international peacekeeping presence is essentially what the u.s. military is doing in iraq right now in terms of functions peacefully perform. i think slow removal of that is conducive to stability rather than rapid. .. >> today we saw one of those

flashpoints. ten simultaneous car bombs all executed by sunni hq i elements. and so were not for a permit dangerous return to what we saw. by that amy and recurrence of that with signal serious loss of ground and lots of progress. but corruption, and aspects, and blindness government in iraq as we've described it, the extra procreation of public assets for private use. criminal use. and it's happened repeatedly. many officials in the four governments that have come and gone in iraq have become millionaires. in iraq you join the government to get rich, very rich in several cases. the guitar and is a multitime 100 millionaire, living in pulling out giving himself another house.

that sort of greed and corruption is the kind of thing that frankly with a well-planned stabilization and reconstruction operation in a coherent capacity building effort, the united states should supersede early on. it happened too often. and because of the structural discontinuity within the iraq government today, it's have to say. corruption is opaque by its very nature. but the limited reconstruction results, good results that we've seen across the country means that money would somewhere else. and that structure -- structural discontinuity, and electoral democracy mangini command economy. so you're holding office, but you know you might get voted out. but she controlled 90% of the revenue. a lot of times or to frequently in iraq, officials have taken

advantage of the situation and their access to that flow of money and enrich themselves. grand or petit, all of the criminal enrichment is a form of the second insurgency that has limited progress of the u.s. reconstruction program. it can't be perfect as stephen said. we can't let the enemy of the good, and other famous washington, but what is good in iraq, good is defined the reconciliation that still seems to be missing between shia and sunni and to find coherent and sensible steps that create a move towards privatization that will reduce corruption, promote and put the third-largest oil research of the world. that's a rich country unlike afghanistan.

it's a country that has a legacy of education and capacity. but it's all in tatters now. the one of the largest tatters fluttering in the breeze no does this discontinuity, that huge amount of money flowing through opaquely and being criminally taken advantage of. we call it corruption. >> all right, thank you. we're going to take some questions from the audience. jim has a microphone there. >> all circulate through the audience now in a semi-random fashion, trying get as many questions nsa can. to request, one that you wait until the microphone actually arrives before starting your question and secondly he let me hold onto that make. this long-standing security foreign policy. >> so what you both have been saying obviously has huge implications for a strategy would retail at iraq and

afghanistan for any of these issues. as a government, how do you think we can set it up so we can better learn these lessons in the future so that has been said here they don't just become encapsulated, put on the shelf and forgotten? >> well, we've kind of of taken on squarely by producing a lessons learned series. impressing those lessons at the department of defense into the congress. the lessons, as stephen was talking about, disorganized and improperly overseen in contracting within the department of defense and the department of state. the lessons of needing to figure out how we do police training. huge programs, both in iraq and afghanistan, done completely different fashions. but the hardest lesson from iraq that we spelled out in her book

length report in 2009 cubby confided to her website, www.thinker .mil is what i've been saying is there is no clarity, no continuity, no cohesive point of decision making of, responsibility to ensure planning of exclamation and operations are carried out. and then somebody to be held accountable. if you want to hold people accountable or responsible for what we've been talking about tonight, you'd be calling for his the alumni from the alphabet autocracy that managed iraq early on and they're not in government for the most part. there's no identifiable point of accountability. and that's my job to impose accountability. it's been difficult to do over seven years because of the moving target. so in our latest report, which we put out in february called applying hard lessons, we propose the creation of

something called the u.s. office for contingency operations will bring together those elements now scattered or diffused among the agencies into one place and actually put somebody in charge of the planning would begin before the first steps foot on foreign soil in stabilization. >> i think that's exactly right. let me add a word from the perspective of the military side of counterinsurgency. the military -- the u.s. military in particular devotes enormous effort to lessons learned activity, the legions of lesson echo four to collect material about the conduct of ongoing operations and issue reports pamphlets, documents, u.s. military also regularly revises all the major doctrinal, the famous counterinsurgency at 7324 that became a best-selling book from the university of chicago press libby intervention will be updated and revised in

that process will reflect the military's perception of what went well and what went badly. one piece of revision i hope they will make disable remove the underlying presumption that document that the centrist alignment between the counterinsurgent and the host. but an interesting feature of any military lessons learned effort, including this issue of what do we learn from governments and reform act committees in iraq and afghanistan as it is generally done without a lot of social science methodological input. it's done in a remarkably casual way by officers who have been busy figuring out how to conduct military operations there will career. if not typically been trained as social scientists to unveil unveil underlying cause effect relationships from complicated arrays of observational data that will lead you to do a better job of prescribing future

actions is likely to bring about the effect from that cause that she wants and not something else. the military devotes huge effort to this. i think there is a massive unmet opportunity for scholarly social science on campuses like this one to make it terribly important contribution to that effort, which is understood to be important by the military by bringing to the table a collection of methodological skills and social science perspectives that the military doesn't normally have at its disposal. it's a mistake to view this as a military lessons learned activity grammatically sealed from the study of cause and effect in the conduct of war. >> okay, next question. thank you both for excellent presentations. there was an article in the "washington post" is the other

day talking about the recent military operations to destroy the punjab region of kunhardt. one of the reason with him isaf and u.s. forces are working is colonel bachmann traffic in terms of the police chief. he is widely regarded as one of the problematic figures in kandahar. but the article emphasized the opinion amongst u.s. forces -- actually the astonishment among u.s. forces of the military efficacy of his band of merry thieves. and this sort of points to one of the dilemmas that i've heard from many military personnel who've been in afghanistan but for the most part the formal afghan national security forces are weak and unreliable, but these private security companies can be relied on however corrupt

they may be. and of course this in some ways is an echo of the dilemma with the saw what in iraq. so this is just another dilemma that i wonder if particularly professor biddle could address. what do you do in the security forces with whom you are supposed to work, who may or may not be honest themselves are completely ineffective in the thieves are the only effective military allies you have on the ground. >> let me as a preamble note that i think the dynamics with people like chris economics and afghanistan are quite different from those of the sons of iraq and the saw what in iraq because it aside part or conversation on another occasion. a couple drivers are very different. that having been said, it is say to turn chilly fatal problem in afghanistan to allow malign

actors with private armies at their disposal to run rampant the way they now do in afghanistan. that is not required that they all be eliminated down to the last soul. as i pointed at my last talk, there's a variety of intermediate conditions between today's unlimited predation and complete extermination that are stable if enforced properly that could involve potentially a role in governance for act or is come like receipt. the first thing we need to do is make a decision about how much suppression do we require, which is not a decision that frankly i think has been reached yet. before we can make a decision with how to deal with individuals like receipt. with that being said, we're going to have to deal with the idea they can deliver security and therefore we should let him run rabbit will lose us the war. that is a shortsighted trade and

it requires explicit government government -- explicit guidance of the theater level to the local commanders who are dealing with people in my supposed to accept this guy services because they provide security even though they off important parts of the population are not. we have to prioritize and think with all this. we can't simultaneously go after every colonel receipt in the country, both because of the limited sources are limited political, so we have to choose, prioritize and think when snapping some actors are going to be allowed to continue to operate in that near-term. the decision about where's to start might under well lose this week in order to focus somewhere else. if i were going to do is simply leave them all in place and

believe they're going to deliver security force if we can play ball with them and therefore we are not going to constrain their act committees. we are not going to limit their take. we're not going to bind them into an enforcement mechanism that puts a cap on what they do to the population. then they will lose. none of that necessarily means that it needs to be shut down tomorrow morning. it's not going to happen simultaneously uppercrust theater all at once. eventually if actors like that are not brought into some confinement system that works and can be enforced, we will lose the war. >> another question over here. >> my question is about whether the media have played a sufficiently strong watchdog role when i was with the bbc my sense was the answer is no.

with one distinguished exception. it seems to me sitting in london, t. christian miller pioneered the story of corruption. he told me a hell of a lot of things i didn't know. he was then writing for "the l.a. times." i'm interested in your take as to whether that watchdog role has been phased sufficiently. >> well, i'm not qualified to say whether has done a sufficient job, but i am qualified that t. miller has done an opposite job when he was on iraq before "the l.a. times." key to a certain extent, as they think is evident to investigate and report. that is my office in the media. but the difference is i have subpoena power and that makes my effort more encompassing and shortens my timeline.

but even with subpoena power, it's difficult to get to the bottom of the issues in an environment that was entirely cash driven. and we've issued actually true to reports. one recently 192,005 about the environment, the development fund for iraq firmly the world for the cal. $19 billion managed by the provisional can no longer exists and is created to spend that money without any capacity. in both reports reached the same conclusion that there is no real accountability for how that money was spent. so he knows how much of it ended up in illicit hands and said the insurgency is impossible to say. but i think that the reporting overtime in iraq certainly became more incisive and

improved and i think jim going for "the new york times" did an excellent job as well. and i think the bbc has covered it very regularly and very thoroughly. >> a question up front. >> thank you both for speaking to us. my question is actually directed towards dr. biddle. you assert the alignments governance is essentially a hydraulic fluid as you put it for the corrupt system is mainly arab contracts. i was wondering where the opiate more fit than two hydraulic fluid. in essence, most figures today put it at 90% of afghan gdp. could that also be considered part of the hydraulic food is the so-called put it? >> it is, but it's a relatively small part. we spend multiple times the gdp of the country every year, the united states, much less the

larger international community. the narcotics problem is a contributor to the underlying difficulty. it is not at the heart of it however. i think our own expenditure is a substantially larger source of malign funding for the activities of these networks that has the narcotics trade. and one of the problems that we hustled we approach this as a rule of law issue is we often do it through the lens of narcotics. it is reported that the early attempt to persuade hamid karzai to remove his younger brother from the provincial council and kandahar was oriented around his reputed role in the narcotics trade and the evidence simply wasn't there. i don't think narcotics money is at the heart of the network and kandahar. it's our contracting that is. now that's not to say that we can simply ignore it. down the road, if we eventually

get to some sort of negotiated settlement that produces the cease-fire for most of the combatants now fighting in afghanistan -- if they get a favorable outcome that's the pathway by which it would be realized. if we get and we allowed the narcotics trade to continue at today's levels, that source of illicit money will eventually run the risk of undermining any of the enforcement mechanisms we develop for controlling other forms of radiation. by powerful figures upon the population within afghanistan. so we will eventually need to deal with narcotics. i don't think it's a priority issue of today however. and in fact i think it will be easier to deal with the sequence later in the process. the primary mechanism by which we will eventually bring our products under control in afghanistan, if we do will be by

making the government's writ run in the places where poppies grown. until you can do that, i think it's going to be very difficult to destroy enough of the crop eradication, for example, to make any significant dent in this. but this suggests however is a solution to the narcotics problem is likely to follow substantial security and government improvement, rather than to proceed it. i think it's necessary eventually take it to a stable system in which the level of predation is kept within tolerable bounds. but i think it's not the first priority. it's a downstream requirements and a look to resolve downstream once we've met the near-term requirements first. >> i'm going to use a guy with a microphone prerogative to ask the last question here. if i were acidic and i guess i've been accused of being worse, could you say -- i mean,

