patients not just about what they care about but also this whole issue of risk benefit and, you know, to me, this is going to be medical society by medical society. physicians need to be engaged. the patient groups need to be engaged because it's one of the other major issues underlying some of the challenges, i think, in the payer community. it also certainly is a regulatory agency is trying to sort through that whole risk benefit equation. i also think we need better markers, objective markers. you know, we definitely -- beyond the pro side, which we definitely need to find ways to gather and get information, again, in my view, we really need to work hard on markers for predictive talks. this is one of the major issues confronting the post-market world now and i think as data sources become increasingly available for academics and other people are going to be looking at outcomes databases, they are going to find signals. they are going to find safety signals. and then the question becomes,

what's the truth and who adjudicates it? and, you know, in my -- again, in my mind, as a regulatory agency, the tools that you have available to you, once you identify a signal, are not necessarily subtle and have major implications. and what we all really want are markers for people to define people who are at risk for cardiovascular toxicity or liver toxicity and i don't think we have that. i don't think we'll get that from an individual marker this this is an issue that is addressed by all parties involved. i think it needs to be the companies. it needs to be academia. it needs to be payers and regulatory agencies and just tackling that issue i think will have a significant impact on both the pre and post-market medical product development costs in the pre-market but also what happens once a drug gets out on the market? >> i would just say, you know, i would agree with that. one comment i was going to make 'cause mark you referred to it a couple times, just sort of the

data infrastructure, right? people have talked about registries and using administrative data in their sentinel and all this stuff. one thing i worry about is the creation of the infrastructure which is, you know, so sexy because there's so much information there already. you know, not necessarily lining up with those things that we really like, you know -- are essential to know like the biomarker information or the pro information or the things, you know, that really matter in terms of decision-making because, you know, we can create infrastructure that provides information which it's hard to know how to interpret it in terms of comparative effectiveness just because it hasn't been designed in with that notion of what are the end users really need to know? what do the patients and clinicians? so all i'm saying, it feels to me like before we get too far ahead in the frontier of, you know, creating the infrastructure, we need to make sure that we're simultaneously really thinking carefully about what is it that we absolutely have to know? and if it turns out just to go

back to the psoriasis example how bad is the face and joints are involved because it's senseless to compare products and you can't just hope that, you know, if infrastructure that doesn't have that information is never going to be useful so you have to really, unfortunately, i think, you know, at least start with a conversation of what do people really need to know to make good decisions. >> i would add the things small companies and startups would face that we would trade and i would speak for myself is unpredictability and uncertainty. those are the things that kill little companies both on the regulatory reimbursement and patent side and those are things that make it hard to raise money. so in terms of this idea of sharing information, i think a lot of little companies would share some more of their information or what they're seeing or what they're doing if there's a flip side to some predictability could be guaranteed to them in terms of the process that they would have to follow along any of these paths which represent uncertainty to both their

investors. things that are important to small company is burn every day i don't have money and i have to go raise and what information is important but what's the most efficient information on a reasonable timeline? 'cause i think, you know, the speed of startups versus the speed of government are very different. [laughter] >> but they don't have unlimited funds or taxpayers to fund us. [laughter] >> one of the things that could be of help to i think a lot of innovative companies is payers know what they'd like to see. are there any guidelines that you can put out that would say, like, if you can do this -- and, you know, pick something easy as a model or a pilot because i can propose all the things i want and another company can propose what they want. but if the payers if you do this, this, this over this period of time, there's a startup with some dialog because

otherwise it seems small companies feel payers would love young patients who never use the system or old people who die suddenly and that's perfect. that's not the health care system. the health care system is about improving health and productivity. and if payers could come to the table for that approach it would help small companies how they could contribute to that. >> and that fits back to the discussion on the previous panel we had too. i would like to open up from a few comments from in the audience. i will start up here. joe, you already had one time. >> thank you, mark. i want to ask a question on a significant societal issue which is the issue of soldiers with traumatic brain injury, to follow up on speaker gingrich's speech this morning because we're talking in this long war of at least probably 150 to

200,000 of our soldiers being faced with tbi. so my question is, how do we accelerate development of both biomarkers and treatment for tbi which would be of considerable use to our military and the va? and how do we do that through this public/private partnership that vicki talks about? >> vicki, maybe if you could start with that, that does fit with your comment earlier about the need for better markers or neuro science and beneficial effects. >> i just had a conversation with powers medical institute and we had an opportunity to meet and i don't know if many of you know there's this really amazing nuroscience institute i posed the question what are you guys working over there. what kind of really innovative stuff from the computational side and also on the basic science said. i said, you know, how would you feel if we came in as the fda

and sort of posed you what are some of the big problems with clinical trial developments? and what if we started taking some of that incredible brainpower and channeling it to start to address some very practical issues that are confronting real product development in the real world today? and so we're going to engage in a dialog about that. he was very open and interested. i really think this is going to be in large part identifying problems and then taking a more engineering approach which is identify the problem and assemble the group of people to work together to solve it. and sort of project by project, bit by bit, i think we're going to have to talk about some of these things and we need to keep in mind, learning what we can from our past experiences. and also, i think, it will be important by engaging these diverse communities there will

be a change in the conversations. i really think with some of these perspectives that are brought to bear in a linear silo fashion, academia who throws it over to agency who throws it over to the academia regulation and it doesn't work very well because each of them have has a very important part in solving this problem. >> we have time for one more. joel? >> i changed my comment to make it relevant to this. >> okay. >> another problem -- and we face this both with tdi and ptsd and the market is small. it's not like hypertension and commercial development here -- we really have to encourage people and to give you another example, the upper arm prosthesis is not -- upper arm injuries now are not very common except in battle.

unfortunately, darpa and us took this on as a problem; otherwise, it wouldn't have happened. and i think, you know, it's been mentioned with markets with genomics and small markets for various rare diseases. but even some reasonably common but not gigantically common things, i think that's a problem. so the government has to do a lot of this. and, you know, we don't have enough money to do all of it. but i think it's going to be important? can i make one more? just in general, i think basically because some horrible things happened, there's been a divide between research and clinical care. and the research subject and the patient. now, with databases, coverage with evidence and we're working on point of care research where people remain in the health care system in a randomized, that's changing. and it's going to require whole new policy on physicians to do that. privacy issues, all kinds of

issues will come up when we try to make a patient a research subject. and i think that's important to think about. >> well, it does seem like -- any final comments on that it seems like where we're headed. where this emphasis as sean described on patient-focused outcomes with the payment reforms that reed and others talked about on the payment side focusing on how do we get better results for patients that are coming into much more focus coming around the patient and data that involves the patient-fund care. any final comments on this. >> i was going to mention to this. rare diseases that are important public health issues like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. this model that's been used in the global community, the advanced market commitments which i'm sure you know more about it than i do, the notion not just counting on government support but actually creating contractual arrangements where, you know, if you hit certain benchmarks in terms of being able to create technologies and treatments that, you know, address these problems there's a

sort of guaranteed reward -- >> and the others have worked on. >> right. >> but -- i mean, we should be willing to pay more for value in certain circumstances. and we should think about that. >> great point to end on. thank you all very much for the discussion. [applause] >> and i'm very pleased now to move right to our closing keynote address. many things to reflect on this morning's discussion and into this last panel already and i can't think of anybody who would be better to again take us back to the big picture of what medical innovation and getting more value from medical innovation, making the development process more efficient and effective for patients can really mean than peter orszag. peter is the vice chairman of global banking at citigroup. he's a member of the citigroup senior advisory group and he

serves as adjunct council on the senior florence. he was the director of office of management and budget where he was responsible for oversight of the administration's budget policy, coordination and implementation of a wide range of major policy initiatives, reviews of federal regulatory action and as all of you know, a major role in health care reform. that interest in effective health care reform including a focus on technology and innovation goes way back in peter's career. i know from my personal interactions with him back before that work add omb when he was director of the congressional budget office to before that when he went part time in the brookings institute as the joseph peckman fellow and deputy director of economic studies. peter has also co-authored a you been in of books and is currently a member among other organizations of the institute of medicine and as i said the council on foreign relations so please join me in welcoming peter to the podium. [applause] >> thank you.

it's great to be back at brookings. let me say a couple remarks about the broader context in which we face ourselves. i think it is now well-known that the rate at which health care costs grow is the primary determinant of our long-term future in what's shown on this chart between now and 2050. social security is expected to rise from 5% of the economy to 6. medicare, medicaid and other federal health expenditures are projected to rise from 5.5 to 12. so our success or failure at containing future cost growth will be a much more important determinant of our long-term fiscal future than either the deal that was just reached on discretionary spending or, frankly, the other measures that are under discussion now, important though they are, what you're struggling with in this room is the crucial long-term

fiscal problem facing the united states. and more specifically with regard to the topic of this conference, most of the analyses that have been done on past cost growth in the united states suggest that a very large share comes from technology-related changes in the health sector. and as you can see across the bottom row there, on the order of magnitude of about half of the cost increases historically, a continued crucial role on a going-forward basis. but if that's all -- the only story that was out there, this would be a very easy conference to attend and it would be very clear what should happen. the complexity comes because many of those technological advances have significantly improved health outcomes. and as this chart shows, which tries to account for the decline in mortality from coronary disease in the united states over a two-decade period, about

half of the decline and very significant declines were experienced, about half of the decline occurred because of changes in health risk factors and in particular declines in smoking and so on and so forth, more than offsetting the increase in obesity rates. but the other half came from medical devices and technology. and therein lies the central tension that is the focus of this conference. we cannot afford open-ended continued cost increases driven largely by technology or primarily by technology. but on the other hand, we don't want to lose the advances in health outcomes that are associated with a variety of technological improvements. ..

that is been exacerbated by gerrymandering and exacerbated by the blogosphere and the cable news cycle and the result is an increasingly dysfunctional political process. this is not just an impression. you can measure the probability that a republican votes with democrats or a democrat votes with republicans and by that measure of polarization we were abormally low levels post-world war ii. started to increase in the late 1970s. now higher basically than its ever been. that is a fundamental problem facing a system that relies, to a significant degree at its heart on medicare and other federal programs.

so in the face of these various challenges there are basically two conceptual approaches. you heard a bit about one of them this morning, a more consumer-directed approach. you certainly hear a lot about that from representative ryan. i will come back to him in a moment. and the other approach is focused more on providers in trying to drive value in terms of incentives facing providers. i want to immediately say these two approaches are not necessarily income patable and they could be done in concert but there is a question about relative emphasis even in a combination approach and let me talk about both of them. the fundamental theory of the case behind the consumer-directed approach the fundamental reason we don't have more value driven even through technological changes, that consumers do not have enough skin in the game and if they did they would drive increased value. the fundamental limitation however is that even under a

consumer-directed approach we would still have very deep third party insurance against high costs. for example, under a health savings account which is one of the most salient manifestations of the consumer-directed approach you have full insurance above some threshold and then the majority of overall health care costs are driven by those high-cost cases. and the combination of those two, so for example, this chart shows that the top 5% of medicare beneficiaries if you rank them by costs account for more than 40% of the costs. top 25% of the beneficiaries, account for 85% of costs. consumer directed approaches have their biggest effect on the other 75% of beneficiaries who are disproportionately below the threshold but they only account for 15% of costs. so you get some traction but not as much as is often promised. now there's been a lot of discussion of mr. ryan's approach which embodies this consumer-directed plan for the future of medicare and i

want to be very clear. mr. ryan's plan does reduce federal expenditures on medicare and it not only does that but it provides greater certainty around that federal path at least on paper but it is, i don't think any of us would view as a great accomplishment if all we did was reduced federal expenditures and shifted costs on to beneficiaries with no impact on overall costs. the whole theory of the cases that to be reduce overall costs. that is the rhetoric that you hear. because of the consumer choice, you bring down overall costs. what did the congressional budget office find when it analyzed mr. ryan's plan? the first thing i had did find a reduction in medicare expenditures relative to the baseline, from $8600 to $8,000 in 2022. that part is clear. now again if all we were doing shifting on to beneficiaries, no great shakes. what cbo found however, you

