raising funds for this, so that we don't have to do these supplemental appropriations. The reason I say that is there are always other issues in these supplemental appropriations in the United States. It has nothing to do with either party or the ideology. The fact of the matter is people add other things in. There is a big dispute now over the supplemental about whether there should be any earmarks in it. When that is held up, it means the appropriations are held up to help the A.U. When the United Nations presents to us a bill for all their peacekeeping operations . I think is it 23 percent we pay now? Twenty-seven. 27 percent; I wasn't trying to drop the figure, Jean-Marie, so don't start rumors. It is just my memory at my advanced age is now slipping a bit. So, 27 percent, we pay it. It is appropriated. We pay it through the regular budgeting process. That is what we need to go to. We cannot use the system we have used to support AMIS financially because it is not regularized. And I might also add during Addis Ababa, there was also an educational process for all of the people there. It was not just for the Sudanese Government. It was for a lot of people who do not understand how complex these operations are. You must have systems for making checks out to the 7,000 soldiers who are on board. There is a regularized system for doing this. I watched the U.N. military operations in the early nineties. I am not being mean here, but they were not up to par. Some of them were a disaster. Over 14 years, whatever it is from 1992 to now, there has been a gradual improvement in the systems, the mundane systems. You think they are not any peacekeeping operation, you have a big problem with morale. Getting those checks from wherever the headquarters is in the middle of a war zone is not an easy thing to do. These are complex operations. Do you have a memo of understanding between the African Union or the U.N. and the country in which the peacekeeping operation is going on because there are legal issues that come up? If someone gets hurt, what do you do? Do you pay taxes? Do you not pay taxes on these? There are all sorts of issues. The U.N. has put in place a series of very complex arrangements that actually work very well. I compliment the United Nations . and I always do that . for the work that Kofi Annan has done, who used to have that job, Jean-Marie's job, and Jean-Marie's reforms over the last few years to put in place a set of what I would call critically important operational systems to make these operations work. It is not a criticism of the A.U. to say that those systems are not in place in the A.U. Why aren't they? Because it is their first operation. It is very difficult to do these. It was difficult for the U.N. to do them when they started. So this is not a criticism of the A.U. I think the A.U. has done a wonderful job under difficult circumstances in their first instance of these kinds of operations. We need now going to 17,000 people from 7,000 which is what the proposal is at Addis, to established systems that has been tested over and over again that we know work. If we don't have those systems, it weakens this all. I want to say I am going to believe the Sudanese Government's statements that they want an effective force, until they prove otherwise. They may prove otherwise, but I am going to wait for that to happen. I believe the only way to make this work properly is to use U.N.-established backstopping systems and command and control systems because we know they work and we can see . I can see . the improvement in these operations over the last 14 years. Jean-Marie mentioned the composition. There are issues about whether it will be only Africans or whether Africans will be encouraged from Arab countries and North Africa or outside of Africa in terms of South Asia and other countries with peacekeeping traditions. It is better to have countries that have done this before in other places around the world because it is more likely that they will be successful. I want to just say something in conclusion. I have watched a lot of these operations. There are some things that are very dicey, very difficult to do, like disarming different groups, particularly from heavy weaponry. There is a lot of heavy weaponry sitting around Darfur right now on all sides. You can't have a peace agreement implemented unless that stuff is collected. The U.N. did not do a good job 14 years ago. I watched them really mess up some things. They do an excellent job now in this. They have established procedures as to how to do it so it works. If we are going to have a peace agreement and Darfur is going to be stable again and development can take place, it is very important that we use those established procedures. I accepted this job because the President assured me and the Secretary assured me that we will have a robust American effort to fund an internationally-coordinated and run development program to reconstruct Darfur after this is all over. I think a lot of people in the camps, in all tribes, and this is going to be, by the way, for all tribes. It can't be for one side and not the other. If it is for the Africans and not the Arabs, people are going to say in two more years, we are just going to have another war. Our objective here is to see to it that this is the last Darfur war, not the third of four or five or six wars. People have suffered enough. The Sahara Desert is moving south. Destitution is terrible among all of the tribes because of the increase in population, the fragility of the environment, and the fact that there are an increasing number of droughts. There is a huge amount of water in Northern Darfur under the desert. It can be used, but we need a development program to do that. I want to just say my government has agreed that they will play a role, a major role in that effort, but we must have a peace agreement and we must have the agreement include all of the tribes and all of the political interests and it has to be done in a collaborative way, not by force. We believe that the United Nations is the best way to accomplish that. Thank you very much.