indiana were all enablers. and by all and talking here about soldier, the private contract your, the person working on the development and goal. their job basically involves relatively small pieces of the puzzle. they're the words come from getting the package from point a to point b., getting a project delivered on time. and if they have to cut corners, pay off some local element, hiring to serve as security, they're going to do that and ultimately brutal acts of corner cutting and perhaps undermining the entire mission. i guess ultimately it's a question of whether there are really microsolutions here >> well, i think this speaks to

the kind of standard issue in counterinsurgency theory of unity of command and unity of effort. and it's classically posited to succeed in counterinsurgency, you need to get cooperative behavior among a variety of very dissimilar government entities, aid agencies, governments reform agencies, the military to provide security. if any of them are substantially undermining the activities of the other, the result will be failure. and this is unusually difficult in counterinsurgency because of the unusual complexity of the committee relative to conventional warfare. now, unity of effort is such a big theme in the counterinsurgency literature because it's so hard to do. it's hard to do within the military. within the military release had a very clear chain of command with very clear responsibilities and duties and obligations. getting civilian agencies to

cooperate with a larger campaign plan that includes their two babies as a subordinate elements of an essentially military direct campaigns is an extremely hard undertaking. now that was probably done to an all-time world champion in her collect at record level in iraq in 2007 because ryan crocker and david petraeus were joined at the hip and shared a perception of the importance of the unity of effort and the difficulty of it and the necessity of disciplining their respect to the organization said they cooperated. i think one could argue that we have been less successful in this domain in afghanistan than we were in iraq. but i think it requires, at the theater level, a joint campaign plan that includes civilian and

military elements that are integrated so they don't undermine each other in the right hand doesn't do what the left hand is doing. but if we continue to contract with receipt, we do it only because we're prioritizing the disempowering of another network and another at her somewhere else first and therefore were not sending a message to everyone in the military, go cut your own deals with no one should let anyone else is doing. it has to be court needed and controlled at much higher levels of my for this kind of prioritization, this kind of sequencing and this kind of cooperation of the civilian and the military to work. if we can't get that because the ambassador and the military are working together as closely as crocker and petraeus did in 2007, we will not succeed. i think you doesn't suggest that it is possible. it is not so difficult it's unimaginable, but it's obviously

very hard. and whether it's going to become successful in afghanistan is very much up in the air at the moment. >> i agree with what stephen is saying. and the conclusion they are from is to a certain extent the success of these kinds of operations, called on counterinsurgency, stabilization, the interagency term is personality dependent. and that is to loose a metric to hang the protection of our national security abroad on. i think that's where the answer is structural. the military has achieved a level of inheritance precedent in our operations in iraq and afghanistan for a military perspective because they are integrated. i think the key is integration, not coordination. there's hundreds of coordination needs in iraq all the time, but they don't result in good fruit

in the field because of the lack of integration -- civil military integration. the military is integration comes from 1986, goldwater-nichols. in the past there were problems of the failure of various branches to work together. goldwater-nichols results. it created a structure that demanded it. it required it. we the goldwater-nichols moment now that exhibits a and b. come experience in afghanistan and iraq to develop something new in the region that goes beyond goldwater-nichols, that brings together those who played enormously important roles in protecting our natural security issues abroad, but are not integrated, who still work in their silos, those of excellence is a term sometimes used, the whole of government solution, another often used term. but -- and civilian surge. these are phrases that have popped up, but none of them amount to serious solutions.

to a problem frankly everyone agrees upon. i think the civilian agencies and the military concur that there is insufficient integration that causes a break down in the unity of effort and it's traced back to the weakness and unity of command -- weakness in command for military operation. and resolve in mind is going to take a bold step forward everything goldwater-nichols like framework and which could be something like the u.s. office of operations that could bring the military backbone together with the civilian expertise and the elements scattered across the agencies that practice this is sort of an additional duty, but that additional duty has been first first and foremost in our national interest for eight years. yet we have it responded as a government to this continuing weakness. >> on behalf of the elliott

school of international affairs here at george washington, i want to thank you for sharing your sober and sobering insights on what is obviously a very difficult problem that is likely to challenge the u.s. operation into the indefinite future. again, we appreciate your time and public efforts. thank you. hot back [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

>> earlier, british opposition party leader, ed miliband challenge david cameron on the governments response to recent terror threats. budget cuts in education and the prime minister's decision to put

his personal photographer on the government payroll. the prime minister also responded to questions about reducing unemployment and cuts to health spending. from london, this is 30 minutes. >> questions to the prime minister, john robert then. >> number one, mr. speaker, thank you, mr. speaker. i'm sure the whole house would wish to join in paint tribute to william blanchard from 101 regiment of explosive ordinance disposal who died on saturday. the work that our staffers do to make area safe for both our soldiers and for local people requires unbelievable acts of personal courage and selflessness. they are the bravest of the brave. william was a talented and caring soldier who will be sorely missed by all those who knew him. our thoughts with his family and friends and we will not forget what he did. mr. speaker comes this morning it meetings with colleagues and others. in addition i will have further

such meetings today. >> john robertson. >> thank you, mr. speaker. can i associate myself to save the house of soldiers and armed forces and respects particularly they will not be forgotten. >> fifty-five of my constituents may lose is due to the education has been done away with in scotland. the fact is he made a promise back in january after he said he would support the armies. how many more promises will be due to aid in break his promises to this country? >> what we're having to do is steal is completely broken public finances. on the issue of the educational maintenance allowance, we are committed to ensuring that every young person remains at education and training until

they are 18 and we will be ensuring that happens. and also, we will replaced ema and will be administered by the schools and colleges themselves which will be far better at identifying those young people they need help to stay in education. [shouting] >> thank you. with the prime minister agree with me that raf -- [shouting] raf maron should be retained as a breach for their tornado and make economic sense as there is a strong skill base in west were purged. and west were purged also has higher unemployment and higher deprivation and the alternative base under consideration in scotland. [shouting] >> the honorable lady makes a good plea for area and she's absolutely to do so. she'll know were committed to retaining the tornado. it's been a very effective

background attack aircraft. we haven't made the final decisions about facing, but i'm sure her remarks will be very closely listened to. >> ed miliband. [shouting] >> thank you, mr. speaker. can i join the prime minister in paying tribute to suffer william blanchard from 101 city of element disposal. as the prime minister said he died during the bravest and most heroic work and we send deepest condolences to his family. can i also say to only fully support the action the government is taking to tackle the terrorists are resolve reemerged last week. i often update the house on the review of that freedom passenger security enough that they can tell us when he believes is likely to be complete? >> i'm grateful for what the rightful gentleman says. as he knows the number of steps separated and taken stopping for a transport from yemen and somalia, suspending the carriage at toner cartridges in passenger hand luggage on flights departing the u.k., prohibiting the carriage of toner cartridges by air cargo into war by the

united kingdom unless they originate from a known consignor. we are reviewing comments he said, all aspects of their free security. this is a complicated and difficult issue. there is a meeting with the industry tomorrow will be updating the house as soon as we can. >> ed miliband, can i think the prime minister for that answer and take the opportunity to ask about the wider context of this incident? does he agree with me as well as the measures on counterterrorism we need to tackle its roots as well? he will know that yemen has long been one of the poorest countries in the middle east and that is why the friends of yemen conference was held earlier this year and one is organized for next february. kenny update the house on the process of those talks, the friends of yemen talks and also progressed with the crucial imf plan for yemen to deliver much-needed economic reform? >> what the right old man says his as well as having good and colleges sharing, tough

terrorism -- antiterrorism legislation in place as well as those things come we have to do with the root causes and there is no a very worrying strange of al qaeda terrorism coming out of yemen. one of the problems is we need to make sure it is a priority for the yemeni government who are also dealing with other problems in their country. the friends of yemen process, which the former prime minister did a great deal to establish is up and running, working well. the british are cochairs of the saudi's. there was a meeting at the u.n. general assembly. they'll be further meetings and the whole aim is to try and pressurize and work with the yemeni government to deal with the issues that affect the wider region and indeed the region is then showed affect us, too. we'll go on with that. we'll go on as they committed other development budget to make sure development aid is going to the yemen so if there's a short-term issue of getting the yemeni government to concentrate on what founders and a longer-term issues about economic development which badly needs to improve. >> ed miliband. >> can i thank him in the home

secretary for keeping the house updated on these issues and i know they will continue to do so. mr. speaker, the prime minister has talked lots about restoring trust in politics. what does he expect of members of his government who gave cast-iron guarantees to their voters six months ago so they would vote against a rise in constituency. [shouting] >> what i would say to everyone is part of this government is i think they have all taken, frankly, some courageous and difficult decisions. [shouting] to deal with something that frankly we all want. i think every single person in this house with comments want strong universities that are well-funded, but it's great independence. and we want to make sure that people from the poorest homes and go to the best universities and our country. [shouting] that is what the proposals are going to achieve.

they grew from a decision made by the last government to set up the koran report. and what a pity that opportunism is overtaken principles. [shouting] >> mr. speaker, the prime minister used to think that talk mattered. what did he say in a straightforward with the deputy prime minister? what did they say and not forward to the coalition agreement? we both want a britain where political system is what that with admiration, not anger? does he not understand the anger there will be among constituents of all the people on those fences? [shouting] does he not understand the anger that will be felt in sheffield, and twickenham, easley, and all those constituencies about promises made and promises about to be broken? [shouting] >> along those that miliband bandwagon. [shouting] he talks about trust.

what did the right in the labour manifesto about the brown report, which he set up? is completely broken their word. the point is there is a debate now in britain about how we get strong universities and people able to go to them without being put off? that's what we're proposing. that is what he's supposed to. and he should listen. you should listen to his trade and industry secretary who was part of the brown process who said this, who said this, the truth is there are many tax elements to the brown plan. you only pay when you're earning about 21,000. brown is essentially right. why not join the consensus is that it playing political games? [shouting] >> mr. speaker, i guess the question -- the prime minister questions. [shouting] now, now, he taught about hard

choices. he claims were make in a hard choice. i can't believe, mr. speaker commies talking about hard choices this week because he has chosen to put on the civil service payroll this week? his own personal photographer. [shouting] now, the good news -- the good news for the prime minister -- there's good news. apparently he does a nice line in airbrushing. [laughter] and you can picture the themes, can't you? you can picture the cabinet photo, were on this together, just a little bit more to the right. [laughter] to me as the prime minister in all seriousness -- the [shouting] is there really a wide judgment when he is telling everybody to tighten their belt, to play his

own for personal on the civil service payroll? mr. speaker, he asks the questions because he hasn't gotten the answers to anything. [shouting] >> honestly come is this as opposition leadership has been reduced to? let me just give you this figure. the last government -- this is the answer. >> the prime minister will be heard. there's far too much shouting going on including the very senior members who want to know better. the prime minister. >> the last government last year spent half a billion pounds on communications. we are cutting up by two thirds. that's what's actually happening. we'll be spending a bit less on replacing mobile phones as well as number 10 dial-in streams. [shouting] quite honestly, why not engage in the issues? we say you need a new system to fund higher education. that's what we're backing. he says he wants a graduate tax?