had some benefit from increased consumer choice against a small base. so you didn't get that much traction being more than offset by higher administrative costs through private insurance plans and less negotiating leverage than medicare. with the result being that it was not that you just shifted costs on to beneficiaries with no, with no reduction in overall cost it's much worse than that you are shifting costs on to beneficiaries in overall costs go up, not down because those two final factors dominate any benefit from increased consumer-directed behavioral changes. and to a shockingly large degree that grows over time. so this plan, which is often being held out as reducing overall costs at least as evaluated by the congressional budget office does not reduce overall health care spending on the backs of seniors, it raises overall health care costs on the backs of seniors. and i don't think that has

gotten as much attention as it should. now speaker gingrich would presumably say based on what i understand his comments have been this morning that that just demonstrates yet again how silly the congressional budget office is. what i would say is two things. first, i actually take his criticisms quite seriously. i did when i was the director of the congressional budget office. i invited him in to actually present what his approach would mean because it's easy to say we should take into account new developments in scoring. it is harder to know, what exactly does that mean? that meeting never took place. i think it is easy to critique omb and cbo. they are not perfect but the relevant question is what's the alternative? what is the specific credible alternative to the system we have in place? and that i have not seen. okay so if the consumer-directed approach has a vast limited benefits and maybe actually some harm

in terms of overall costs if you believe the most recent congressional budget analysis, what are we left with? fundamentally we are left with a provider-value approach in which we recognize that those high-cost cases, the top 25% of beneficiaries are where the money is and we also recognize that in those cases to a first approximation the health care delivered for most americans is what the provider is recommending. therefore, if you combine those two observations, the only way you're going to contain health care costs over the long term is by affecting what the providers are recommending and what does that then entail? i think entails two reinforcing things. the first is much better information flow. over the next decade, next five to 10 years we will have a significantly expanded health information technology backbone in the united states. that, health i-t backbone will throw off a lot more

information than what is currently available even through registries. and if used well in a comparative effectiveness research setting could then feedback on to clinical decision support software built into the hit systems, so what i would want in five or 10 years to be able to walk in my doctor's office, not having to fill out annoying paper forms. give the doctor permission to access my records and have the doctor have a set of best practice guidelines pop up from one of the professional bodies that going to see a doctor about a heart problem, american college of cardiology and so forth, and frankly be able to click through the underlying information behind those protocols, to see whether my individual circumstances varied from that best practice protocol. that should be feasible to do in the united states. i think it would be reinforced in one of the things that was left out. i think unfortunately from the health act is a change in our medical malpractice system, not along the lines that are typically proposed

where all you're doing is reducing, imposing caps on liability, but instead getting us a fundamental premise of the medical malpractice system which is based on a best practices methodology. or a common practices methodology, i'm sorry. so you have in order to avoid liability you have to basically do what the guy down the hallway is doing or woman down the haul wray is doing because that defines common practice. the common practice standard however is nebulous, often not fully scientifically informed. it would be much better to have a safe harbor for evidence-based guidelines put forward by professional bodies. if my doctor is following an evidence-based protocol put forward by an accredited professional body and can show he or she did that i shouldn't be able to sue the doctor. in obgny settings where 80 or 90% of the problematic babies are not because of mistake by the doctor or hospital but because sometimes births are complicated, if you can show

that you were following the best practice guidelines, you wouldn't be liable for medical malpractice that would reinforce this flow. the other thing that needs to happen is a change in the payment system where we're currently paying for quantity. we need to move to pay for quality. easy to say. hard to do. and what i would say in just to close on that is given that we need to take politics out of the equation under mr. ryan's approach, he is trying to take politics out of the equation by just empowering consumers but without really giving a lot of specificity how we would alter the payment system towards value instead of quantity, except for a bank shot from consumers which may not work and cbo has suggested would not work. indeed, also in mr. gingrich's comments this morning i had a chance to look over the written comments, there was basically nothing on, there is a lot on let's put more money into research. not very much more how do we

make sure the research is oriented toward value and not just more? except in paragraph seven or item seven, a bunch of pilot projects and experimentation at cms which is exactly the approach adopted in the affordable care act ironically. so where does that leave us? i think the key issue at this point is much of what was being discussed in the previous panel that i had an opportunity to hear which is, what do we mean by value? how do we measure it? there are different approaches that exist abroad and there may have been discussion of that earlier. for example, as you know in the pharmaceutical setting in france there are five different categories based on the degree of advancement or the degree of improvement in a new drug. in austria there are three different categories for the same topic. there are variety of proposals floating around to move in that direction in the united states and frankly i don't see, i don't

see a significant alternative. it's hard for me to argue against either patent life or reimbursement rates depending on whether there's a significant advance or a trivial advance from a new technology. doctors pierson and bach at sloane kettering have an idea that has been proposed to reimburse new technologies drugs in the united states for some period of time. they said three years. and if after that period they have not shown improved medical efficacy relative to existing technology, it is not that you wouldn't allow those technologies, the new ones to be reimbursed. just that they would be reimbursed at the rate of the old technology. so getting at the same concept which is that if you have not actually improved medical efficacy you don't get paid more than a existing technology. we'll not have new technology just for new technology sake. we'll have you new technology to improve out comes and improve value of

the just to close on this, if you tried to get that proposal through the normal legislative process in the polarized political environment that i mentioned i don't think you would have a very good chance. one of the reasons that the administration put so much weight on trying to make more of the politics out of this system, including through the independent payment advisory board, which very importantly in this kind of polarized environment changes the default so that proposals are adopted unless they are specifically overridden as opposed to opposite. one of the reasons it did that to precisely try to encourage innovative, new, value-based or payment systems that are oriented towards value into the system in a more facile way than our current system. so i guess i would just close by saying this. there have been many criticisms of that fundamental approach. some of them warranted.

some of them exaggerated but given the absence of a clear pathway from an exclusively consumer-directed approach to any significant cost reductions, let alone actually avoiding cost increases, i think the question we always need to be asking is, what is the plausible alternative? we, it is easy to keep talking and talking but it's hard to actually move forward. we need to avoid just spinning around in circles because that entails a future that is utterly unsustainable, and i think we need to be moving a aggressively towards a new health care system, backed by much more intense health i-t, reinforced by comparative effectiveness research and with an evolutionary approach to a better payment system that emphasizes value and not quantity. thank you. [applause]

>> peter, thanks for the comments. move over toward the middle a little bit here. >> i like being in the middle. >> that's right. i know you do. we have just a few minutes for a little bit of a wrap-up discussion here and i wanted to start that out with picking up on your comment about the politics and also about the approach to reform being kind of divided along the side of providers side incentives and consumer side incentives and reforms and you mentioned briefly in passing, well, maybe they're not really all that in conflict and maybe it is a more of an issue of emphasis. i was wondering if we can build on that more. it seems like some earlier panels, reed and other payers in particular they do see these reinforcing each other. in particular they're trying to set up health insurance plans where if you have a serious chronic disease and you go to providers do unmeasureably better job getting better outcomes, reducing complications using

all the evidence-based medicine you describe they would get substantial savings. just because they're high-cost individuals doesn't mean they can't get a big financial benefit from making the most of the evidence that's out there and taking advantage of information in particular on providers that are in turn using this better evidence on what's available on medical technologies to get the most benefits for patients at the lowest cost and think that's some of the reason behind the emphasis that paul ryan and others have put on the consumer side. they think that can actually be a fairly powerful force. is that really that much in conflict with the provider side reforms that medicare and other payers might undertake directly? >> if all you do is bank, put all your chips down on consumer-directed health care which is effectively with respect to my friend mr. ryan, what his budget does, the probability that you succeed strikes me as exceedingly low, given, and

cbo analysis underscores the risks involved. it is not like it's a risk-free thing to do. and that's by the way even if you continue to implement the program and you don't have such backlash what is written on paper is not what's implemented. in order for the combined approach to work, you need two things. you need more comparative effectiveness research. it is hard for me to know how a consumer, under a pure consumer-directed approach would really know whether that mri is worth it or not worth it without more of that public good. and yet that has become so politicized. the irony, comparative effectiveness research should be among the only things among one of very few limited number of things, that both the pure provider perspective and the pure consumer perspective agree on because you need it for both to work. the second thing is, again,

as you move away from the pure consumer-directed approach, all we're going to do is set up premium support approach and assume that will then feed through into better incentives for technology and for utilization, you do need to worry about, assuming again you're not in that extreme, incentives under medicare. so how are you going to take incentives built into the fee-for-service system and start migrating them towards fee for value? if you kind of dial back those two key things i think you're then in a world where, you know, both the consumer side and the provider side come into play. so for example, on the pierson-bach approach, not only would the reimbursement rate be effective but presumably you also want co-payments to be affected by the degree of advance of a new technology. and that they would reinforce each other. >> that is something medicare should potentially thinking about too? >> in my view, yes. >> okay. let me open up, we have time or maybe one or two comments

from out here so, nancy, you want to start? >> one of the problems with the poe lit at that says -- politicization, that the comparative effectiveness research written into the legislation no decisions on coverage could be based on that comparative effectiveness research. really stunning actually. and made some people happy but clearly didn't serve the needs. how are we going to get beyond that? >> i think that's, look, there are a whole variety of manifestations of the polarized environment which we find ourselves and i don't have -- this is a much broader problem. i don't have -- you're asking a narrow question but it is reflective after much broader problem. i do not have an answer because the pole laization is reflecting tom deep structural changes i mentioned. it is frankly at this point the technical debates about how you measure value, which by the way remind me of

economists debate about the right discount rate which can become, you know, it becomes philosophical at some point and at some point you just need to decide move forward recognizing everything is imperfect in life. in any case those issues strike me, while important, as much less challenging than the fact that our country has increasingly become averse to dealing with gradual long-term problems before the crisis. we'll deal with the crisis but we don't deal with anything before it's a crisis. that is a fundamental problem. the point you're making is just one reflection of that deeper problem. >> doug, i think we have time for one comment in the back. that was the next hand up. >> thank you very much. i just want to mention, there tends to be this fallacy that medical technology and medical devices are driving the cost growth and we all recognize that health care costs are

growing and they're forecast to grow at greater rates in the future yet i think it is very important to add to that discussion the fact that analysis of national health expenditures by the former chief actuary of cms found that medical devices represented five to 6% and that was constant over a decade. with respect to pricing, the device growth, device growth pricing was lower than cpi, lower than medical cpi and other measures. so i think that the benefits of technology, which are tremendous both within the health care system it telephone as procedures have moved from long, in-patient stays to brief outpatient visits as patients gained new abilities to live independently on their own without the resources of their spouse or their family members, i think in the broader context the vast improvements in health care or health status of seniors in particular is underrated

and not considered to the full extent it should be. i think those are important when you consider these recipes for reducing the cost growth. thank you. >> well, again, look, you mentioned medical devices. we can parse, i mean medical devices are a small share. pharmaceuticals are only 10% of the total health care spending. you can keep walking through the array of what at least most people describe as devices and technology and medical innovation and indeed if you look at the cross-country comparisons it's not like one area has higher costs than the united states. one subsector has higher costs than the other countries and that explains the whole delta. instead it is spread throughout different components of the health system. yet again, and that is by the way why i put up chart on improvements in mortalty from coronary disease showing benefits of some of the technologies. the question becomes whether we're getting as much for that spend as we can and, as

long as the payment system remains oriented towards just more and not better, i think the clear answer to that is no. >> the payment system and even some of the consumer incent activity as well. >> thank you for bringing that in to. >> great. that's a very nice point to end on, peter. thank you for joining us today. it's been a terrific discussion. [applause] i have a few more comments to make as we close out today. you've heard about a lot of, i think very challenging but also very important policy issues. these book ends with speaker gingrich at the beginning, dr. orszag at the end who both emphasized the fundamental importance of getting these issues for innovation right. both because innovation is so important for improving health and because what we do with medical technology can have such an impact on the cost of our health care systems as well as health outcomes as well. and i think you heard some common themes during the day

around starting with, panel one we talked about reimbursement system reforms that are happening now that are at least trying to move in the direction of paying more for care and by extension for medical technologies that are having a bigger impact on health and avoiding unnecessary costs in the process. we talked from there in panels 2 and 3, not only examples of how these reimbursement changes were starting to affect medical technology but also some possible pathways forward to solve the very difficult challenges of getting good information, reliable information information that matters to consumers to patients, of out comes of different ways of treating their problems and increasingly going to matter as we move hopefully more quickly into a more personalized era of medical care and medical innovation. to solve these challenges you heard about some ideas for collaboration from both the public and private side about understanding better

what kinds of outcome information we needed to help support these kinds of reforms and to develop models using noncompetitive data but pre-competitive information, better applications of research science, really, either an engineering science or was referred to as development science as well for bringing better evidence to bear for measurement, for supporting all these kinds of reforms so there can be potentially some greater alignment, not just in support of valuable medical technologies but in support of the reimbursement reforms for providers and insurance reforms facing consumers, all of whom have a shared interest in getting the most value and the most personalized, individualalized effective care possible. we have more work to do in this area. i want to let you know this collaboration for this effort between brookings and usc here is one step in a

further process to develop this kind of evidence and to build on the kinds of ideas were presented today. so more to come on this. but in the meantime i want to thank you all for supporting an excellent discussion here today. so on behalf of engle bert center at brookings, schaeffer center at usc we want to thank our core supporters, leonard shaver and al engle berg who is with us here. the schaeffer center team. brandon blair, alice l the u and devon stambler contributed a lot to making this possible. all the real work gets done beforehand our team at brookings. aaron karnes. ben martin. alexander barbie. michelle wong. josh phieffer and especially josh benner for putting this together. special thanks to our speakers and all of you for making this discussion

possible. we'll look forward to continue to work with you and continue to events like this one within critical issues and health care and health reform in the weeks and months ahead. thank you very much and please enjoy your weekend [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> comments from former omb director peter orszag wrapped up that brookings institution discussion. if you missed any of them find them all online at the c-span video library. later tonight watch c-span's "booktv" online. webcasting live from busboys and poet's cafe with black tide. book about the 2010 deepwater horizon oil rig explosion. the author remembers the 11 men who were killed on the rig and millions of barrels of oil that spilled into the gulf of mexico. that is live "booktv" webcast starting at 6:30 p.m. eastern at booktv.org. tonight on c-span2 a

discussion about investigative journalism from long island university. a group of reporters discuss how they break down the wall of secrecy. we'll hear from "rolling stone"'s michael hastings and ac to. son and others on topics from police shootings to prison live life and the article that led to the dismissal of general stanley mcchrystal. that is tonightite eastern on c-span2.

>> 2/3 of the american people depended own the network news of those three networks as their primary source of news information about the president of the united states. all were hostile to richard nixon. >> go inside pivotal moments inside american history on-line at the c-span video library. search, watch, clip and share with every c-span program from 1987 through today. it's washington your way. >> next, russian prime minister vladmir putin with his annual address before the russian parliament. topics include the country's decreasing population, the economy and a defense spending increase. it's reported that prime minister putin has not ruled out running for president again in 2012. his entire speech lasted

close to four hours and included questions from members. here's a 15-minute portion. >> translator: good day, dear colleagues. dear boris, in accordance with the constitution of the russian federation, the government of the russian federation is presenting its report on the work of the government for 2010. i believe that this is our common accomplishment that russia in its very challenging period of global crisis avoided the serious shocks and risks. and those risks were real. they could have weakened the country, its economic and human potential and critical lowering of social standards. you remember that in 2008 the world crisis started as purely financial crisis and then the problems in world

stock exchanges led to structural breakdown in the global economy. in many countries there was this balance of fiscal balances. literally a few days ago heard about it. portugal had to ask the european union for emergency financial assistance and earlier other countries asked for assistance. greece and iceland is still in challenging position. many of our neighbors in europe had to either raise retirement age or freeze pension benefits and welfare benefits. in france you perhaps know and heard about it. their retirement age was raised to 65 years and it equally applies to both male and females. in estonia they have passed a law that would have phased

in raising overtime and age to 65. the phasing of it would be deferred but the decision was made. at the height of the economic crisis some countries such as greece, poland and latvia made decisions on freezing pension benefits. the world economy is on the recovery right now. it's a fact but the consequences of the economic crisis lead to social tensions in many countries and entire regions of the world. we see destabilization of entire regions and consequences are unpredictable. you probably heard now that they lowered sovereign rating of the united states and experts are saying most likely these are just electoral gambling and republicans are implicated but nevertheless this is negatively affects the economy. and the lesson for us is that economic and government

weakness and, weakness in the face of external shocks will affect national sovereignty and let's be frank. in modern world if you're weak there will be always someone who would like to come over or fly over and give you advice on which way to move. which path to choose and which policy to pursue. and all these seemingly kind, types of advice are harmless but behind them is a willing to dictate its policy and interfere into sovereign internal affairs. we all know are understand that. in this issue all parliamentary factions take unified consolidated position and i'm very thankful to you for this attitude. [applause] i would like to emphasize we've got to be independent and strong and what is most

important we have to pursue policy that neats the interests of citizens of your own country and then they will support you in our undertaking. in the years, over the years i visited a lot of regions of our russian federation, practically all of them and i visited companies, hospitals, schools and met with servicemen, teachers and medical practitioners and the situation varies a lot and people experience a lot of difficulties. in 2009 and 2010, we don't have still full recovery. a lot of people encounter a lot of difficultis. they dealt with what ioffs or with difficulties in doing business. all of us know that this crisis came to us from outside but in the course of combating it we will never use this excuse that these

are external consequences and external situations even though they were certain factors we wouldn't really -- couldn't really influence. and again i never try to dodge responsibility and took it upon ourselves in full extent. [applause] by constitution, russia is a social welfare state and in any conditions, any situation it will never renege on our social commitments. the promises that we gave to the citizens of the russian federation, the government would guaranty that. and let's take a look, what we've accomplished in this very challenging period in the life of russia. the country went through serious economic challenges and tests and had budget deficit, nevertheless it was able to provide more than

250,000 apartments free of charge to service veterans and war veterans. and there was a also a plan of rehabilitation of old housing and moving people to new apartments. know that these plans were made before the crisis but we implemented this plan regardless of the crisis and affected the lives of 10 million citizens. in 2010 by 45 pension benefits were increased. 38 new perinatal and high-tech medical centers were opened and large-scale demographic programs were continued. and we adjusted for inflation all of the social programs including maternal capital just like as we promised at the beginning of the year compared to precrisis, such in 2007, we increased 1.5 fumes times financing of education and civilian science was

financed in volume of two times than before crisis. starting 2009 we started economic growth and in 2010 we have increased our gdp by 4%. this is the best rate in all g8 countries and in the first quarter we have 4.4% growth. it means that by 2012 russian economy in full extent will be compensated for the losses during the years of crisis. we have heard forecasts that the russian economy will fully recover in 2013 or 2014 even. we'll do it before that. and this is not wishful thinking. this is based on sound economic analysis. but even today we have to look ahead. we should concentrate all our resources on ren flow vision of industry and infrastructure. we need to use the potential and reserves that the each

of the russian federation regions has. before the end of the year the government of the russian federation will approve long-term strategies for all regions of russia. it will give impetus to qualitative growth and development of russian territories with the national bank we have specialized program for development of particular regions such as the northern caucuses. we have direct investment in economic projects in far east up and running. we have to improve quality of investment and lower our dependency on exports of raw materials and develop a banking system. we have to effectively support entrepreneurship and suppress corruption that's pulling us back and demoralizing our society. russia should become a competitive country. this is a basic requirement both for the government, for business and for social sphere. on such indicators as

productivity we significantly lag behind leading countries. in 10 years we have to increase our productivity two times and in some sectors of the economy three or four times and we should raise the share of innovation in our industrial output from today 15 to 30 or 35%. and now in previous year we were able to increase productivity 3.2%, which is a pretty good figure. and our gdp of russia should become one of the five leading economies of the world and in gdp per capita we are trying to get a level of $35,000 per capita. and this would be higher than today's indicators in such countries as italy and france. they're not standing in one place. this is today's indicators. so we need to stablize the growth of population and provide access for all

citizens to quality health care and education. the dignified pensions and form a massive middle class. today with the participation of a wide range of experts we're finalizing our 2020 strategy. primarily talk about new reserves for growth and properly emphasizing prioritis. for us, positive growth is investment into a person, in its capabilities and his talents and ability to self-realize and self-initiate and, i'm convinced only this will be the foundation for high-growth rate and entire technological break through. the country needs decades of sustainable and tranquil

growth without tumbling around and, and going from one extreme to another in social experiments based either on extreme liberalism or social demagoguery. we don't need either one or the other extreme. all of that will distract us from the steady course and of course we need to preserve civil and interethnic accord and try to oppose any attempts to bring a split and interethnic strife. we need to find solutions that will allow our country to move forward and build a strong innovative economy. each year this growth should bring real improvement in the lives of citizens. perhaps for the majority of russian families this is the core idea of our poll spismt

dear colleagues, in the beginning of 2010 it was forecasted that we would go through long stagnation or have a second wave of crisis and this bleak forecast, thank god, did not come true. nothing of that sort happened and it's not just because the fate, the destiny and the market, prices on commodities were favorable to us and about 30% growth for our main export items such as oil, gas, chemicals and machinery really helped. all -- car companies are present in russia. they are indispensable part of russian automotive industry. right now we're putting up with new demands on local sourcing. and of course this is not as

simple dialogue with our partners but in general they understand our demands and they're making a step forward and we have a pretty good local sourcing at about 60% and we should have an out put not at 25,000 cars but at 300,000 cars. well the numbers are important because when you have numbers that high, it makes economic sense to relocate production and our counterparts understand that both on the engine and other parts. high level of local sourcing is our principle approach to building investment and technological cooperation and not just in automotive industry. so in heavy machine building, in shipbuilding and pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. for example, we give a billion dollar contracts to

foreign companies for pharmaceuticals and medical equipment and we have to be adamant in our desire to have foreign partners relocate their production to russia. before 2020 we will spend $140 billion rubles, for our medical equipment industry and pharmaceutical industry. . .