the shadow chancellor says don't do it. the trade industry goes against it. what on earth is to reduce to? [shouting] >> ed miliband. >> he can't even defend his own. isn't the truth of what we're learning about his government is a government of broken promises? broken promises -- broken promises on bap, broken promises and child benefits from the prime minister. that is what they meant by broken britain. the prime minister used to say he wanted to resort. all he's doing day by day is destroying trust in politics. [shouting] >> you can come here every week and have a succession -- and have a succession of lame soundbites or engage in the substance about the future of our country. [shouting] mr. speaker, we know it is

against. he's against the housing benefit. is against taking benefit away from millionaires. he's against the benefit cabs. we know what he's against. i think everyone is beginning to last, what on earth is he for? [shouting] >> matthew offered. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i'm sure the prime minister and indeed the whole house will join me in sending condolences to the family friends of marvin henry, a young man who was shot and killed my constituencies last week. what practical encouragement can the prime minister give to organizations such as the one voice club for attempting to direct young people towards positive role models and experiences rather than the space. >> i think the general makes an extremely good point and we junichi make sure as are making difficult decisions about public spending that we go on funding organizations that divert young

people away from crime. that's one of the reasons why we have set up a special fund of 100 million pounds this year and next year to make sure those organizations that need help get it, so we keep giving young people things to do. >> thank you, mr. speaker. prime minister, another opportunity to ask a question. does he think of the 500,000 public sector workers facing the act will be pleased to know these own personal photographer? [shouting] >> the last government -- half a billion pounds. half a billion pounds wasted on communication being asked by this government. that's what's happening. and the honorable gentleman and honorable ladies, you've got a choice. you can read arthur wicks handout. try again. >> andrew sulu. could i encourage the prime minister to work with members on

all sides of this house who recognized the need for welfare reform, starting with the shadow health secretary whose benefited the top? >> my honorable friend makes a good point, which as we do need to debate about how we tackle the welfare system and how we get it under control. i think one of the best places to start with housing benefit is the manifesto personally written by the honorable gentleman sitting opposite me because this is what it said. he said very, very clearly that housing benefits -- here we are, housing benefits and the labour manifesto. they all stood on it. they should be reminded of it. housing benefits will be reformed to ensure we do not subsidize people to live in the private sector unrest that other people in ordinary working families could not afford. [shouting] the level of opportunism is so

great that even when we introduced their own policies they oppose them. [shouting] >> thank you, mr. speaker. the prime minister will be aware of the horrific explosion that took place this week. and our thoughts are with mary beans, the lady who's been severely injured. 200 families have had to be evacuated from their homes. i like to pay tribute to all the emergency services in the city council, but most of all the ordinary men and women of the community who have stepped forward. neighbors who have opened a local and give people comfort and shelter. they do not fully fabulous job. mr. speaker, the cost of this event will be enormous. unlike every other service or counsel is facing significant reductions. while the prime minister seriously consider what extra help you can give to those families to ensure that we cannot support? my honorable friends, the

members who work -- [shouting] [inaudible] [shouting] my honorable friend is with me -- [shouting] >> the prime minister. >> the house is being unfair to the honorable lady. she's speaking about a very important issue than she's speaking powerfully on half of her constituency with a dreadful accident and we should think about those people who've lost their homes or in temporary accommodation and she's right to page of your punches to emergency services, what ordinary people have come up there and done extraordinary things. of course as i understand it the city west housing which owns this property is working very closely with the local authority to make sure residents are able to return to their homes as soon as possible. she raises the issue of funding. of course there's the balance beam, we'll make sure am looking at this we respond as they can to their needs. >> peter ault says. >> thank you, mr. speaker.

these are some highest levels of deprivation in england and in urgent need for reduction, but have huge potential to create jobs in your sector. with the prime minister look again at the inclusion of these dangling pose in the 60 million pounds allocated to establish when manufacturing and invest the scheme last week? [shouting] >> thank you, mr. speaker. there is a great opportunity for communities and postal communities to make the most of offshore wind. and i myself have spoken to a number of leading industrialists were thinking of investing in britain to make sure the grants are there. as i write old friend will know, this grand scheme only applies to assisted areas of england and it is not an assisted area, that doesn't rule out the development taking place and there are other sources of funding like the regional fun that can be applied to. i hope you look into those of the stands up for his community.

>> mr. hamilton. >> thank you, mr. speaker. following the statement last week and will the prime minister gave a commitment to the people of leads for the much-needed new generation transport system will receive the government funding that's been promised for so long? >> this issue is currently under consideration i'm sure will be one of the first to find out the results. >> in the year to march over foreign nationals in north hampshire applied indefinitely to remain in the united kingdom. 80% of these applications were approved. would my right old friend assure my constituents that in this government's legitimate efforts to reduce the backlog of the silent plains left by the previous governments, people will simply be waved through and offer indefinite stays. [shouting] >> my honorable friend makes a good point. there's a danger we have a backlog in with the left 400 to 450,000 to just wave them

through. i can reassure there will be no amnesty. all cases will be considered on the individual merits. and we are committed to getting the issue of immigration and asylum under control. we are looking at the government -- less government's point system. i have to say under tier one of highly skilled people, it turns out there's 30% of those given the action and low skilled rules. the current system is at work and we're going to sort it out. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i beg to return to the issue of education maintenance allowance. in march of this year the prime minister came to the college and spoke to students about his plans. he said and i quote, will keep it. we've taken a look at it. we think it's a good idea. can you explain to me in the 1150 students at the college who are currently getting ama by his government is not describing a?

[shouting] >> because we face a situation where we have the biggest deficit of any country. that frankly is the prism through which these decisions have to be seen. in politics you have a choice. you can either confront the problems in front of you intuit them cautious government is doing or you can run away from them. were putting in place something that will be more targeted and more effective, but frankly we have to deal with the mess we left. >> mr. speaker -- a >> i think my honorable friend for the question. to make an automatic enrollment fee which was published last week examine the impact on businesses that these reports. they concluded small businesses needed to be included in the reforms that were to bring about improvement in savings for the time we need to attack consequences of an aging population and widespread understating for retirement.

these reforms would give 1.2 million people working for small businesses the opportunity to save for their retirement. the review made a number of recommendations to try and help small businesses introduce these and we'll look at those extremely carefully and make sure this is not too onerous. >> i welcome the government to encourage the savings culture. however, every new piece of legislation, no matter how small increases significantly on the lives. with the prime minister introduce a scheme that allows on the legislation and the impact it has on the varbusiness? [shouting] >> my honorable friend makes an good point and this will be road tested on the bigger companies adoptee introduced the first. i think we have to accept there is a problem with only 10% of very small businesses having pension provisions. so this would give 1.2 million people the chance to say, we're going to look very carefully for small businesses until at least 2014.

he will know i've appointed lord young to look about the impacts they have a small businesses. we also have the one in one novel where every new regulation must mean another regulation is strapped. >> can the prime minister tell the house that total overall savings made by reducing the number of mps elected mps by 50 in increasing the amount by tobias is 000? [shouting] >> web server the first thing which is reducing the size of the house of commons. we will emphasize the cost. i will remind him to his constituency has just 55,968. [shouting] i'm sorry, but -- i'm sorry my constituency has got many more than that. and i'm afraid i'm just going to have to ask them to work a little harder. [shouting] >> thank you, mr. speaker.

earlier this year the prime minister visited westhill in my constituency. it's a world center of excellence in subsea engineering. will they ensure the home office makes its concerned local companies about the future of the visa system to ensure it is not lost in this country that supports thousands of local jobs? >> will certainly do that. as i said in answer to a question earlier, as we look through the last government bb point system and immigration policy, we really do believe it is not going to be difficult to achieve much better immigration control with access advantage in business. and for instance, things like intercompany transfers shouldn't be included in what we're looking at. so i don't think will have a problem. when we look at the system we inherited, no problems improving on it. >> lindsay roy. >> thank you, mr. speaker. in almost every answer from the prime minister blames the challenges facing our country on the previous government.

[shouting] is he prepared to tell us about the biggest mistake is made as prime minister in his office clacks i'll leave others to judge the many mistakes i'm sure that won't make ms office. but as our talented -- as they taunted farmer headteacher, i'm sure you have to accept your responsibilities. and it's about time they accepted theirs. >> andrew stevenson. >> thank you, mr. speaker. that given what the former achieve sad while the prime minister ever taken of her veto essential defense measures because they are bitterly too difficult? >> i think my honorable friend makes a very good point. let me pay tribute first of the outgoing defense staff who was a dedicated public servant who was done an extremely good job for our country.

he did make an important point, which said it is important not that the politicians have to agree with the chiefs on every occasion. there should be a lively debate between them, but we should not have politicians put off potential decisions are made to be taken. and our defense review was taken the tough and difficult decisions necessary. >> it's recently been announced at 300 job losses will take ways in the hospital. can the prime minister explain how this squares with this broken promise? >> the promise made has been delivered, which is to make sure that an aged as spending when you combine capital occurred spending is going to increase in real terms every year. now that is not a promise that has been backed by the party opposite. so if your worried about nhs cuts, start talking to your own shadow health secretary. >> gregg holland.

>> thank you, mr. speaker. talking of photographs, we know from the conservative party conference that the prime minister blakeney enjoys a pint. and as he knows, this is the first-ever british pub wake. will he join me in celebrating this vital cultural and social institution? and will he commit to being a pro-government and will he join -- >> order, order. >> i've been very helpful. he shouldn't abuse me by trying to ask three questions when one won't survive. >> i very much approve of my honorable said. one is to be a friendly government in assam going to be going to a pub this week. i can't tell your disk is otherwise it will be discontinued, but i'm looking forward to it. >> mr. speaker can't sesame 1.4 million will lose their jobs. it's also been bad that when

they rise in january, another 300 will be logged. what is the prime minister picking up gamblers? hard-working families? why does he not take it upon the banks with those who caught the problem in the first place fights [shouting] this government unlike its predecessor has introduced the bank you monday. the banks will be making a contribution. he quotes from -- he goes from the report has been published this week -- i have to say it has not been received by other organizations with much enthusiasm for the institute of directors, for instance, said it's dangerous for the cdp to make headlining cuts that are based on little more than a guess. i think honorable members should spend less time talking down the economy and more working on how we can get growth. >> power johnston. >> is the prime minister accrues me that he would be wrong for convicted prisoners to be able to vote as suggested by european court of human rights?

because the incarceration of convicted prisoners should mean there's a lot of rights for the individual and not much really accrued the light to vote. [shouting] >> i have to say i completely agree with my honorable friend. it makes me physically ill to even contemplate having to give the vote to anyone who's in prison. frankly when people commit a crime and they go to prison, they should lose their rights including the right to vote. but we are in a situation that again i'm afraid i have to deal with. this is costing us potentially 160 million pounds. so we have to come forward with proposals because i don't want us to spend that money. it's not right, so painful that since it is for going to out another problem that was left to us by the last government. >> mr. speaker, how did you view the prospect of prisoners select genes in a recent crime

commissioner? [laughter] >> the honorable gentleman just raises yet another reason. i'm particularly anxious to hear the answer from the prime minister. ..