>> we'll build new shipyards and specialized in promising such as icebreakers and drilling platforms. in 2010, by the way, russian ship building grew at 8%. >> i will repeat again, our main goal is to have the entire production and geological cycle over the territory of russia starting with research and development and to output. mass production of finished goods and products. it's very important to have high paid job and continue higher level of technological production and engineering culture. [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: the experience of recent years demonstrated that we're capable of successfully

modernizing and giving an impulse to the entire sectors of the economy. and we worked out an effective and universal model including targeted support using the finances of other development institutions. and if it's necessary forum, strategic alliances would lead foreign partners. and as you know, we'll be establishing a specialized fund for attracting foreign direct investment to russia and formation of a large scale joint project. and we would fund it in the amount of 62 billion rubles. and the highest priority of this project as an exception we would transfer additional 10 billion rubles from oil and gas revenues and i will talk about this issue very later. we have to be careful about it

but considering this absolute priority in forming new structure of our economy as an exception, we suggest to transfer 10 billion rubles of oil and gas revenues in this fund. and we believe that the long-awaited measures, removing barriers for investment in our strategic sectors we will increase flow of capital in russia. we will get to 50 and $70 billion and raise this bar. in 2010, the influx of russia was at $40.5 billion. we're planning to modernize and perfect our spots in order to simulate high tech production on russian territory and on the other hand not to create additional barriers of importation of high tech equipment and hardware that is not produced in russia and no

plans to produce it in russia. we should put priorities light in some cases it's more efficient buy licenses and technologies abroad. it will give a fast return and if we have some domestic reserves and we can create our own breakthrough technologies, we need to invest into r & d. i know the deputies make suggestions in this regard and it will certainly take them into account. the government is planning to support innovation activities of our producers. coal finance expenditures for r & d and subsidized loans for this purpose. and last year, more than 70 billion rubles were provided from the federal budget. a perspective model of public/private partnership would be so-called technological

platforms that would join government, business and science around the new manufacturing. and we believe that there will be benefits of creating special economic zones and technological parks. the government already invested about 60 billion rubles into these enterprises. and this year we will send another 17 billion rubles. i will remind you that today in russia there are 24 special economic zones. and in 12 regions we have technological parks in high tech industries. in these high tech industrial clusters, we already have 650 resident companies registered some. from molecular electronics to construction materials and they plan investment there. it's about 300 billion rubles. i'd like to attract your attention to this. we're not exclusively focusing on what's going on in moscow. this is going on throughout the

entire russian territory. and from singular breakthrough and particular deals and projects, we should go toward massive wide range support of domestic companies that are trail blazing trying to find their place on foreign markets. so, therefore, we're establishing russian agency for ensuring exports. and this company will take part of financial risk and let our exporters build capacity. we're planning this year to provide guarantees and insurance about $1 billion. and we're planning to increase up to $14 billion. and in the interest of development of our industry and economy, we're using advantages

of integration. 2010 was the year of the birth of customs union between russia, belarus and kazakhstan. we have a unified customs tariff and the unified customs code. and actually business appreciated this opportunity. by 28% of the trade of goods between this country increase and i think this is a historic event. for the first time in the post-soviet space we have a real genuine integration. [applause] >> in 2012, within the customs union. we have the unified system of technical standards and regulation. it will be an important development in russian technology. technical regulation standards that will push business towards modernizing their production. and we'll use vast world practices including our partners in europe in formulating those

standards. and from customs union we'll make a step toward unified economic space starting january 1st, 2012, we'll have unified market with unified legislation. and the free flow of goods, services and people. and in the near future we'll have a coordinated economic policy in key sectors of the economy. it will be genuine integration breakthrough. it will currently change and radically change economic and geopolitical configuration of eurasia. i will emphasize the customs union and unified economic space is open to other countries, our partners from the independent states. and i believe that this initiative and our suggestion that our european union neighbors to create harmonized economic space between lisbon

will be supported and i know reaction is generally positively. and we're talking about dialog and economic partnership. and possibly have zones of free trade there. and the more advanced forms of economic integration, we have something common to strive for because the result we have a wide market that is worth 3 trillion euros. but additionally, we would like to ask our european partners to remove some bottlenecks that they have to create infrastructure. but the starting point would be canceling of the entry visas to europe. and we talk about it a lot. dear colleagues, i would like to point special attention to situation in our defense

industry and our aviation industry considering the fact that there were a lot of requests from duma deputies in this regard. in the time of crisis we reneged on our support. between 2009 and 2011 we invested 270 billion rubles in the aviation industry, and we were able to promote all projects that have to do with our aviation both civil and military. we were able to consolidate our aviation production complex. it was so convoluted legislation and, unfortunately, we were moving very slowly. there were a lot of special interest provisions there but as a result the entire complex can move forward. yeah for 130 first training planes and 148varonish would be in both and civil and military

education and we will be revising production in the largest cargo plane. the super jet 100 is being ready for supply. 150 orders have been received. and this year they will lease 10 of these aircraft in the middle of may, they will receive their first airplane. i was very pleased to see how the work was progressing. when i came to the far east, i see on the one side there are people speaking italian. another side people speaking french and russians is the joint international team trying to strive for the result. and this is the first russian aircraft that was designed entirely in digital format. this is a positive event. [applause] >> and yesterday, as you know, our first super jet 100 landed and now joint civilian aviation

fleet in armenia. it's symbolic that it bears the name of our national hero. the 50th anniversary of space flight that was celebrated by the entire world. we're still working on ms21, our breakthrough project. this is midrange aircraft with a new engine and a new composite wing. and we have a generation of fighters. and we're building a new one. and we have good foundation there that was created in previous decades and primarily in the soviet times. we have titanium valley. they will manufacture experimental materials for aircraft of new generation. and i believe that the foundation of our aviation industry is being laid down very

solid. and we will meet all interests and demands of russia both in military and civilian aircraft. renovation of aircraft -- of antiaircraft system and weapon system will be one of the priorities for russia. aircraft brigades already receive new weapon system, as 400. and in the near future, the production of new weapon system of s-500 they will be able to meet the task of both antiaircraft and antiballistic missile. they will be able to hit targets in outer space. and there will be new missiles both technical and strategic starting 2013 and the production of strike missile complex would be doubled. we also modernized our civilian missiles. in 2013, we're planning to start

flight testing of ongara launcher. and by 2015, ruse m launcher would be finished. they will start from the new national civilian launching site and will launch into space both passenger and cargo ships. the construction work on this launching site will start this year. in this case we'll be fully sovereign and independent launching capabilities. we had only one launching site that was re-equipped for civilian purposes. there was no dedicated launching site. >> going back to defense issues, for the very first time in the history of russia, large scale appropriation, about 3 trillion

rubles will be appropriated for the development of russian navy. these are figures from the program of russian forces and overall we're planning to spend a scary figure, 20 trillion rubles. compared to the previous program, a threefold increase. it has to do not with our desire to have a military-heavy budget. the thing is that a lot of weapon systems are now obsolete and they need to be replaced and, of course, we need to replace them with a new highly technological weapons system and we are making plans on modernizing the entire defense industry because we can make new weapon system only using new hardware and equipment. in 10 years we'll spend more

than 3 trillion rubles. and more than 200 billion rubles will be spent on the research and development. and based on this research and development, there will be technology of dual use and because of that, the increase in military complex, we will see a former organization of defense industry itself and the entire economy of russia. and military contracting has to be done rhythmically and appropriately and timely, of course. we certainly have issues and problems there. and deputies were appropriately pointing out these issues. and we will keep an eye on that and we'll ask you to do the same. but we've accomplished a lot compared to precrisis 2012, the military and defense industry

output increased 1.5 times. one other fact. in 2010, up to 75% of investment in defense industry was for a procurement of equipment. up to 75% of investment for new equipment and hardware. so now we are observing a process of accelerated formation of weapon systems. we have young people going to defense companies. we broke this trend of aging. and the average age in r & d and design centers -- in industry have now 46.5% and in r & d, 41.5%. oh, no, not percent. years, years, of course. and next year we'll have a targeted recruitment of 50.5

thousand students that will be trained in specialties that are required to by defense industry and this year we will be paying pluses to best and most accomplished engineers. in the three recent years, 5 million 358,000 children were bo born, an increment was 35,000 children. and one of the best telling indicators is average life expectancy. today it's 69 years. i'll remind you that in 2005, it was 65 years. so between 5 and 2010, very good increase, four years. at the same time, the results -- and who's getting free apartments?

>> please carefully follow the process. it's a pretty good growth. at the same time, the results of the census demonstrated how fragile and unstable this democratic balance would have. but it is evident for us that active policy in the demography has to be pursued and continued. and we will continue pursuing regardless of the difficulties. and we'll do everything to re-enforce positive demographic trends and support families with children. all aspects are important and technology and housing issues and steady development of health care education system, the government initiated introduction of tech deductions for children and assisting with the registering of lent lots

with families with more than four children. i will have to go back to the address of the president last year. it's not by accident. it was focusing on protection of maternal health and child health and improving demography. this is our common strategy for preserving nations of russian federation. we started the second face of demographic policy between 2011 and 2015. we expect demographic projects will receive about 1.5 trillion rubles. so what we are hoping for -- what we're trying to achieve in 2015, the first indicator would be the increase of life expectancy, up to 71 years. and compared to 2006, birth registries increased by 25, 30%. and the death rate would be lower. and looking at the trends that

we have now, it is achievable result. the main thing is to keep up the pace. and demographic indicators reflect the quality of life and morals of the society the status of russian exporters. today we're talking about substantial improvement of public administration and have to reorient government apparatus to meet the interest of russian citizenry and, of course, we're talking about fighting corruption. try to make bucharest responsible and eliminate any preconditions for rent seeking and bribery. of course, we need to clean our regulations and laws and the administrative procedures from loopholes and vague areas. the new law, unlicensing, lowers

by a half licensed business activities. and all licenses will have no expiration date. starting in 2012, a lot of licensing procedures will be put into electronic formats. it will spare business from going door to door. and now a little bit about certification. this is a very important aspect. even though it seems mundane but it's where we have the source of all evil. quite recently, up to 78% of all goods and services had to be certified and now it's only 46%. we will further lower this bar. and in many cases, producers will self-declare compliance to standards of quality and this process should accompany you with responsibility of the producers to guarantee interest of consumers. i will give you a short reference in the past two years

more than 600,000 small and medium businesses were launched in the wake of the crisis and this is very serious growth and i believe efficiency of regional and local authorities in supporting entrepreneurship should be more effective and open, therefore, we suggest to have rankings among investment effectiveness of the regions of the russian federation. despite the deficit of the budgets and the post-crisis measures, we are going to support small business involved in innovation technology, in defense industry and for those entrepreneurs who are working in social spheres. we will assist small business through financing.

shortly, we will provide for providing services by the government of local and regional level. we're talking about e-government, integrated communications channel and regional and agency-based data banks. from june 2011, all coordination and inquiries will be done by agencies by themselves. and not use citizens as messengers. and i would like to add those citizens who would prefer traditional form of receiving government services in person would be done so but the entire procedure should not be too cumbersome. therefore, we're expanding the program of multifunctional centers. they will be based on a principle of a single window. the initial centers that were created in 2007 but now we have 170 of those and in we'll have 800 of them. and they will be working for the interests of the citizens and

any municipalities. they should be able to receive services on single window. and by the june of 2012, there will be a fee schedule for government services. and the fees will be charged only based on tax code and the schedule approved by the government. so demands for additional payments above those schedules would be illegal. in the shortest time, the government as an initiator, would like to the government involved in the governing process so, dear colleagues, we would like to arrange for public hearings of all socially significant bills and drafts of

laws, and this could be done involving the widest range of experts. it has been done publicly and openly. recently i was talking about the needs of health care. we talk a lot about it. we talk about everywhere, but this is a medical facility and i realize people don't know about what is being done or make suggestions so i think we shouldn't lay out the drafts and put them up on the website so people could look at that time but also have public deliberation of it and maybe using the system of electronic voting so people will decide which is the more appropriate and important for them. a lot of leading countries now incorporate more and more the system-open government that would involve citizenry in the decision-making process so we would also need to encourage active civil engagement and

taking into account those recommendations and advice given by independent experts. but, of course, it would be more difficult to organize these conditions and sometimes we'll lose on speed but the quality will be improved. dear colleagues, please allow me to conclude with saying that practically three years ago here in this chamber we laid out the new program for development by the government of our federation. yes, we had more challenges than we anticipated. we at the same time had to move forward and fight the crisis and protect citizenry from the conflicts of the crisis and defend every accomplishment in the sphere of education and health care. and step-by-step restore and recover and increase potential for growth. i can say with full responsibility that this was a successful dash forward and now

we're making large scale plan for economic and strategic growth. the government will do everything possible to make sure that the economy is following the traecktory of growth and the families will grow. we are guided by the principle by listening toe people and we're stepping away from this general principle line. support of citizens always helped us. and we used it as a support in making very important decisions and we'll do everything to earn this trust. for patience and attention, thank you. [applause]

>> thank you. recent political events both in our country and in the world proved the internet played an important role in the marbleizing people. today you have the opportunity wide formal and free communication between people. and the users are not afraid to openly express their ideas about upcoming presidential and parliamentary campaign in russia. it can lead to a crackdown in this issue. and the evidence is in the recent statement by security services on possibility of blocking access to internet sites. and our faction is convinced that this is impermissible.

we don't want to go back and we believe these actions will lead to discontent in the internet and overall will destabilize the situation or provoke something that bureaucrats are trying to fight against. so we'd like to hear the principal position of the government incensorship of the internet and if possible would like to hear your personal opinion. [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: i don't recall they had the internet in 1937. >> well, you know, there was a joke. what's the difference between saka, center comedia, the communist party and the secret police? the sound and they are clicking and in checka they are clipping. we're not planning to clip anything. and the internet is just a tool, a tool for solving important economic and social problems,

this is a tool for communication and self-expression. also a tool for improving quality of life and getting information. but the main internet resources are owned not by us, they are across the pond. they own overseas and, therefore, it causes concern among security services, the potential of using these important resources for purposes that go against the interests of our society and our country, but it's their concern. as far as i'm concerned, i don't believe there's a need to restrict anything. >> the wave that rolled across muslim and arab world various upheavals, mutinies and civil

disobedience threatened the world economy but the question is, what does the government do to go for it. because it's no secret that we had large contracts with this country. our companies were working there and our redistribution of the financial flows and migration flows now put at risk the existence of the european union and politically in many countries right wing parties come to power and they want to restore borders good countries of the european union. what does the government do to be at least affected by the changes brought about by those revolutions that are happening and probably will happen in the nearest future? >> their main guarantee to avoid social upheavals is the social

economic policy in the interest of russian people. with mandatory positive results in our joint work. if people see that we're working -- defending their interests and we yield positive results, their living standards are improving. i assure you there will be no problems that have to do with maintaining civil accords in our country. but, of course, there will always be isolated elements that would be attempting to destabilizing anything. just like in any similarly healthy body, there are some harmful bacteria that are there, but they're suppressed by immunity. if immunity is high.

as soon as immunity is weakening, this influence presents itself. so if we maintain high immunity in our country, no quasi political influence would present itself. as far as our economic losses in the course of turbulent events in north africa, in other countries, yes, we have this problem. we have a multibillion contracts in defense and other sectors, transportation and energy. and, of course, they are now up in the air. in some areas we already provided services and the work has been done and it's not paid

for, so it's been suspended in some parts of the world, we had plans to provide weapons system. and this is a huge problem because that's our companies produced according to the contracts large amounts of weapon systems, but there's nobody to take it. and what do we do with this inventory? because it was not requested or commissioned by our military. they don't need it. but the resources were spent and i guess we need to somehow support these companies. we will find ways to do it but it will require additional resources from us, maybe direct support from the budget. it's not pleasant but it's not terminal. we will solve these issues. >> later, you can watch c-span's booktv online. webcasting from busboys and poets cafe in washington, d.c. with black tied, a book about

the 2010 deepwater horizon oil rig explosion. author antonia juhasz remembers the oil that spilled. >> approve the action in january. here's a look ahead with former presidents of south africa,

berundi. >> i want to welcome you all to the u.s. institute of peace and this important event on sudan and its future. just a reminder to please turn off your cell phones so there won't be any disruptions or confusion. usip has been working to try to promote peace in sudan for nearly 20 years. for the first several years we organized tract 2 peacemaking events between representatives, intellectuals, former officials from both north and south. more recently, we've tried to be

supportive of the u.s. special envoy for sudan and for the african union high level implementation panel whose leaders we have with us today. we provided expert advice on issues which the northern and southern leaders are currently are addressing, such as divisions of oil revenue, international debt as well as constitutional reform, popular consultation and customary laws and we've conducted workshops on how to prevent electoral violence. because of our long and deep engagement with sudan, it's a particular pleasure for us to be able to host this event today and to introduce our speakers, i want to welcome and introduce my executive vice president. >> thank you, david. and let me just add my welcome to all of you who are just in

the first few weeks of programming here so bear with us for anything that doesn't work. it won't be our fault. and if it's great, we'll take all the credit. as david mentioned, sudan is vital to our work and i want to thank john and the many staff people from usip who travel between washington and sudan constantly. i know that because i sign their travel vouchers, and they go and come and they are really doing remarkable work on the ground. it is intimidating enough to introduce one former president but the job of introducing three is almost overwhelming. and i won't tell you too much about each because they're all so familiar to all of you in this room. tabo, i've known for many years. he's one of the outstanding leaders of the continent.

he served as south africa's president for nearly a decade as the successor to nelson mandela. he is, of course, the chair of the africa union high-level implementation panel for sudan. i hope you'll join me in a warm welcome for tabo. [applause] >> president pierre, we all know the president barundi for a total of 13 years in different iterations and different periods. the longest-running president. and i'm very excited to tell you he was once a former usip grantee. would you join me in welcoming the president. [applause] >> and last but, of course, not

least, we are very honored to have with us the man who served as president of nigeria from june, 1998 to may, 1999. of course, in addition to all the wonderful things that he has done, he was also the envoy, a very difficult assignment from the u.n. to the congo. and he is part of this wonderful panel today. and i am just delighted that he could be with us. would you join me in welcoming him. [applause]

>> mr. president, ladies and gentlemen, i have been asked by my colleague to introduce the conversation this afternoon. as you know, we are a panel, an african level high level implementation panel on the sudan. and we start to march in 2004 in darfur. and in october, 2009, it was extended to the whole of sudan.

and we've been working with the sudanese to follow up the implementation of cp. and then we have been asked by the sudanese, the talks on what is called the post-cp arrangement. it may be the best way is to tell you where we are. and maybe it can trigger a discussion. a question and answer. maybe it's the best way. first, as you know about the implementation of the cp we have gone a long way.

i recognize here those people who played a very important role in the organization of the referendum. [applause] >> the professor and the deputy. we were working with them on the issue of the referendum and do you know what happened? the contribution of everybody have a beautiful and capable referendum. and the outcome of which has been accepted by the sudanese and by the international community. i think this has been a very big achievement. and what is left in the

implementation of it? three matters? one is the issue of peace. this issue seems to be the more complicated one. but what i can say is this. we are working on it. we have agreed with the president bashir and the president that at the end of may, our panel is going to make a proposal. after consultation with the sudanese and the other international holders. we hope that we then come to an agreement on iba.

the second remaining issue is the issue of bod border and on borders there are two issues remaining. one is to agree on what is called the disputed areas. there are five disputed areas on the border. and there is a political committee and a political committee and the two are working on eight and we hope that before 9 of july, we reach an agreement on those five disputed area. the second remaining issue is the demarcation of the border. you know, between the north and

the south there is almost 2,000 kilometers of border. we think this may be the demarcation exercised. we go on even after the independence of the south. it appears that it's impossible to complete the demarcation in the time of 9 of july. the third remaining issue of the cp is called political consultation. in the two areas. political consultation has been completed. now, what is remaining is to come to a conclusion. then it means a talk between the

state authorities and the government of khartoum. but in the south, popular consultation is not done yet because they have assessed to handle the election and it's the 2nd of may and we hope soon after then popular consultation is going to take place and you see also that the exercise of political consultation we certainly go beyond the 9 of july. those are really are the three issues remaining in the implementation of cp. then there is the second set of issues are what we call a

post-referendum. they have been negotiating on the issue of citizenship, the issue of security arrangement, the arrangement especially three important matters: oil, currency and debt. and their discussion -- also the discussion has also gone a long way. we are about to conclude the negotiation on the economic issues. we have had many seminars. and we think maybe we need one

more efficient to come to a conclusion. and there is finally few issue where the party don't agree yet. on the issue of currency, there is the matter of redemption of the currency. what to do with it circulating in the south, one the south circulates its own money. on the issue of debt, the parties have been agreed on what they call option. it means that khartoum take the responsibility to deal with the whole debt of the sudan. and the two parties agree to

make a joint advocacy for debt relief. and here in washington, it has been one of our main discussion was in the currency. on the debt, with the imf, with the world bank, with the creditors of the sudan, and it's assumed things are moving in the right direction. the other remaining issue is what the sudanese parties call the financial transition arrangement. and the other way, how to share the oil revenue after the independence of the south. and related to this, how -- what

will be the ownership of the oil fracture. those two matters are not agreed yet. and we have said that there should be a special committee on a high level to try to have an agreement on these -- those issues. the other post-referendum arrangement is about security. >> we also have a negotiating security arrangement. here also one issue is not solved yet. it is the future of the spla -- no, the soldiers coming from the two areas. what is their future?

there is not -- there's no agreement yet, but the parties continued to negotiate. there is also a discussion about the third parties in the management of the borders after 9 of july. we think the most complicated issue will be the spla soldiers coming from brunei and the south. and then the issue of citizenship. here also there is one suspect which we have not agreed to yet. it's the transitional period. it will weigh the sudanese and

reapply for citizenship in the north or in the south. at the beginning, the parties had had discussion upon the possibility of dual citizenship. they couldn't agree. then to avoid the state of -- the statelessness, then they agreed to have a period after each party has legislation on the citizenship, then the people are working to choose to join the south or the north. i think there we are in the

post-referendum regiment as you see. we are moving on all the issue of at the same time and we hope that before 9 of july we have an agreement on all of those issues. now, we are discussing with the parties some of the issues which can be continued to be discussed even after 9 of july. for example, did issue of the border. it's where we are and we have been discussing these issues here in washington. we've also been discussing the issue concerning the future of the two countries, especially the south after the

independence. there is a lot of concern about the nation-building, the south face a lot of challenges. about security development, governance. we have seen that there is a lot of worth in the national community, the international community is talking about outcoordinate all those to help the south of sudan. we have been discussing also the future of the north of sudan. because the north of sudan they have to adapt in the south. in khartoum they have the status to think about the

constitutional review, how to adapt the constitution for the post-independence of the south. and here it comes also the issue of darfur. the other matter we're dealing with is to try to implement the report we made on darfur in 2009. the situation in darfur has not made a lot of progress. there is the negotiation in doha which is going, going, gone and what we have discussed? we have tried to start the darfur political process. there is a lot of discussion how

to coordinate doha in the political process and in the center of discussion with the head of the u.s. government especially. we are hoping that we are finding the way maybe to have -- to a process. i'm hoping that those two will lead to the peace in darfur. we think there's an agency place in darfur. especially, we see that darfur -- the lack of peace in darfur is having a negative impact on the whole of sudan. for example, on the issue of debt, one of the issues is the

sanction, the u.s. sanction to sudan because of the war in darfur. and when we are talking about -- because the fundamental principle in our negotiation -- in the negotiation between the south and north is the principle of two valuable states, viable states in making the north viable the issue of the debt is very important. and darfur is -- darfur will be also important in the constitution review in the north 'cause darfur is part of the north. and we think that darfur -- the peace in darfur has to come so

that the north can then organize. darfur is also having a negative impact in the area of security. there has been accusation as you've heard before -- there have been accusation is helping those in darfur and the north is helping the others in the south.