>> i can give that assurance that we are going to have a new scheme that is 15 billion pounds of capital spending in the program going forward and that will enable us to rebuild many schools and primary schools as well as secondary and i am looking forward to doing that. >> jim mcgovern. >> thank you mr. speaker [inaudible] my honorable friend last week the prime minister -- that seems to be counter to the government policy to any in the future. can you give a definitive answer on the house, on behalf of my constituents? >> the steps we took in the budget, which i think are right, are to look at the tax system and try to simplify the corporation tax regime so we can

bring about one of the rates of corporation tax in the developed world and that is what we've done. we cut the tax. this year, next year, the year after to bring it down to 24%. that is what we are doing by removing a number of allowances. i think it is a very progressive reform that would make britain including scotland one of the best places in the world to do business. >> and the head of britain's secret intelligence service, john sawers, gave a speech last week at the society if editors in london. this is the first public address by the chief of britain's intelligence service and its 101 year history. the organization as also known as mi6. [applause] >> thank you very much, and, for that warm introduction, and ball before everything you have both done for making this occasion

possible. times published a reader's letter earlier this year that read is it not bizarre that mi6 and mi5 known as the secret service are accused of being secretive? i may be biased but i think that reader was on to something rather important. most government work these days is done by conventional and transparent process these, but not all. burton's intelligence effort was first organized in 1909 when the secret intelligence service was formed. we just published a history of our first 40 years. i'm sure you will ever read all 800 pages of it. the first chief, mansfield cumming used to pay our officials of his private income, dispensing cash from a desk drawer. i'm glad to see even after the chancellor's statement last week i'm not in the same position in

sis existence as said by simon was that minted in only 1994, and we british move slowly on these things. and this, i believe is the first public speech by serving chief of the british secret intelligence service read why now, might you ask. welcome intelligence features prominently in the national security strategy and the strategic defense and security review published last week. we often appear in the news. our popular name, mi6, is an irresistible draw. we have a web site, we have versions in arabic and russian. we regard our staff openly with efforts in the national press. with the dates on the speed of's role is not well informed, in part because we've been so determined to protect our secrets. in today's open society, no government institution is given the benefit of the doubt all the time. there are new expectations of public -- and legal -- accountability that have developed.

in short, in 2010 the context for the u.k.'s secret intelligence work is very different from 1994. i am not going to use today to tantalize you with hints of sensitive operations or intelligence successes. instead, i want to answer to important questions. what value do we get from a secret overseas intelligence effort in the modern era? and how can the public have confidence that work done in secret is lawful, ethical, and in their interests? first, how we all fit in? the secret intelligence service, mi6, operates abroad. dealing with its overseas and gathering intelligence mainly for human sources. the security service, mi5, works here in the u.k., protecting the homeland from terrorist attacks and other threats. gchq produces intelligence and communications and takes the lead in the cyberworld. these three specialized services

form the u.k. intelligence community and we operate in what the secretary calls a networked world. technology plays an ever-growing part in our world. the sis as well as the gchq. the boundary line between home and abroad is increasingly blurred. so the three agencies were increasingly close together and the next five years we see as intensifying our collaboration to improve our operational impact and save money. yes, even the intelligence services have to make savings. what is secret intelligence? welcome a secret intelligence is important information that others wish you not to know. it's information the deeply believe could even zora understanding of a foreign country or grouping or reveal their true intentions. it's information that gives new opportunities for action. we at the sis obtain information from secret agents. a people nearly all foreign nationals who have access to secret information and choose to

work with us. our agents are the true heroes of our work. they have their own motivation and hope, many of them show extraordinary courage and idealism strife in their own countries for the freedom that we in britain take for granted. our agents are working today and some of the most dangerous and exposed places, briefly and to hugely doggett will affect and we owe a debt to countless more whose service is over. agents take serious risks and make sacrifices to help our country. in return, we give them a solemn pledge that we shall keep their role secret. the information we get from agents is put into an intelligence report. it lacks the sources described in general terms it is just that, a report. it tells us something new or recurrent outbreaks what we expect. aerts value can be overplayed

that tells us what we want to hear, or it can be underplayed if it contains on welcomed news or runs against received wisdom. it is a part of the picture command may not even wholly be accurate, even as the trusted agent to give it to us is sure that it is. so the sources of intelligence have to be rigorously evaluated, and their reports have to be honestly way alongside all other information. those who produce it, and those who want to use it have to put intelligence in a wider context. the joint intelligence committee plays a crucial role. and the butler had review following iraq was a clear reminder to both of the agencies and the center of government, politicians and officials alike, a top intelligence needs to be handled. the sis board recently reviewed our implementation of laura butler's recommendations to make sure we implemented them fully in spirit as well as in substance. and i am confident they have been coming and we will get a wider issues again once the

inquiry reports. so why do we need secret intelligence? well, let's start with of the terrorist problem. most people go about their daily work not worrying about the risk of a terrorist attack. that a bomb may have been planted on their roofs or hostages might be seized. i'm glad they don't worry about those sorts of things. part of our job is to make people feel safe. but those threats exist, and we are recall in now with of the 7/7 in a quest. that said, on any given day, the chances that a terrorist attack will happen on our streets, even in central london, feel small enough to be safely ignored by the public. he and millions of people like you go about your business and our cities and towns free of fear because the british government works tirelessly out of the public eye to stop terrorists and would-be terrorists in their tracks.

the most training aspect of my job is reading every day intelligence reports describing the plotting of terrorists who are bent on meaning and murdering people in this country. is an enormous tribute to the men and women of our intelligence and security agencies, and to our cooperation with partner services around the world that so few of these appalling plots the fall/winter real terrorist attacks. some of these terrorists are british citizens, trained in how to use weapons, how to make bombs. others are foreign nationals who want to attack us, to undermine our support for forces of moderation around the world. many of the reports i read describe the workings of the al qaeda network, rooted in a new holistic version of islam. al qaeda has a vicious goals, weakening the power of the west, toppling moderate islamic regimes, seizing the holy places

of islam to give them a moral of doherty, taking control of the arab world's oriel reserves. they are unlikely to achieve these, but they remain set on trying and are ready to use extreme violence. jonathan evans, the head of mi5, recently described how the threat is intensifying. precisely because we are having some success in closing down this base for terrorist recruitment and planning in the u.k. the extremists are increasingly preparing their attacks against british targets from abroad. and it's not just the border areas of afghanistan and pakistan. al qaeda affiliate's in yemen, somalia and north africa pose real threats to the u.k.. from his remote base in yemen, al qaeda leader and u.s. national anwar all al-awlaki broadcast propaganda interest instruction in english over the internet. every intelligence effort needs to go where the threat is. one of the advantages of the way that we at sis work is we are

highly adaptable and flexible. we don't get and in one place. there is no single reason for the terse phenomenon. some blame political issues like palestine or cashmere or iraq. others cite economic disadvantage, distortions of the islamic faith, male supremacy, the lack of normal checks and balances in some countries. there are many theories. i've worked a lot in the islamic world. i agree with those who say we need to be steady and stand by our friends. over time into a more open system of government in these countries colin more responsive to the grievances will help but if we demand an abrupt move to the pluralism that we in the west in chollet we may undermine the control store now in place, yet terrorists would end up with new opportunities. but the cause of the so-called islamic terrorism, it is little prospect of a fading away soon. sis deals with the realities, the threats as they are. we work to minimize the risks.

our closest partners include many in the muslim world who are concerned that the threat of al qaeda and their like poses to islam itself. in the u.k., the security service, mi5, leads our counterterrorism efforts. they do a superb job and the sis's work starts with the priorities that the security service assets. it's not enough to intercept terrorists here at the very last minute. they need to be identified and stopped well before then, which means action far beyond our own borders. and this is where sis comes in. over one-third of sis resources are directed against international terrorism. it's the largest single area of sis's work. we get inside terrorist organizations to see where the next threats are coming from. we work to disrupt terrorist plots aimed against the u.k. and against our friends and allies. what we do is not seen. few know about the terrorist attacks we help stop.

it's scarcely needs saying that i will say it any way, working to tackle terrorism overseas is complex and often dangerous. our agents and sometimes our staff risk their lives and much intelligence as partial, fragmented, week to build a picture it's like a jigsaw but with key sections listed and pieces from other jigsaws mixed in. sis offices around the world make judgments of short notice of potential life for the consequences. see indigent fornes as of a planned attack. we may need to meet that age and fast and securely to understand his intelligence more fully. to meet with the -- to work with gchq who looks at other signs read to work with mi5 and the police to act on that intelligence here in the u.k.. ministers and lawyers need to be briefed and consulted on the next steps. we need a partner agencies abroad to pull information, to monitor individuals or detain them where there are clear

specific concerns. disrupting the terrorists is a painstaking process with much careful preparation, and then sudden rapid activity. details have to be got right. it all has to be tackled fast and securely. there is little margin for error. all this goes on for 24 hours a day, every day of the year. and it keeps us far safer than we would be without it. terrorism is difficult enough, and despite our collective efforts an attack may well get through. the human cost would be huge. but our country, our space system will not be brought down by typical terrorist attacks. the dangers of proliferation of nuclear weapons and chemical and biological weapons are more far-reaching. it can alter the whole balance of power in the region. the state's seeking to build nuclear weapons against the international legal obligations

are obsessively secretive about it. sis's role is to find out what these states are doing and planning and identify ways to slow down the access to vital materials and technology. the revelations aren't iran's secret enrichment site at qom bridge success. they lead to diplomatic pressure on iran intensifying with fer de u.n. nteu sanctions which are beginning to bite. the of iranian regime must think hard about where it's best interests lie. the risks of failure and syria are grim. stopping nuclear proliferation cannot be addressed purely by conventional diplomacy. if we need intelligence led operations to make it more difficult for countries like iran to develop nuclear weapons. and the longer international efforts believe there iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons technology, the more time we create for a political solution to be found. long-range strategic intelligence which the prime

minister published last week's top the strategic direction of the foreign defense and security policy for the years ahead. intelligence is at the heart of that strategy. sis has the responsibility to gather long-range strategic intelligence to track military and economic power in other countries and find out what they're going to do with it. we try to see inside the minds of potentially -- potential policy anniversaries and protect their behavior. we have expertise on states that operate copay clique and without public accountability. we provide early warning of new weapons systems or of major changes in policy. machiavelli once said that supplies is the essential factor in victory. one of sis's work is about making sure the british government does not face on welcome surprises and did some of our adversaries do. my colleague gchq recently described the cyber threats we face in the modern world.

attacks on government information and commercial secrets of the company's are happening all the time. electricity grids, our banking system, anything controlled by computers, could possibly be vulnerable. for some, cyber is becoming an instrument of policy as much as diplomacy or military force. as lean as the first to recognize there is a purely technological solution, we need to invest in technologies to defend ourselves and the government has allocated funds for that purpose in the spending around. even high-technology threats have a crucial human dimension, and sis will be gathering intelligence on individuals and states launching site attacks against us, to find out how they organize themselves and to develop ways to counter them. we have already set to work. it is a big task for the future. where the military are involved in a conflict you will find sis and gchq along side of them. in afghanistan, our people

provide tactical intelligence that by its military operations and saves our soldiers' lives. our strategic intelligence help snap the political way forward. we are building up the afghan security service, already probably the most capable of the afghan security insti

and in their interest? let me explain how it all works in practice. sis does not choose what it does. 19 and for intelligence service sets the legal framework. within that, the ministers tell us what they want to know, what they want us to achieve. we take our direction from the national security council. as the chief of sis, i'm responsible for sis operations. i'd answer directly to the foreign secretary. whenever operations require legal authorization, or into a political risk, i seek the foreign secretary's approval in advance. if a case is particularly complex, he can consult the attorney general. in the end, the foreign secretary decides what we do. and submissions for operations go to the foreign secretary all

the time. he approves most but not all, and those operations he does not approve do not happen. it is as simple as that there is oversight and scrutiny by parliamentarians and judges. the intelligence and security committee chaired by sir malcolm and it was other senior politicians, many of them former ministers. they told us to account and can investigate the areas of our activity. and two former judges have full access to our files as intelligence commissioner and interception commissioner. they make sure our procedures are proper and lawful. these prophecies of control and accountability are as robust as you will find anywhere. sis fully supports them. we want to enjoy public confidence. we don't operate on our own. intelligence is a team game. if we do need to track a british tourist in another country or stopping shipment of components for a secret nuclear program, we need to work with services

abroad. we work with over 200 partner services around the world with a hugely constructive results and our intelligence partnerships with of the united states is an especially powerful contributor to the u.k. security. no intelligence service risks compromising its sources. so we have a rule called the control principal -- the service who first obtains the intelligence has the right to control what is used, who else it can be shared with, what action can be taken on it. its role number-one of intelligence sharing. we insist on it with our partners and they insist on a bus. because whenever intelligence is revealed, others try to hunt down the source. agents can get identified, and arrested, tortured and killed by the very organizations who are working against us. so if the control principle is not respected, the intelligence dries up. that's why we have been so concerned about the possible release of intelligence material in recent court cases.

we can't do our job if we were only with friendly democracies. a dangerous threats usually come from dangerous people in dangerous places. we have to deal with the world as the days. suppose we've received credible intelligence that might save lives coming here or abroad. we have a professional and moral duty to act on it. we will normally want to share it with those who can save those lives. we also have a duty to do what we can to ensure that a partner service will respect human rights. that is not always straightforward. yet, if we hold back and don't pass that intelligence, out of concern that a suspect terrorist may be badly treated, innocent lives may be lost that we could have saved. these are not abstract questions for philosophy courses or searching editorials. they are real, constant, operational dilemmas. sometimes there is no clear way forward. the more finely balanced judgments have to be made by ministers themselves. i welcome the publication of the consolidated guidance on detainee issues.

it reflects the detailed guidance issued to sis staff in the field and the training we give them. torture is illegal and of horned under any circumstances, and we have nothing whatsoever to do with it. if we know or believe action by us will lead to torture taking place, we are required by the u.k. and international law to avoid that action. and we do, even though that allows the terrorist activity to go ahead. some may question this, but we are clear that it is the right thing to do. it makes us strive all the harder to find different ways, consistent with human rights, to get the outcome we want to read and other countries expect our approach these issues you even where we find deep differences of culture and tradition, we can make progress, slowly but surely, by seeking careful assurances and providing skilled training. i also welcome the prime minister's initiative in setting

up the gibson inquiry into the detainee issue. if there are more lessons to be learned, we want to learn them. and after 9/11, the terrorist threat is immediate and paramount. we are accused by some people not of committing torture ourselves but of kuwait in our back to that times, recent debate about secrecy reflects to concerns. first, national security. and the need for the intelligence of security agencies to work in secret to protect british interests and our way of life from those who

threaten it. and second, we need justice. the rights of citizens to raise complaints against the government and get a fair hearing. as a public servant, and as a citizen, i guess what we want this objective is upheld a tough one undermine the other. the judges have to determine what constitutes a fair trial. we in the intelligence security agencies have to make sure that our secrets don't become available to those who are threatening our country. and we have to protect our partners secrets. as the prime minister said in the parliament, at present we are unable to use secret material in court with confidence that the material will be protected. the government promised a green paper to settle some better options for dealing with national security issues in the courts, and i look forward to that. part of sustaining public confidence in the intelligence services is the date of the principles and value of intelligence work and the purpose of today is to explain

what we at sis to and why we do it. why our work is important, and why we can't work in the open. a lot is at stake. sigrid organizations face secrets even if we face a public space as i am doing today. the operations become public, they won't work. agents take risk. they will not work with sis, will not have the secrets they hold unless they can trust us not to expose them. the foreign partners have certainty that what they tell us will remain secret, not just most of the time, but always. without the trusted agents, the anonymity of our staff, the confidence of partners, we would not get the intelligence. the lives of everyone living here would be less safe. the united kingdom would be more vulnerable to the unexpected, the fishes and the extreme. secrecy is not a dirty word. secrecy is not there as a cover-up. secrecy plays a crucial part in

keeping britain safe and secure. and without secrecy, there would be no intelligence services, or indeed other national assets like the special forces. our nation would be more exposed as a result. and without secrecy, we can't tackle threats at source. we will be forced to defend ourselves on the goal line, on our borders, and it's more than august that the dangers of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and cyberattack are not much impressed by international borders. ladies and gentlemen, the remarkable men and women who make up the staff of sis are among the most loyal, dedicated and innovative in the entire public service. we ask more of them and we do have any other public servant not in uniform. exceptional people, doing extraordinary things for their country. our people can't and don't talk about what the do. they receive recognition for their achievements only within the confines of the service. you don't know them, but i do.

it is an honor to lead them. thank you very much. [applause]

now in the pendulum and challenges in iraq. we will hear from a representative of the u.n. secretary-general's office as well as the state department iraq affairs director. hosted by the united nations development program, this is about an hour and 40 minutes.

>> i think we will get started. can everyone here in the back? is the microphone working effectively? great. thank you. we seem to have a sort of on filled metal which is someone observed may be a metaphor for our situation on this political day. let's hope not. my name is fred tipson, the director of the office of undp and would like to welcome you to the ground to allow iraq's deval met challenges. most of you know undp well but for those who don't, we're the leading developer and agency of the united nations, has offices in over 130 countries and we do work in more than 160 countries. but among those assignments our development challenges and many of the most difficult parts of

the world and we wanted to highlight in particular of the -- undp and the mission of the united nations as well in iraq let me tell from a plug for future rot tables and one in particular that's coming up not unrelated to the challenges we are facing in iraq and that is ever launch event of the 2010 human development report of undp this year looking at 20 years of since the innovation of the human demint report which as many of you know which is not the first in the seas and reports based on the indices that went beyond income and gross domestic product measurements for measuring human welfare and that in particular measures of longevity and literacy that embellish a wide view of what human development

encompassed. what's interesting about this report coming and i hope you can join us on november 17th at aed for that event. what's interesting is that there are a number of new indices that have been proposed and added in that report, and one measuring the quality, one measuring the gender empowerment, and one which is called the multi dimensional poverty index developed in conjunction with oxford to adversity, which looks at an even more multifaceted way thinking about both poverty and progress against measurements of poverty. so, please come out for that. the roundtable today, i should tell you, is being video by c-span, and we are glad to welcome c-span audience. that means that you're all on your best behavior of course. but you always are in this audience, and we look forward to vigorous interaction with you after we've made some initial

presentations to get the conversation started among the panelists. i can't help observing however working in the converse in 1980 when we had one of our last tsunami is in the united states government. those years you may remember or not. it was not expected really that there would be a change in the u.s. senate, and as the night wore on, those of us who worked for the republicans, myself included, ourselves increasingly confronted with the prospect that we would be in the majority. so i sympathize with many colleagues who may be find themselves in that position tomorrow morning because it is indeed a rather sycophant change in u.s. politics when even one of the houses shifts. i note that experience, because as we know don't know in the

course of this discussion, the iraqi people have an election some seven months ago and have yet to form a government based on that election and have received some criticism for that delay to but i simply would point out that in every democracy there are challenges even once a government has been formed in operating the government in reaching consensus emerging agendas forward and the weigel but is not the case in this country next year we may find ourselves challenged by the need to collaborate across often very contentious political boundaries in making a government function. fortunately in iraq things continue to move forward in a positive attraction come and it's really that that we want to focus on today both the challenges iraq faces but also

hopefully take note of the fact that there are some very dedicated people not just in the international community but especially in iraq who are working despite the lack of a form of government to move the agenda of human development forward and it's for that purpose that we are gathered today to try to reflect and understand how that process is unfolding. to do that, we have a star-studded cast. in particular, our own and deputy special representative, secretary-general christine mcnab and iraqi, and christine not only as the dsrg, so several hats as you can imagine complicate her challenges in operating their but it's one of our star performers from previous assignments and other difficult locations.

i am not going to go through all of the biographies because that's why we put them on the back of your invitation. but we are also pleased to have john desrocher from the state's department who's just come back recently from iraq and is now leading the department of iraq from washington and also has quite a distinguished career in the foreign service and putting your location that is dear to the heart of our administrator, helen clark, former prime minister of new zealand and the council's general for several years so we are very pleased to having bring the perspective to these issues. for the national democratic institute as many of you know the head of the u.s. committee heads the antioch yet every time we tell them we have the need

for a speaker related to the middle east she immediately suggests less and less shared the podium and before so we are very pleased to have him back again. i would also note since we are talking about electoral politics he is a practicing politician in his native canada. he may wish or not to see more of the experience as we go, but i think these challenges of government performance in democracies whether old democracies won new democracies there is common themes that run through and perhaps we all can take account of. citizen lineup. we asked each panelist to spend ten or 12 minutes leading up their view of the challenges and we will then have an interjection from the panel stimulated by me as the moderator but then hopefully turn to you, the audience to surface of the kind of issues their presentations provoke

which came with so without further ado i'd like to turn to christine. >> thank you. can you hear me in the back? okay. good. i've been a working in iraq for one year and i intend to be there at least another year so in a way this is my midterm review. i can to iraq with a strong different background as i'm also the humanitarian coordinator. so i would like to tell you a little bit about what i've seen and what i have thought about since arriving in iraq. and arriving in iraq was quite spectacular try point of view because i stepped off the plane into the baghdad international airport military side, i felt like i stepped into a film set. we've seen this on television. i stepped into it. i then got lifted by the u.s.