>> we are optimistic the sudanese have the ability to resolve their many problems. we are unaware there is pressure of time, because we are less than three months to the ninth of july, that i think especially after the referendum we can see there is strong political ways for the northerners and southerners to move to create

what they have called two states. it's important for sedan, sudanese. it's important for the whole region. because sudan you know is the weakest country in africa. other countries, there is stability. in sudan it will be a big contribution to the stability of africa if there is stability. i think it is why african union is very committed to help sudan. sedan is very important to africa. african a union for the first

time appointed three former heads of state to try to move to help sudanese. this is the recognition, the importance of sudan for africa. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, president buyoya. we can now move to questions. and i think all three of our former presidents will participate in responding to your questions. we have microphones we can pass around to those who ask question. just raise your hand with a question. why don't we started with steve

mcdonald. >> thank you very much for your presentation. welcome president mbeki and president abubakar. i was in a lunch last week where prime minister ortega gave the presentation here and he said that the kenyan government had approved and set aside funding for further development and for building the pipeline and road up into southern sudan. can you comment on that as to how that will impact the flow of oil and the administration of the revenues from the oil funds? i know it will be several years

before that is a reality, that if you could comment on that i would appreciate it. >> spent why do we take three or four questions and i can relate them. anybody else? we will take three or four questions. >> you tell us what to do. >> okay. go ahead. >> thank you very much. mike kellerman, how are you? of all the participants i would like to know in particular because this involves the african union, and then start to change the subject but in particular about, are you satisfied with how that turned out? and secondly, about louis.

you have been asking union delegation attempted peace agreement with mr. gadhafi and the rebels, so-called. and i'm wondering whether it is now. could you answer both of those questioned in the course of your answering questions? thank you very much for coming here today. thank you. >> when you ask a question if you would identify yourself and your affiliation. >> thank you very much. i work with refugees international. my question is for the panel is regarding the situation of the northerners in the south of the southern union and the north and what about the negotiation going on in terms of leadership. what has been done by the panel institution to reassure the people from the south and the north, and those in the north and south that after july night there will be no retribution, to be no violent act against them?

because i was part of a team a couple of months ago visiting both the north and south, and every people we interviewed, expressed fear that there would be either retribution or their properties or physical safety would be jeopardized after that day. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> trying to the side the way i should speak from. what a few of the house. it's better? good.

only on the matter of the pipeline, the issue of the ownership of the oil infrastructure, pipeline, and whatever else attached to it, this is one of the matters that is still under discussion. and, indeed, they are regular in terms of negotiations that president buyoya was talking about. they are particular subgroups discussing each one of these issues. including issue of oil. but it's been agreed that with regard to the specific issue of the ownership of the infrastructure, oil infrastructure, that should be0 taken to a higher level, political committee. if you take it out of its

regular negotiated good because it is proved to be a bit of a challenge. so it should be dealt with at the higher political level. but again, i would view that as president buyoya was indicating, that like all of the other issues in the economic class that this matter would be resolved by the end of may. but it is one of the issues that are central to this discussion. we haven't discussed at al all e matter of the possibility of other pipelines. in fact, i'm sure this is the first time all three of us here, over lunch last week, so we did not -- by certain it's not any matter. it doesn't matter. it doesn't at all in the context of negotiations, the possibility of another pipeline, et cetera.

it doesn't, it doesn't matter. so they were perceived to decide this matter of the ownership and so on. because it relates to the matter of access, what kind of access, therefore, should people have to the infrastructure. the issue of citizenship, the matter has also been under discussion for some time. and again as president buyoya was saying, one of the principles that has been agreed by both parties is that we should avoid states lester to any arrangement that is arrived at must avoid that. and secondly, it's been agreed by the parties that whatever the

arrangement, whatever the arrangement, they have to include the possibility for the sudanese to stay where they are now, maintain, keep the property they have, keep the jobs they have, and all of that. generally, it's a group of arrangements which reflect as to the four freedoms. northwest and south, south of the north. if their citizens, they become citizens of the other states. they should never nevertheless enjoyed the four freedoms. so i'm saying that is too much agreed about, avoid statelessness and make sure

people enjoy these four freedoms. those principles that were agreed and what remains now is to discuss whatever has outstanding, one with regard to the citizenship thing. so that people avoid, avoid creating negative situations for ordinary people, of the formation of two states. so hopefully we are quite sure that the necessary agreement will be done, which would then create the possibility for the two states to draft the citizenship legislation, which would then define who is a citizen and, therefore, enable people to decide, to choose as to where they want to belong. in a manner, and, therefore, the issues that is outstanding which is under discussion is with the

two states having approved their nationality legislation, how much time should be given to enable people to say, okay, me, i make southern national or a northern national. so that is one matter that is being discussed. but so it requires sufficient time should be allowed, so that nobody should end up being stateless. so i'm saying that therefore hopefully matters are being discussed in a matter that i am indicating, in order to avoid the neutrality we're talking about of people being victimized in north in the south of south in the north, go home and i take your car and your house and whatever else comes to avoid exactly that. now, with regard to the second question of the libya,

fortunately panel has not this issue. icing fortunate because every coveted and typical. and other people have had to deal with it. no, wit. no, we haven't discussed this thing libya. i understand the chair, the chairperson of the commission of the african union is in washington. he will be in this building tomorrow. that will be the person to ask this question. [laughter] >> let him answer. okay. [inaudible] >> it's the same. i say, a panel also done. we haven't at all gadhafi. in december you remember the election in the second round was was on the 30th of november,

and immediately more or less after that, the problem arose with the african union, the chair of the commission of the african union will be here tomorrow, you can ask you about that also. he asked me to go there, to look at a situation, talk to the leadership to make it a come addition to the african union as to what to do. so i went, talk to all of the leadership, and came back, growth report the african union and i said i think this is what you need to do to resolve this problem. and so ask john tomorrow. what happened. >> i think -- >> i am saying these are the questions that you should put to chair of the african union commission tomorrow. thanks. >> other questions?

>> we will get the microphone for you. but. >> i will just -- >> no. use the microphone placed. >> is it on? joe with csis. president buyoya county spoke of the strong clinical well, both part of the leadership of the north and the south. but i'd like to know the panels thinking or discussion in respect to that political will holding, particularly in the north in case the leadership is not sustained there. okay? in other words, political will has to be sustained over the long term over successive governments. >> other questions? yes.

>> i'm a graduate student at duke university study and environmental security. my question is about the nile basin and given the south comes independent, it will be in control of the white now. i was wondering if one has come up in any of your discussions. and if so, how do you think, or what, how do you plan on dealing with the issue? >> we will take one more and then -- >> can we address -- is a bit of a bad act to in this hall. so once you are far from the mic it is difficult to understand what you're saying. could we please give them back the mic and speaker closer to the mic so we will hear you

better. >> my question was on water and the nile basin, and given that the south is going to be in control of the white nile want to becomes independent, i was wondering if the issue has come up in any of your discussions, and how you plan on dealing with that, if it has. >> we'll take one more in the back there. >> laurence freeman from executive intelligence review with the african desk. in terms of two viable states for sudan, i've been a supporter working on sudan for almost 20 years. it seems to me that there has to be a positive vision for sudan to move forward, which i have not seen anywhere in washington to articulate this vision. which would be and south sudan unite together for the benefit of all people sudan.

and this seems to me that center around the question of production of food, especially two of our brothers southern sudan, but food for northern sudan where poverty exists, electrical power, rail transportation. this idea of two countries working together, the self-interest and benefit of each other for a positive program that goes beyond simple debt relief, this is not discussed in washington. and i want to know if the three ex-presidents have thought about these ideas for the future of sudan. [inaudible conversations]

>> yes, sir. i think that with regard to the defense question, i think part of what all of us need to appreciate is the fact that, you know, for 40 years of its independence, as i think all of us will recall, sudan has been at war between the two, between the north and the south. which ultimately resulted in the regime of the cpa. and i think our own experience is that the sudanese generally have understood very, very well the cost that attaches to war. and, therefore, are very

familiar of the view that war is not going to solve their problems. and that any matter outstanding between the two of them needs to be solved by peaceful means. because they're very direct expense of what the opposite of that has meant. so, i'm saying that is our stance. this doesn't mean there are no tensions and so on. of course, there are tensions, and, indeed, there still might be some people who might think that a return to war would produce some results, but i'm saying that in the generality, the majority in the leadership of sudan, both north and south, it seems to us that they're very clear understanding, that they should not return to work. 40 years of fighting have taught everybody that lesson. and so, i do not believe that if they were to be a change in the

personalities, the change in the personalities in terms of the political leadership in the north, that this would change this fundamental understanding among the population in the north. so, therefore, the will to proceed in the way that is the two sedans, the north and south of the way they are proceeding now the political will to sustain that i think it would remain. even if it were to change among some of the personalities. in terms of the people are in the government in the north. you are unlikely to get anybody there to say, perhaps, the cpa process reintegrate south sudan with the north by force or

anything like this. or indeed, take a position contrary to the notion of two viable states. so, i think that's a matter of the political will to which -- i think that political will would be sustained regardless of whatever political changes might happen in the north with regard to some of the political players there. on the matter of the viable states, development, agriculture, infrastructure, all of that, this has been part of come again as president buyoya was indicating, one of the principal reasons that i came to washington this time at the invitation of the imf and the world bank, in particular to deal with this issue of debt, as you were saying.

this debt relief, debt of about 38 billion in dollars. which clearly the country can't pay. and which has to be forgiven. if it isn't forgiven, as again as president buyoya was a, it would be directly on this viability, the viability of the north given the decision that the north would inherit this debt. we came therefore to discuss an element, an element of the issue that is being raised, the challenge of development. the second matter that we are to have, a meeting organized by the world bank. the world bank him it was a roundtable on sudan, to discuss more broadly the challenges of

development for both the south and the north. the challenges of development. i think the point that is being raised is correct. that it is in addition as i understood it, the point the president made was that in addition to look at this political arrangement, independence of the south, information -- and formation of a government which is fine, what happens to the north and its politics is fun. the point that was being made was related and important issue which is the development question. and their first issue of agricultural development, important issues of infrastructure development and all of that. that the rest of the international committee should not just look at this political issues, but also look as develop and issues. and, indeed, this is part, as i'm saying this was part of the discussion in this roundtable which was convened by the world

bank at the african government bank. ad hocly combining the people who are here, even saying that, his sense is that washington. >> it would be very important. there is a working group on the issue of water.

as a working group like the issue of water. and with all of these working groups, again as president buyoya mentioned, the economy questions, et cetera, our panel convened all of these groups. we work with them on the agenda, timetables and so one. i am mentioning that because of the interesting thing about this water, working group, and that they say to us, we don't need you. we are absolutely making very good progress. making very good progress. the interaction and understanding between the two parties is very good. and i am quite confident that they'll be able to sort out a proper agreement. bearing in mind the point which they both recognize that

normally historically president wise, it does take time to sort out all of these water agreements. but they are perfectly capable combo site, that they are proceeding well. and didn't actually need our facilitation. but we managed to gather ourselves. but it is being attended to. thanks. >> i would like to add something on the issue of the political will and the stability of leadership. i think this issue is not particular. now we are in the world of constant change of leadership,

through emma craddock process -- through democratic process. i think the reality in sudan, reality in this country, and elsewhere, the sudanese have to agree on some principle in the core issues. it doesn't mean that this will be implemented by the current regime. this one issue. the other question concerning about the positive vision of the cooperation between the two. if you see, first the need, to name principles. the one is the principle of two viable states. the second is the principle of cooperation for benefits, not on

short-term or midterm. it's for the long-term. for example, in the framework of negotiation of currency, there are two currencies, to come to a trade treaty. it is a long-term agreement. when we were negotiating, they want to come to the treaty in the oil area. how they're going to cooperate in the long-term, in the oil area. when they are negotiating both issues, they have introduced this notion of -- first order, allowing freedom of movement for

the people for the goods, between the two states. i want to just say behind those negotiations, longer-term vision of cooperation to benefit. thank you. here. >> hello, can you hear me? i am with the united nations. i just want to hear your views on how you see posted july 9, the roles of the african union and the united nations in sudan. operation in darfur. a role whether one nation or commissions. just your views on that would be very interesting for us. thank you.