forces helicopter onto the international and started my career as a deputy head of united nations mission. there were two deputy heads, the other deals with politics. i get these ebit, development and humanitarian affairs. nothing is easy in iraq as ensure john will also tell you. it's highly complex because we are dealing with a country where the majority of the population have known nothing except war, sanctions and conflict. half the population is under 18. they literally have not known peace. they literally have not known democratic to the limit or respect to human rights for their human rights. so we have a huge agenda ahead of us to work with the government of iraq and the people of iraq on development,

human rights, humanitarian relief, rebuilding the country and the country where the infrastructure was severely damaged. first was damaged by the era of the sanctions because that meant essential work maintenance could not be done on electricity water supply, irrigation systems then smashed by the war than we had the international struggles which displaced huge numbers of people after 2003. and we as an international community have an obligation to iraq because they are members states of the united nations and we are all citizens of member states of the united nations so that's my starting point. people in iraq have a start to a decent future, too and they are not very different than anybody else. the absolute majority were not the same as i want in my family and you probably want for yours. peace, security, a good school

down the road, a health clinic they can go to and a job and hopefully career ahead of them. at the moment remarkably few iraqi is half that. but it's not all bad news. it's not one mess, it is a lot of different challenges and some parts of the country there is more peace than others. a lot of children go to school but i will come back to my schooling is still an issue. the big picture is so much work to be done despite the money that is being poured into the country. the budget is not where it should be. it is a government with a deficit budget despite sitting on the sea of oil but we hear about is not being pumped fast enough, effectively enough to export at the moment. and yet we need now to lay the foundations for what is to come which is a stable space iraq which is a normal country

playing a normal role in a very important region of the world. it was that if you go back several decades, and we wanted to go back there. so let me just skip a very quickly through some of the challenges as i see them as some of my team sees them. you know about the development goals that are shorthand for what every family has a right to expect. we are making the process, maternal has decreased over the last decade to read access to sanitation has increased. there is widespread cellphone ownership that comes if you are wondering why that is part of the catchall, but malnutrition still exists. there are still children stunted in their growth because the lack of access to food so there are good use. the policy is shella.

most families in the policy are just on or below the poverty line so we don't get that deep agonizing policy for the children slowly starve. it's not that. it's much, much better than that but even if children are old and grow up fairly healthy, they have many challenges ahead of them. one is an illness caused by damaged water supply and sanitation infrastructure and another is basically going to school. the numbers in the school are dropping. keys to be 95% now down to 85%. but the thing that worries me is this. although the majority of children go to private school by the time you get up to senior high school level which feeds the universities and training colleges it's only 20%. this is an absolute catastrophe for the development of iraq because that 20% will have to carry all the expectations of a

trained work force doing all those technical jobs that need to be done in the future. and the schooling is partly the lack of schooling is partly the result of damage of the war. many teachers fled because they were definitely targeted in the post 2003 fighting, and for those who stay, there are real threats against securities and many quite simply don't send their children to school. it's okay going to the village school or down the road but it's not okay for 20 miles to get their secondary education. so that is one of the huge issues. another is women who used to be part of the economy into the development of the country have been severely marginalized following the war because jobs are not scarce supply and

talking about 30% open unemployment and probably much higher. women have been forced back into the homes, and while for many this is perhaps an inconvenience and not what would be expected it is a tragedy for the women who are widows and thereby become dependent on the good grace of rather distant relatives. it's difficult for the women headed households. if we continue about the challenges, there is another serious challenge and the u.s. government has been very instrumental in trying to help solve this, and that is internally displaced people. there are one and a half million people who have to see their homes who are still living in the country but some of the most all of settlements in baghdad or rural areas which have been devastated and there are serious

problems getting them back to their homes selling them where they are because in urban areas there is a whole issue that has to be solved, and in rural areas there is a hotjobs issue. you cannot survive in the rural area unless the irrigation systems are working because our cultures are dependent on that, jobs are dependent on agriculture. so it is a huge challenge. 1.5 million still to be settled to the there have been some recent flows of refugees you might have picked up but they are much smaller than before for the very specific groups that have been targeting the minorities you have probably seen in the press of the weekend there is an awful incidents of the catholic church in baghdad where all the people that served were taken hostage in the rescue attempt over 50 of them died. so they are still targeting. there is also begin a bright side. we don't see targeting against

christians around the election time or muslim neighbors actually said please don't leave us we will protect you. and student convoy was attacked, christian students, muslim colleagues came out in demonstrated to keep them at the university. so there are things aren't a good side of this. the final development challenge i want to mention because it is not the obvious one but a very important one is rebuilding the state of iraq. rebuilding the civil service, rebuilding the public service in schools, the education system as a whole of the universities, the hospital's, sanitation supplies, but the core of rebuilding is the people who work for the states, the civil service reform, getting things like civil service might mean you are at the surface of the people and

you are civilians helping other civilians because it's been a highly militarized economy. so civil service reform is key, and the other reformers that of what is reform, it is building a private-sector. because iraq amazingly hasn't had a private sector. it has had a state-owned enterprise, it has had farmers and traders, but a private sector as we would know in the credit lines that generates jobs has not really existed in iraq before but we are working that very closely with usaid to build up the capacity of the government for the emergence of the private-sector. to regulate the private sector, to give them stable operating conditions because the key is in the future it will be jobs. oil will generate income but it will not generate jobs.

the oil fields down south are generating about 30,000 jobs. we need 3 million jobs town south. so it is an essential part of our work. the u.n. has agreed now with the government of iraq on a five-point agenda of which covers the areas i have mentioned already. first highly neglected area and that is climate change and environmental management because the country is getting dry and hot. that is the trend of the moment. water supply is declining disastrously. the famous marshlands are down to 10% of their original area and one of the most important globally and we will work on that through of the global environmental facility through the united nations environmental program with the world bank we often partner with the world bank and donor communities. i have a final message in my ten

minutes and that is as much as we've done together since 2003 in a very difficult security conditions there is even more to be done but it is in our selfish interest as well as in our humanity interest to keep working in iraq. we are aware of the risk we take measures to mitigate risk. it is a high-cost enterprise, but it's like something someone said education which is very simple. if you think education is expensive, try a deterrence. it's the same with iraq. if you think a successful iraq is expensive, think about the alternative of a failed state in the middle of the middle east. thank you. >> thank you, christine. john, we will turn to you.

>> thanks very much. i want to thank you for the invitation. it's great to be here with christine and les and talk to everyone. i think i will have to talk to everyone a less enlightened minutes then everyone because christine covered a range of challenges i think pretty well. i will maybe just glide through the remarks life prepared and not so as to not repeat a lot of what you've already heard and sort of give you the u.s. government angle on some of these things. pardon me. i mean, christine lead of the challenge is very well and clearly and i was checking my notes and picking them off as she went through them thoroughly. our own approach to government relationship with iraq is governed by strategic framework agreement which is something we signed in 2009 which covers the gamut of the relationship with iraq across economic and

political and all sorts of fields of discussion and we work on things like public service and economic reform and reducing violence and strengthening and respect for human rights under the rubric of this agreement. we've spent billions of dollars in 2003 on iraqi reconstruction in all sorts of serious and security and economic reconstruction, local governments. christine made the point about jobs. it is a great deal about jobs. iraq is a country that is rich in oil but you don't need to look at a global for very long you can find country's rich in all leal or other natural resources but also suffered poverty, and we want to help the iraqi is built a diversified economy, complete the economy, born in that oil is the

foundation for but isn't the only part of. as christine said, there's only so many jobs the oil sector will create and there are a lot of young iraqi is out there who will be looking for jobs, trying to develop the commercial sector in iraq, helping with things like to give the jury reform and developing good business environment, working on the banking sector, the telecommunications sector. we had a couple of very successful trade missions. beagle had one last year under congressman sanchez the just returned from a trip to baghdad where we are trying to bring business people together where our companies, iraqi companies can find partners and work together and that has been going well. we work a lot with our international partners and i should talk about that. christine talk to the refugees and displaced people. we spent a lot of time and a lot of our assistance with our ulin partners on working on refugees and idp and i think we have had some success. it's a very difficult challenge,

but we are having success getting people back to the area they came from and supporting them until they can do that. that's really crucial. of course the u.s. military has done a great deal from the beginning through a lot of support for the reconstruction goals, both things they do on their own and to support us. the work a lot with the u.n. as well. we also work a lot in the ruble fall sector. spend a lot of time working with the government iraq to build capacity in its legal institutions to strengthen the courts and try to reduce corruption. there's a wonderful program that the department of commerce has called commercial law development program that trains judges and lawyers on the commercial and economic aspects of the law to build an environment where business can thrive. the iraqi government put forward its own anti-corruption strategy

which signed the u.n. convention against. we are obviously supportive of that. but there are a great many challenges, and as i said i was just jotting down some notes as christine was speaking, and it's true it's important to recall how economically isolated iraq has been for so long and obviously not just since 2003, not just since even the sanctions period but even before that isolation has taken a toll on the infrastructure of the country and when you have to think of infrastructure in the most broad terms, not just the electricity sector or transportation sector although certainly those have suffered but education and health, all the things you need to build a society suffered a great deal in past decades and those things are -- they cannot be rebuilt

overnight. we are putting a lot of effort into that. the education system as i said has suffered. refugees and displaced people fled and the damages as christine pointed out. the agricultural sector, iraq's sector can be a great employer. it should be an important employer but it operates on a very outdated status centralized approach which is really in addition to the infrastructure problems with irrigation and everything else it makes it a challenge. i talked a bit about the financial environment. we spent a lot of time in baghdad parking with the iraqi on the financial environment. the banking system, you know, the banking system is just starting to develop. it's hard to develop an economy while your banking system is still developing. legal and regulatory, i mentioned. we talked to people who want to

do business in iraq and security is the concern, security situation has improved but still an issue of course there are other issues. if i sign a contract with someone is there a legal system i can to get in touch of to enforce the contract if i have to? can i buy land? if i can buy land, can i get a clean tile to my land? can i borrow money against the value of this? very things that seem basic to us but are the underpinning of any diversified economy and that's what we spend a lot of our time working on and i really took to heart what christine set about rebuilding the states. so many people fled. the educational system was so damaged. they're really is a gap in expertise in so many areas across ministries. you have a lot of people who want to work with you, don't

have a lot of experience, don't have international exposure to different methods of different things to different approaches that you can take and that makes it very tough. but these are all things we are working on with our u.n. partners i think very well together. ..

>> i was part of the first trip good two of us went as soon as saying sold down after the invasion in 20031 of the connections with the u.n. at the time this will sound crazy but a true story , and it shows how nine ef- many of us were about iraq but myself and the deputy director decided to go to iraq had no idea how to get there but we could hitch a ride with the un

plano identification and no affiliation but we did not think what would happen when we arrived three arrived in the military hangar and the only cars out were those of the 11 they brought us to the u.s. office of was eventually blown up people just assume the lire employees and tried to funnel us into the orientation and reverberates to say we did not work for the when so we thought we'd be looked at as impostors seven ways knockout and again it sounds crazy but we flagged down a cab and said take us to a hotel. but in those early days there was a lot of optimism. over the course over one week dozens of iraqis who at that moment were hopeful when foreigners could walk

the streets and soldiers or seven standing on the top of tanks and seemed like anything could have been marvell not lend to the history after that because we know but it is amazing given the very tragic story that iraq has fallen off of the public agenda to some extent and it is nice to see such a crowd and even if the optimism was highly overblown and the mistakes were a huge that does not mean collectively we don't have the responsibility to turn out well. i want to do a typical thing to explain to put a few things in the good news category than the bad news category. good news, again referring to political

parties, development, advoca cy organizations that are trying to have an impact of policy at the national local level and women's participation. youth participation, a media all of the things that go into building a functioning system. uzbek as the news has been been, and i am the regional director for ndi iraq is in the middle. under most measures it compares favorably if not ahead and iraq their hundreds of political parties. i don't know if that is good but there is a competitive political system and almost anyone that is interested kid joined the party to join a political life. there have them successful

local elections and match -- national elections. also, i'll probably say many problems and not keep qualifying because i don't want it to sound as if i am naive but there are many problems, however a surprising degree of freedom of expression and iraq. unlike many neighbors it is possible to hold in different opinions and expressed those opinions through the media or writing articles, a wide degree of freedom of expression. her was a quota system in the last election that led

25% of the parliament seeds for women. it is imperfect with the criticism and i suppose we could wonder if iraqis were entirely serious but it happened prick the we know from experience including morocco and jordan and kuwait, once women are in political life it leads to many more good things stand in morocco will lead to a complete change of the family code which was much better for revenue and families in the election of 35 women to the rock and parliament was the precursor of thousands of the local council level. good things can happen. iraqi parliament will sound funny if i say it is functional because it hasn't for the last six or seven months but is no more than

any other. when it meets and has power i will not say too many things but it actually makes decisions but iraq parliament passes laws. it stops who was a consequence and has a big role in negotiating treaties , not negotiating but has a role to ratify the treaties with the international community. those statements do not apply too any other parliament. their rack parliament matters. that is the good news. moving closer to the current time another piece of good news prior to the election toward issue based politics i know christine was in bosnia in the mid 90's. one thing that happened also

with the unfinished business but when when i describe as the existential threat than people the dodd have to worry if they or their families will live another day it did not take long before the attention and moved away from sectarian issues jobs, health, everyday concerns in restarted to see that last spring in iraq. not long ago for $0.3, iraqis be paved as if they were closer to their tribes because of the existence of threads, but in the last election there is good evidence through focus groups people started to exercise boats based on the parties and leaders they thought would bring the best future economically in terms of services. also the election was fair.

i wrote an op-ed in march where i mentioned the support of the u.n. to the independent high electoral commission the support for domestic much caring and natalee were the technicalities run well with u.n. assistance and others, there was domestic monitoring, volunteers, and they found a parallel both to tabulation that the results announced were roughly true. may have been some mingling but the results were definitely true and 52 did polls that tracked well so the results seem to jive with the pre-election polls then also ndi conducted the post-election poll and iraqis very clearly believed

in this case, if you remember, the coalition won a couple of seats with a small margin of victory but it was clear that was the case and the pre-election polls, roughly double the number of people who actually voted for the coalition perceived him to be the winner three or four weeks after the winner. his perception increased as time went on but the perception of maliki was diminishing even among the supporters. that is a common phenomenon you may have heard of a common phenomenon when you do post-election polls, and many more people that actually voted for the winner will have claimed that later and we will see that starting wednesday.

[laughter] there is a big sweep everybody will say they were on that train. it actually turns out more people than voted will claim that they did. the election is over, let's move on. we have a winner let's use that as a basis. i will go quickly through the bad news. no government. i don't know of john has comments on this or not, but the idiot the iraq government should be all inclusive is good and some ways. we wouldn't agree in a post conflict environment a government that excludes anybody is a mistake but on the other hand, people voted and took it seriously the outcome should be the predominant factor. maybe not the only factor

but should have a large impact and unfortunately that has not worked for it is a shame the incumbent as someone working on middle east democracy a was looking forward, i don't know if this is completely true, it may have been the first instance that maliki's stepped aside peacefully to allow a successor. maybe the first genuine peaceful transfer of power other than succession in the arab world. maybe it will still happen but that would be very exciting. i am not sure all inclusive government is the way to go. because it sounds all lot like a system of bosnia and lebanon where if you allow the bargaining for these positions that supposedly belonged to a sect then you are stuck with them forever.

when do back away? we have learned that that formula is not a good long-term formula but yet the iraqi people spoke to the election. want to finish by reading five headlines from a series of 16 focus groups that ndi completed in iraq and september 22nd thru 27th there we're asking iraqis what they would like to see. one. political leaders are undefined and driving frustrations do my face the parties and civil servants self-centered looking to maximize their own personal gain rather than help average iraqis. and it gives them a sense of parties and not focused on

the public's needs. issue base politics is novel and we ask this question because we realize that is not normal and personalities and power not about like to do a better job or a will help the agricultural sector. they talk like i am a person. vote for me. we talked about how they can get a skeptical public to buy yen. they are open the parties have to communicate. the sad part the pollsters felt iraq is said eighth tipping point* although not the majority view some say life was better under sadam with security and economic conditions in this needs to be adjusted for many iraqis.

there is not proof electricity can be relied on to deliver better results. after all of these billions of dollars people are still unsure whether or not the system can deliver better results than saddam hussein's air that is bad. and a slightly better now a strong sense of iraqi dead in a day. we have been conducting focus groups since 2003 counter to the conventional wisdom, 98% of nine kurdish participants identify themselves as the iraqi not as tribal or regional identities. even kurdistan recognize themselves as the iraqi. there is a lot of pride and hope. bid kennedy has been strong since 2003. there are many qualifications if it

includes kurdistan. most people would say 99% don't think of themselves as the iraqis but that is not true. the minority groups embrace nationalism so those echo those in one to be treated like iraqis. they just won a better life for themselves and better representation. i will conclude i have a lot of history and a lot if it is negative but it is a great idea but wants it has happened from the idea to turn iraq into a normal country that is integrated with the rest of the world, that is our responsibility. it can happen in the traditional development area

and so happen as the one works in both of those with other organizations and gray raw material to work with. we are heartened day and john mentioned very clearly we have a lot of satisfaction they know there is tremendous room material so if we can marshall the resources to push forward we have great people to work with. >> we'll take the prerogative of the modern -- moderator to ask questions on specific areas to also address other issues colleagues have raised. christine, i want to rescue the security question because we have deferred to the august 2003 bombing in the hotel which

caught -- killed all sergio and my good friend arthur who happen to be visiting and interviewing sergio at the time the bomb went off. it to reintroduced itself but with the u.s. transition , but rather than needs for security? what needs to happen to make your position more secure? >> a lot needs to happen. roi note to was just given to me eight bombs in baghdad coffeeshops full of civilians 26 dead expected to rise sharply coming on top of the message here at the christian church earlier this week. security is a huge issue for any organization of working in iraq.

i think people got the impression we disappeared but we were out of the country for about when year is that right? we worked into very different ways. quite of a large group of national staff working for us and the security is their anonymity because even so long after the hotel bombing, un staff and agencies to don't actually tell anybody they work for the wind. staffers leave their homes at different times of the day and others the work in the international's helen who come in and out with the flow of the civil servants because unfortunately the u.s. and u.n. sound similar

and the u.s. has been a target more so in the last several years and they do not want to be confused. so they drop of nine. we're very obvious because we don't speak arabic but if we do, not fluent and easy to pick out as of not being of iraq but the international community and had amazingly good support for the american forces. it is even heartwarming to go with the american soldiers because of a difficult missions even when they were just shot the american and colonel was shot and hit but saved by the flak jacket. after all of the fighting and was there 2003/2005 and

back on his third speech 11 to have your american development and humanitarian colleagues is what it is all about the soldiers we have done the fighting now we want to see the rebuild. we have been very reliant on american security so we're making very difficult adjustments in their own posture. it is still not safe for us to wander around except in the north it is much safer in the kurdistan because they have a no-fly zone which allows the development to take off sooner. and the government forces and northern iraq they protect us very well so we can make the transition from

being with the u.s. troops to being with the government and it is relatively easy. what is not is to move around the center and the south because there are still bombs going off and rockets and targets of minorities and anybody who has seen other. we have to think through our own security posture and a two wrong approach. we're beginning to produce printed and other materials explaining what the u.n. does. we are on your side working on your development with the problems you are coping with. we have so what more publicity and also trying to find solutions such as our

own transport means former bosses, armored vehicles, you do not want to be collateral damage to a roadside bomb. despite all of this, our own special representative had his convoy targeted to a few days ago and a very near mess very sadly the police officers died and others are badly injured. we have to ask the government of iraq but also the united states to continue to focus on donor countries and support not because you want to go around in hugh german fleets but because we do want to get the job done and wants you move into state building capacity development, you cannot do what from a distance but they're talking to people and it is a long-term project.

we cannot wait so the security issue is a very personal thing to ask about and the bottom line is the bottom line dba and iraq is very expensive because we have to make sure we have security some of which is provided by the iraq a primitive but still need security to give our staff confidence we're doing everything possible to return home safely. >> zamansky you john not so much of security but this transition under way between the military led operations in the united states, what are the particular challenges of doing that and repositioning the u.s.

government with an iraq? how do you think of government engagement even in this situation without a coalition? >> vellis start by saying we think of the engagement and transitioned constantly. the august 31st deadline deadline, i got there the previous august and just thinking of the percentage of my day there would be spent working with the military colleagues on this transition because it is a big project and a big challenge to determine how we will pick up items or issues the military has done and how we will address them.

operating in this environment, christine has laid it out very well and it is very expensive not the normal environment that we're used to working in but if we want to get our job done we have to be prepared to do that and it is very expensive we are determined to get out. you cannot do your job prop -- properly from behind the wall i got out a lot my colleagues got out a lot and continue to do so. teams get out of the time but the basis of what we do cannot be done remotely. if we could, we would do it from here. you cannot do it with a phone or a facts or e-mail that is the u.s. government leadership that has taken on that the job is so important

yes different than before but we will endeavor to find the resources that it takes so we can do this safely. we are learning a lot because a lot of it is new but i can speak, in your experience i feel that we do well and i could do the job i need to do sometimes you expected to go out and you could not but it was an impressive operation from my perspective. >> let me ask you since you volunteered for the role role, the regional question, iraq has neighbors who are vitally interested in the outcome not only the international relations but the party develop how big of a factor is the outside employment in the call

lessons with the eventual formation of the government itself? >> is a great question meeting with the political leaders, and they were and still going from syria to turkey to jordan has 70 arabia and elsewhere in the thinking about this with a political science background , i kept thinking, why is this? the obvious reasons of power brokers and iraq cannot afford to ignore saudi arabia but it seemed odd as they're making these shuttle trips and is started to realize there is a tremendous lot in the political system in iraq that there is no head of

state. a president pro but he has symbolic power but not symbolic in this sense of european head of state where this is a prestigious office it is not particularly prestigious because he is seen as partisan and not above it all. it is interesting as the leaders go around to get a clue to how to form a government, of the surrounding countries have a traditional head of state nothing in iraq has the legitimacy of the u.s. presidency or the british monarchy so prestigious john from being the candidate of the iran garcetti arabia or turkey. one way to look at what is

happening in the surrounding countries is they play a collective head of state for iraq can do can imagine how damaging fed is and the focus groups, the iraqi people were very, very upset that the politicians are driving the legitimacy rather than with the voters and that is a major flaw in the system had in the country. >> now let's turn to the questions from the audience broke >> my question, floor leslie

campbell and what will it take for the government to overcome the divisions between them to form a government? >> i am not sure i can answer that exactly it is a negotiation to carve up the pie. rather than seeing the election and political power and dot deriving from the people, i think of the iraqi politicians see it they could demonstrate they're relative strength, and now there is a pie to cut than it means positions of who will control what? have more things like oil

going to be decided? they're negotiating how the pie will be split and it is just a long complex negotiation then add the outside countries and they have their favorites because some parties her closer to iran for the turks so i don't know the terminology but a negotiation with 100 points to be decided and it is taking forever. of some stage it is about stubbornness. i think if any one of the major contestants the incumbent had said the normal democratic practice the party that wins a plurality of seats as a first chance to form a government i will step aside

that would resolve the problem but to defend iraqis there is no history of democracy we saw happen in britain not long after we're for one moment of the british prime minister thought maybe i could stay away to stay on but iraq doesn't have a long history to draw upon. >> from the policy group, could the speakers talk more about the impact of the nabors? not just political parties but what roller they're really playing and what countries are trying to get more involved in iraq for commercial or other reasons?