>> i am jill, more or less the same question. does the panel have a mandate posted july? and if so, and kill when and for what? and will be assessment and evaluation commission carry on in any form? >> i am from the wilson center. we have the impression that there may be some disconnect on darfur between europe panels approach and that of the doha mediators. with your teen favoring some peace from within policy, adopted now by the government in

khartoum. and his team giving priority to their own mediation talks. can you take this opportunity to explain to us how you are coordinating with the doha mediators? what sequence he of the process you in vision, and how you are all tackling the very difficult question of persuading all the darfur movement to participate? >> with regard to the matter of

that, the discussion hasn't quite started about the future of always in sudan. it's obvious that in terms of its mandate, in terms of its mandate, obviously its mandate most terminate with the end which is the ninth of july. but matter has been raised as president buyoya was indicating. the matter has been raised of the need for some international participation with regard to the security arrangements between the north and the south. matter has been raised. so, now what has happened is

that the two parties have asked us to address this issue, to come back to them with some suggestions as to how this matter might be dealt with. of the international participation in terms of the arrangements between the two, between the two countries. so that's a matter we are working with. it's obvious i did not -- in that context the issue will not arise. the issue will arise out of the rule both the u.n. and african union, and, therefore, to that extent the role of oneness. the south -- i'm talking about an arrangement that would relate to both north and south.

so that's a matter that is a consideration. and i'm quite sure that at the end of it the sudanese will probably then want to approach either the u.n. or the au, or both, depending on the outcome of this approach is to say look, can you do whatever. the south has already approached the u.n. with regard to a further goal that it might put and sell. so that's a matter that would be discussed, being discussed between the united nations and the government of south sudan. so, matter therefore is not quite finalized. there are discussions in new york as to some views as to what they think might happen. both with regard to deployment in south and as it relates to

relations between north and south. but this is a work in progress. of course, it will not affect. they will continue working in darfur. the anc -- some discussion as also written about the matter of the anc as to what happens to it, but also its own mandates as relates to cpa. in principle, its mandate opt in when the cpa and. -- its mandate ought to and when the cba ends. to the extent that there might be some things which might

require looking at posted jul july 9, maybe they may decide to continue this. but i really don't know what sort of discussion is taking place in the context. but i'm saying in principle, the mandate should presumably and on the ninth of july but doesn't guarantee that's what will happen. with regard to doha, i wouldn't say that there's a disconnect. the african union decided on a policy in october 2009 that in order to agree to a durable peace in darfur, it would be

important to involve the population of darfur in any negotiations that take place that would define the future of darfur. the reason for that was because this is what the population in darfur itself had sent. win again as president buyoya the same, when we started offer work on the structure of the acting union, dependent on darfur, we spent a long time with darfur years. the au said to us can you please advise the african a union as to what we should do next to help resolve the problem in darfur. so we decided that we couldn't answer that question without asking them themselves what they think.

and what they said, population and all that there is segment, the refugees, the native administration, the nomads, everybody. civil society, they said that it would be very important for a durable peace to be achieved in darfur. it's important that we, the population of darfur, must be involved in negotiating about peace. and third to us, part of the reason that the darfur peace agreement of 2006 failed was because it was negotiated by the government and armed groups. and they met and finish it and then they came back to us, population of darfur, and sent here is a peace agreement. and we, the population, said it is your peace agreement. it has nothing to do with the.

so they said please, don't repeat that. so we said fine. and went to the african union as a recommendation and i adopted this policy. so, that therefore we get this from the acting union, this is a policy you must pursue. it relates to this question of an inclusive network shaping process in darfur. in the meantime, what happened was that the negotiations in delhi -- the doha into. and so, we agree except negotiations in doha. and we are seeing that it's important that those

negotiations, because there are negotiations among the belligerent, they have to concentrate in particular on issues that relate to cease-fire, to a cease-fire and other arrangements. because that's an important part of any peace agreement for darfur that you get the cessation of hostility which can only be negotiated by the people who carry guns. it's important that the doha must continue and produce that desire. the problem of course with regard to this is matter that you have raised of encouraging everybody to participate, encouraging all of the groups to participate. and the mediators have found this very difficult to get -- to

go to doha and engage in negotiations. to go there, and now with developments, it has proved very difficult. for the mediator to attract groups to come. all of us have been talking with them. all of us talking to them saying, all of us saying please go to doha, because all of us need, that this is fine and so on. i'm quite sure, try to persuade them to engage that process which us to focus on the matter of determination of hostilities. now, i don't think anyone can guarantee success with regard to this because the decision is not in our hands.

it's in the hands of these other groups. whether they want to come or don't want to come, but that should encourage them to, so they've been doing that sense, in fact i should've said that, this was one of the messages we got already from 2009. and they said to us, please talk to the leaders of the armed groups to go to doha to talk peace, and, indeed, we conveyed that message. now, what doha has also done in addition to discussing the issue of a cease-fire and security arrangement, they had discussed issued and broader issues that i've got to do with the piece of darfur. power setting, wealth sharing, et cetera. which are the matters which i'm saying the population of darfur

that said, with regard to those issues we have to be involved in this discussion. so then what i'm saying is let doha proceed with that and what should happen, necessarily is that the outcomes of doha would then feed into this inclusive process, inclusive political process in darfur which would bring in the various constituencies in darfur. so there's no disconnect. what has been a challenging issue is a question of time. president buyoya when he spoke order to he talked about the relevance of darfur, and asia darfur entrance of the constitutional review process of north sudan.

which will india become on the edge and as soon the south since it. the north will have to decide how it governs itself, and, therefore, is constitutional review process must take place. it cannot exclude darfur. because darfur is very much part of north, and, indeed, a very important part of the north. so, that's why bring it is timing issue. therefore, yes, indeed, we would want to see this outcome on doha which would feed into the popular inclusive political process in darfur. but we need to move this process forward faster. if we don't do that fast enough, we will create another problem. which is stalling, stalling the

process of the review in the north which will create other complications. so, therefore, whatever that is discussing in this regard is how to speed up those processes so that indeed we get that kind of sequence. now, obviously if you can't get that sequencing right, bearing in mind there's other pressures i'm talking about, it is still possible to do parallel processes to allow the negotiations in doha to continue. and at the same time, to convene this inclusive process among the darfurians. and, indeed, in terms of the inclusive process in darfur, whatever might agree or not

agree. whatever might have been drafted, i could still take that. so we are saying the good news, to taken from darfur into the inclusive process, the outcomes of doha. but the outcomes of doha are too dependent, not totally and so on, one solution. but too much on what the armed groups decide. so when they decide not to come, then mediators cannot do anything about it. so, in the event that there is therefore delay of that kind, let's go ahead and get that population in darfur, including the armed forces themselves because one more thing, inclusive process, inclusive process that also includes the armed groups. to run in parallel, side-by-side.

so, i hope that answers the questions. thanks. >> two questions here in the back. >> i am a fellow at a refugee international. >> you are to have to speak up. >> i am a fellow at refugees international. my question relates to outstanding issues. in every mediation, there is always outstanding issues that are meant to resolve time and again, maybe over a period of time. but experience is have shown that these outstanding issues are never result.

talk about people get the independents or people get what they want at the bargaining table. as soon as they signed that agreement, independence is given, fresh issues come out. we take a look at utopia in the region, it gives them independence. and we also talk about the issue about which is from a country, the outstanding issues that were meant to resolved two years from now. so, have you learned a lesson, in trying to resolve this issue where he you leave outstanding issues at this is the issues of the border, and you know the importance of the border to your country and of the region. and to give a country independence without undermining where the region will lie at the end of the day. you leave those issues i attended and you think they will resolve themselves over time. thank you.

>> thank you very much. my name is david and from the public international law and policy group. i had a question regarding the popular consultation in southern cardiff are. and blue nile apocalypse has been conducted but not concluded. i was wondering if the panel could comment first on the political practical impediment to issuing a report and initiating negotiations with khartoum. and second, if you could comment on how those negotiations will likely play out given the anticipated political and constitutional changes in the north. thank you. >> jason? >> thank you. jason with the u.s. institute of

peace. your excellencies, you've spoken about darfur and the need to make progress because of the application of these, this problem with a broader constitutional review in the north. similarly i think it's become apparent that the popular constitutional implications. i was one if you might comment on your thoughts on whether or not these processes need to proceed in order to positively inform the constitution making process on whether or not sudan might not be better served by having a national constitution making process tried to at once solve these problems? thank you. >> we will take one more over here. >> i am a diplomat in sudan embassy. i would just like to thank

president mbeki for his effort for achieving peace in sudan and his colleague. and i think i'll be a issue is the most important issue among -- abyei issue is the most important issue. what you think to resolve the abyei because the rest of the issues can be, i mean, negotiated even after the cessation of the south of sudan. thank you.

>> the outstanding issues, you have a concern that there are always outstanding issues. in sudan, and africa it i think we could add everywhere in the world. and, unfortunately, it's not always possible to solve all the programs at the same time. if you have outstanding issues. you have unresolved issues in many countries of the world. you have kashmir between india and pakistan. you have said was between turkey and greece. and many other countries.

palestine. we have a palestine. i think what we try to reach is to solve all those problems, possibly before dying of july. it won't be possible for all of them. and i think if you take for example, the issue of the border, even in areas of africa, demarcation of the border has not necessarily tied, the time is independent. it can't be after. what we are trying to do now, for those issues that can't be solved before the ninth of july, to show the way may be time

limit, they have to be solved. i think it is the most important because other way, it will be impossible to solve them. >> the issue of a constitutional review has much to do with popular consultation and blue nile, and the south. and maybe also the darfur political process because they, what means popular consultation. popular consultation is way for those two areas, blue nile in

the south to define their relationship with the center, with the center government, with khartoum. i think one of the issues in negotiation is doha is the relation between darfur, the issue of darfur being wider region for many regions. then there is a very close tie between popular consultation and the constitution of the review process. popular consultation in the blue nile is second best. there is no negotiation yet

between the state and the center of government. the governor of blue nile, he's a present just come into the central government to start these negotiations. we permit to him that with this matter. as i said earlier, popular consultation has not status. but i think the end of the game, the same. once it is completed to be a negotiation between the state and the center of government to try to see what kind of relationship, and i think the constitutional review is also tackle this matter. for example, the governor of

blue nile is saying that he would like to see a current of federal system in sudan where the state -- [inaudible] financial autonomy. maybe those issues will be, will come in the constitution review process. it has to be seen. but finally we are convinced that maybe this exercise is the way to find a solution on these issues of popular consultation. the obviate issue, everybody --

the abyei issue, sing like you, the abyei issue is the most important, most difficult now. it is clear. .. it didn't succeed.

by the end of the year, the partner, we took over. we made some proposals and proposals in the country. we sent to president bashir that we are going to try again to put the proposal and now we are trying to do it. the parties will come to an agreement. everybody is the same now. later as the issue moves, maybe it can be what they call a -- approach to serve all those including abyei. then i think it is a very

important issue. we can see it now. but, i think at the end, the parties will have to make a compromise. it is up to them to make a compromise. we put on the table different opportunities and then it will be up to them to decide the issue. >> we will take two final questions, went down here. it is going to come across the road to you.

i am with the -- institute. i have two quick questions, the first about. >> speakout. >> the first question is about the border agenda met for negotiations. i'm seeing the progress made is mainly influenced by the u.s. golf relationship with the two parties rather than the partner's willingness to achieve peace. depends on what the u.s. government is willing to give to the two parties and khartoum. would you agree on that and my second question is about darfur, just a follow-up question. i think i understand that how we would have a peace process in darfur knowing the situation is not right. what needs to happen in darfur between now and july in order for us to have credible -- do

you have any conditions for improvement in the security situation? >> pass it down here. >> first question, could you repeat the first question? >> i am saying that they -- is very much influenced by the u.s. relationship with the two parties and what are you willing to give to the two parties? [inaudible] >> final question. >> christina murray from the university of cape town. i wanted to go back firstly to the darfur issue. i understand that the khartoum government has recently announced a referendum for darfur.

and secondly has also proposed introducing and creating two new states in darfur. i wondered if you could comment how you think that fits into the other processes relating to peace in darfur? and then secondly, on the issue of blue nile, and really again this is for comments rather than a question, for you to comment on, please. i'm sort of puzzled by the claims that are being made particularly by the governor blue nile because as i understand that the current constitution of sudan, the interim constitution gives significant and in fact quite strikingly substantial powers to the states within the north. and i wonder how you understand the relationship between the current constitutional position and the claims that are being made at the moment?