>> let me have the first attempt then i will handed over. we seek lots of interest in iraq because it is the oil-rich country where the iraqi government has said very clear it doesn't know who its friends are. it is a different picture depending where you are. kurdistan has highly developed relationships with treaty as the biggest trade partner in many turkish firms working in the north of iraq but also china is very interested in coming in and there is a huge reconstruction program going on in the kurdistan region and all of iraq as a huge reconstruction program for example, they need several million new housing units with the the first batch of

750,000 and will attract interest from global companies. it will not we done locally because the materials are not there. the oil industry is a chapter on its own and i and know that i am not to call them concessions but the oil deals going on for different parts of the world in turn will bring and other firms and subcontractors to provide secure housing for the thousands of workers that they need and they will probably come from outside because the number of oil engineers and the country is just enough for about one oil company the men have chats how will we share these 1,500 engineers between us? soleil will bring people in from outside so the trade route is very important.

and the neighboring countries with outstanding issues, too late to was a very important stumbling block because of the reparations program and iraq so far has paid back 30 billion yen has got another 40 billion to pay if they really need to renegotiate how that will be managed there are demarcation line problems with to wait that needs to be solved some human political mission is active in working on that front. looking to the east we have iran with plenty complex with huge minefields on the border and then, water there are huge problems with water sharing and no boundary agreements and iraq is

downstream of almost everybody. they have to do negotiations in the future and they need to know more and there are complex relations which means it will generate interest it is not just a regional question has been actually if i could take a minute i would go back to the previous discussion of the evermore formation for a lot of reasons i will not go into detail but it's when thing that is important to note, we do want to see an accountable iraqi government and we do want the political leaders to move forward but it is important to note what is going on is a political

process and political discussions going on that may sound like i am stating the obvious but i am not. think of what is not happening here not having the military stepped in, a political process in a place where it is new and we have the election results that broadly spread women some large blocks, a coalition blocks and there is a lot to work out there. i want to remind people this could be happening in other ways all the we would like things to move more quickly quickly, the fact it is a political process may need to keep in mind. christine covered a pretty well talking of a country of 30 million people that has substantial resources that if it develops wisely would

be the economic powerhouse in the years ahead. but there is a consumer market there that some day countries will want to serve and resources countries will want to share. it would be unusual if they were not so interested that would surprise me more. and then dealing with the neighbors will be part of the new sovereign iraqi government does in the years ahead. >> and modernizing foreign assistance network. this is really informative. i was surprised usa only came up wants in the discussion and that talks about coordination on the ground knowing various agencies and ngos and

working i was curious if you could talk about coordination and on the ground? of america will turn to the chief coordinator 55. >> there are many people on the ground ngos, government agencies, they need to keep abreast what is going on and one of the traditional u.n. roles is support the government and there is the active four m which is both the multilateral and bilateral agencies cochaired by me together with a representative of the world bank. but when a new government

comes then it will be the third co-chair of the forum because it is a logical progression in every country they checked over lunch than a formal forum, then the government is invited to join and it takes over then gets technical assistance to manage the aid coordination not just as individuals but also the budget the donors need to be integrated transparently in the national budget. not until you make a concerted effort. there is another mechanism that we have a humanitarian coordination it brings together both governmental and humanitarian and reestablished and have the meeting together in november

and also the government is responsible to hoping we terms so the humanitarian work is also coordinated. that is a typical u.n. bankroll in the community but as fast as possible, we build up the capacity with the minister of planning or finance or both to take over the function so transparency will increase so the development budget is usually a big chunk of the capital and it is not put in the national budget. >> certainly careful coordination is something we take very seriously and that is pointed out in baghdad created a position that has not really existed called the assistant chief for

assistance transition and that is somebody, an office always filled by somebody who was so the ambassador rank to give you an idea how seriously we take it. that was my boss. because we have to draw together effectively within the government or on efforts whether what the military is doing with all these partners that we work with the end coordinating with non u.s. government partners. we spend a lot of time on it. lot of organizations are there. you don't want to step on each other but be sure that you are addressing in working with the post government to determine priorities that they have so

they have to buy yen to the programs you were doing and spend a lot of time on that briefly. >> to give you a specific example on the cords nation from the election, providing different types of support to the election commission but the u.s. aid funded program was giving a lot of staff support and logistical support to the commission and ndi funding mostly comes from the state department and we were supporting domestic election monitoring the accountability side of the equation. these programs are very integrated to a greater degree than macy in other countries so different integration. >> talk about the multi

donor trust fund? we find in our work in washington and there is very little widespread and crafts recognition as a vehicles for donors. >> within the donor trust fund was one of the biggest ever and in the end totaled over one point* $3 billion coming from donors to the government of by iraq and the agreement is they will put the money into the same budget and then to a series of committees and iraq's allocated to specific projects high chair the committee with government and technical committees which look at the programs and projects that are requesting financing. this is important because it

is the u.s. mechanism. and 20 u.n. agency's review the working in baghdad. what we don't want is competition between agencies we want to be integrated and want the government to have a voice with which programs are in fact, using donor money and several important financiers putting at half a billion dollars other important ones include japan and spain and a number of others and a smaller sum came from the u.s. because the u.s. money was not for the development of the committee's hearing agenda but the refugee returns. the multi donor trust fund has come to a close and we

have allocated all the money and go into a new cycle of programming and endured a traditional u.n. assistance and now setting up a new trust fund that would be smaller because the reconstruction cost a lot of money to do. the government now takes over the physical reconstruction and now with the state building and capacity building is working with as many people involved with the face to face development in the country we do hope we have another trust fund up and running so we invite with government than a memoranda of u.s. understanding than invite people to put the money in

and then earmarked it. we would love to give you 100 million or 2 million or 25 million and we would like it to be used for children and it goes to social services or we will give you the money but we we would like you to use it for the ndp but that could go through essentials services. the trust fund mechanism is another way to ensure the coordination with those represented on the steering and program committee. that also brings us together at the table and really is important we work together a. >>

[inaudible] we're hearing a state department, everything from full support to health services to infrastructure or security. what about the challenges of today especially working with the state department? >> i am not in a position to talk about the contracts and so on, but we do and will continue, i believe, we talked before about the extraordinary expense working in iraq generates. you need to be transported and life-support with basic housing, food, clean

water, all of the things you used to support yourself where locally cannot be got and locally. we will continue to do that and see contractors having a role but i am not in a position. when and if we do the rfp we do not talk in advance but that is all i should say about that. how. >> and one thing that really struck me was hearing that only 20% of the young people who would be in the educational system that continued, are truly

progressing to the point* where they can be part of the infrastructure that is going to be very critical to achieving all of the goals that everyone has in every country is whether hours or the surrounding countries to make it stable and viable. what about the other 80%? i am sure they are cellphone users. [laughter] but 80 percent of young people throughout the country, not going to school, and not employed, it would seem to me we have a very precarious population and situation and i want to know how all of this across the board is being addressed. >> i can start.

the first thing we have to do is raise awareness because people look at primary schools and say it is okay but not great -- great. you cannot wait for them to move you have to fix secondary now and we have to have strong messaging to government. that will get some results. will not fix the 80% or out of school so we have to look at the solution because one of the alternatives is to get the young people into vocational training or apprentice ships or in turn is. i keep running into in turn think we should start the insurance system. -- and turned system. i am working hard because we

started off with some fantastic programs for this is to tackle the issue of the out of school use and to get them into work and in the context of work is done in many other countries and many other models for it too and one way to attack this every time a private sector comes we will be knocking on the door to say corporate social responsibility your firm has signed up this is what we need and what we want you to do and focus on two or three things. the overall development of the oil factories also for

the mining action and focus on giving work opportunity to use. they are the main company at the moment and getting very enthusiastic of setting of vocational training south of the country. it is not solving the problems. reader sincerely worried about the impact particularly on girls. what will happen to the girls as they will be married young and not have the knowledge or skills to make them independent in their adult life. they will go into a dependency on the family that will continue and make it difficult for them to have their children get the education even when it comes on line. to three areas i will individually focus.

one is education. the other is water. we have not talked much about that but that is a big issue because the elephant -- development is based on what your availability prepare unicef is very active in the country and a focus on primary and preprimary but let's work on those and then go up the ladder a little bit. unicef was one of the few agencies that does very active messaging to the cell phone users. one of the real puzzles for the development community is how to use media to get the message across because and did good old days there was a state radio which everybody listen to and state-owned television which was great now have the satellite dish picking up

100 channels and never watching iraqi news. it is a real issue said any bright ideas we will gladly take a look at how to do that. >> the state department point* of view? when you recognize you haveóó 80%, i am not clear on the exact age but probably talking 13 f-14. >> secondary school? when they are not in school were not employed and provide real fodder for any kind of extremist influence

influence, internal influence that is not in a positive direction we will like to see the country go. what is the view? >> i do not think there is not an easier short-term solution. what you have to do is as christine pointed out, and the oil sector, it offers iraq great potential but it is limited how many people could work in the oil sector. what you have to do is develop a diversified economy that offers employment and develops over time and you are right about a large cohort of people who will be tough to reach. and you cannot do with everyone tomorrow or across the board but the quicker

you get emplace an economy where they see not as fast as people would like that creating businesses, a jobs and opportunities is offering something that they can see a future, that is what you have to do. it is a tough road and does not happen fast. i don't have a simple answer to take care of this group of young people because there is not one bull's-eye for that and is a long-term challenge. >> it is not widely understood this problem is as bad as it is a and not just potential terrorist recruits but crime, young people without a future are very problematic for iraq.

i want to ask a question for the middle east. if i am a non democracy in the middle east looking at iraq, why should be persuaded the democratic system is worth the effort and why should i pragmatically considered going that route with my own political development? what do you take away from the iraq experience to date? >> first of all, it is important to be reminded the idea of iraq as a democracy is something that is developed after the fact. i spend a lot of time having to defend the notion that a democracy is something imposed on people and where does that come from? united states tried to impose democracy on iraq and was after the fact and i