>> with regard to the last question, the point that was made i the governor of burundi was indeed exactly what you saie constitution, they have these powers, which addressed the issue of autonomy and all of that. but in practice i think it is not working. for instance, the issue of giving sufficient results under the control of the state so that the state is able to take whatever decisions in the exercise of that and that is not happening. and therefore that is a security problem and that is the issue

you are raising. therefore in working out, and the the point that was being made about these popular confrontations ended the darfur process would have to feed into a national constitutional process. in terms of that national constitutional process which comes after the popular consultations and out of darfur and so on, in that process this issue would have have to be agreed. yes indeed here the powers in terms of the constitution, but what needs to be done to translate this a radical power intellectual power. that is the issue that you are raising. you are quite correct in terms of what the interim constitution says that the issue at we are raising is sometimes -- which needs to be addressed. now, with regard to the

referendum issue, one of the matters that has proved to be a big stumbling block in the doha negotiations between the government and the ljm is the same issue that rose the big stumbling block and 2006. this issue of darfur being one region, one state, it was agreed already that it couldn't be resolved in the negotiations and therefore this would be a result of& referendum. the same thing has happened now. so the reason again in doha, the same way that it arose in -- incapable of resolution among the negotiators of the government has said well, send

the referendum and let darfur decide. that is how the reference them issue is decided. with regard to the two states this is under discussion. 2008 there was a very broad, inclusive sudanese negotiating process. they brought and everybody. the opposition party, the people from the regions and so on. and one of the issues that arose was this question about should darfur be one region, one state? should it continue to be three states or should it be more

states? this relates to the way the population of darfur is composed duly constituted a population? so, you get sections of that population filling, saying in terms of the way darfur is arranged now in three states, such and such a group is in power. it was more focused on us so that we have the capacity to do whatever, whatever in terms of that context. now, naturally what we would say is all of these matters should be put on hold. they should be put on hold.

until the more global political solution of this is a racket and it is in the context that matters will be discussed. the matter is being rising and comes back again to say is a part of the agenda of the inclusive which obviously is not right. whatever the marriage of the issues that have been raised they are saying nevertheless they need to be resolved within the context of the bigger set of negotiations. this is a matter to discuss what the government and to indicate to them are on view about this.

that response to both the referendum and the two additional states in darfur. now the question is raised about the credible process and darfur. president piere buyoya said at the beginning we started as -- in darfur and had to get a sense from them as to how these matter should be resolved. that required a very extensive popular consultation. actually that consultation was no different from the popular consultations that have taken place in burundi and will take

place in south africa. in that context, we had to say to the government of sudan, we need to conduct a process. we have to be satisfied. that is the result of this process and we have had the true and authentic free voice of the people of darfur. therefore, it is very important that the population must feel free to speak and not intimidate so let's agree on how to handle all of these meetings to make sure the government is uniquely a process we organize and we decide where they take place when they take place and all of that. we will decide when we want to

talk to you and your supporters and so on so we made all of the the arrangements and the deed that is what happened. for the population of darfur as we worked with them in 2009, we were perfectly happy with the processes that took place. they spoke freely about all of the things and made their own input. nobody was arrested or anything like that. that was our experience. we have spoken after the government to say we must have this inclusive process and after a lot of resistance on the part of the government finally they agreed and they said okay, and incidentally i must say with regard to this, this darfur political process we are talking about is part of government policy.

the government of sudan actually didn't want this because what they prefer is an agreement that would be negotiated between them and the rebel leaders. it is a much simpler process. than as part of those discussions we would decide that this one gets such and such a post and to the other one gets such and such a post and so on. that population is saying, you can't just talk to those leaders. they must be involved sure about you must also get the population involved. it took a long time before the government said okay. in any case we are explaining to them this is not just our view. in the context of that, when we say to the government darfur

must have this political process, we then say to them we want to repeat that it is necessary to create the conditions again which enable us to conduct the popular consultation in 2009 so they agreed. the context of which the matter was raised that if we have to address this issue in darfur. the government has agreed sure but they will also lift that state as part of this. so, we as a parliament, we have no doubt that it is indeed possible to organize this political process in darfur. so, to organize it, indeed it is conducted in a manner, conducted

in a manner which would ensure that it is credible because it is important that the real true. of the darfurians -- his head and i i'm saying that but they see most of this on our own experience. this has been done during my -- with regard to the issue of the negotiations, i doubt darfur would agree that the negotiations between the north and the south have been driven by considerations of the united states by the united states. these negotiations have been driven by the two parties that are saying, again and let me go back to what president buyoya

said about let's agree. we want to have, to create two viable states. we also agree that we should design a system of cooperation that will produce mutual benefits. not only short term but in the longer term. with the parliament has been asking themselves, they have been asking themselves the question, therefore with regard to the economic arrangements, what is it that we need to decide which would address the matter of two viable states? with regard to the issue of security, what does the government decide is the challenge of two viable states? it is not in the negotiations. they have not been driven by what is the detriment that would please the united states. it hasn't been in such concentration.

it has been and continues to be what is good for the two sudans. so, i know the negotiations have not been driven by considerations of the united states. that having been said, it is clear that it is important that certain decisions are taken here for instance again president buyoya indicated that if you have this issue of external debt of sudan, everybody agrees. we spoke to a lot of -- in washington apart from the imf and the people who are actually owed these billions. and we said to all of them, it is obvious that the sudanese cannot repay this money so that

debt has got to be forgiven and all of the agreed. now let's see what to do. there is a particular challenge as you know that faces the united states, which is that the sanctions relating to this matter of this debt, the sanctions were imposed on the issue of darfur. it will be impossible for the u.s. administration to move on this matter and you act as one of the major creditors. it will be impossible for the u.s. administration to move unless the u.s. congress moves on this matter. so the u.s. is indeed relevant to this process taking place,

and this is part of the challenge. so, u.s. legislation that impacts the debt issue was imposed because of darfur. so naturally the u.s. congress will say we want to see movement on darfur so that we can then move on the legislation. now the problem with the situation is even have have the government of sudan, which sits endo pot every day, ready to negotiate an agreement, and the rebels don't come. therefore there is no agreement. therefore the u.s. congress will take that decision and therefore they debt must be sustained and therefore you have got other problems. and it isn't the fault of the government of sudan.

it is the rebels. so i'm saying to you it is important in this regard. so, this is of course naturally what you would expect. i've been discussing with the u.s. administration and i think we need to conclude with regard to this. as president buyoya has been saying we have been working continuously for the last 25 months. we had to abandon everything else we have been doing just to focus on this. and it is very very clear to us that the sudanese both north and south have a very clear

understanding of their own history, have a very clear understanding of their own challenges, and indeed as we keep saying, the decisions about what happens to sudan's north and south and decisions that must be taken by the sudanese will continue to do this. and i was saying at the beginning it is perfectly obvious that these sudanese are saying no more war, must have peace. there is a very serious challenge which is what led to the wars in sudan, the wars between the north in and the south and between the center and darfur and between the center and the east, which is the issue of the management of diversity in sudan.

the south will separate. the north will remain as diverse as it was before the south separated. the issue of diversity is not going to go away. incidentally the south is also faced with this issue of diversity and i'm saying this by the experience of this when you mismanage that diversity it leads to conflict. now i am sure that my colleagues and presidents of one are very clever people. thank you area much for gouging this. [laughter] you know, but i'm absolutely certain that the sudanese both north and south actually don't need our advice about where to retake sudan.

the reason i'm saying all of this is because you see are people who think that you need particular sets of sanctions to oblige the sudanese to understand where their true interest lies. that is wrong. you don't need -- the sudanese don't need anybody to impose sanctions on them to understand that they must make peace. but the people comment with that frame of mind. they don't quite know what is good for them. therefore i'm asking impose the sanctions and sustain the sanctions so they do what i know is good for them. i am saying it is wrong. the u.s. is important to these issues and in particular we have to find a way of addressing the sanctions matters, because the

assumption that the sanctions are necessarily playing a positive role is not necessarily correct. it is assumed to be so, but it is not necessarily so. thanks. [applause] >> i am sure you all agree that this has been an extraordinary presentation of the issues and the convocations and but with some hopeful signs of a way forward and we are grateful to our three presidents for their presentations. before closing i just want to mention that john king is going to be here tomorrow. we have a full house, but we may be able to squeeze a few more people and tomorrow afternoon, and then on april 28, you have

already been introduced to the chair of the southern sudan referendum commission and the deputy chair and the general secretary. they will be here on april 28 at 10:00 to make a presentation on their work, so i hope you can join us for that the thank you but thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> next time a conference on a regional impact of unrest in the arab world, former cia analyst bruce riedel and gary ryan who served on the national security council under presidents ford, carter and reagan are cohosted by the jamestown foundation, this is 90 minutes.>>than

>> thank you ron, thank youk ndke. a very kind introduction.oducti i want toon thank the jamestown foundation for inviting me.want i want to plug the militant leadership monitor publication. i highly recommend the besting e publications for following terrorism available in the where in the world today. i also want to say it is a great pleasure to be here with gary sick, an expert on the middle east and on american policy in the middle east, and as we thinw about how to deal with the winter of air of discontent and the spring of arab revolutions his seminal works on the iranian revolution and americans r response to it are well worth taking another look ates.e we have seen remarkable eventsbe in thent last 100 days in the ai

world. first in tunisia and then in egypt, now in libya, yemen bahrain syria oman and i can go on and on bahrain, syria and i could go on and on. there is a full day's worth of discussions here. i'm going to focus, though, on the impact of egypt, on events in egypt and on what they mean for american foreign policy. i should begin by saying a word about the title. stability is, of course, is the "s" word to egyptian revolutionaries. stability has been the code word for repression, for dictatorship for the last 30 years in egypt. they are quite right in saying that. but we also have an interest in trying to see how the change will impact on stability. so with apologies to the egyptian revolutionaries, i

think we should proceed forward. there are many ways to explain what is happening in the arab world today. one is, of course, demography. its enormous youth bulge, demanding jobs, demanding more than jobs. demanding the opportunity for a lifetime. the slogans in tahir jobs, we want jobs, we want to get married. very poignant about how prospects in enjoying life in egypt have become so dim for so many. 60% of the arab world is under the age of 30. the median age is 26. but it's not just demographics and it's not just about jobs. i think the revolt in the arab world is even more about something more fundamental. it's a revolt against the police state system, which has dominated arab politics for a half century if not more.

the state to use its arabic name, ruled every arab country from morocco to amman. some with a gentler hand than others but all with the state. it is a state within a state. a state in which the inner state is accountable to only one person, to one man, the boss, whether it was a king, a prime minister, a monarch or whatever gadhafi chose to call himself at the moment. the system was beyond the rule of law, totally unaccountable. anyone could be arrested, imprisoned. missing, killed without any redress. this system had grown over the years to massive size.

the minister applies 1.5 million people of employees in a country of 80 million people and that's not counting the millions of informants working for the police state. in syria, there are at least 6 secret polices, all of them spying on each other as well as spying on the syrian people. various arab countries built elaborate guards to go with their mukhabarat states. the guard that guarded against each other in order to keep the rise in power. the development of the mukhabarat state and the military dispute was an early destroyer. and it led to the creation of the guards and to the creation of police states. the cold war was a further driver. inter-arab politics became a

driver. and 9/11 became an enormous driver for the increase in the size of the mukhabarat states. and the united states, after 9/11 was an enthusiastic supporter of the rise and development and enrichment and deepening of the mukhabarat state, ironically exactly at the same moment that we began talking about democracy in the middle east. some of the mukhabarat states are what they call hard mukhabarat states. saddam's iraq, syria, gadhafi's libya, some are soft mukhabarat states, king abdullah's jordan, the gulf states. but they all share the same feature of unaccountability. now the arabs collectively are demanding their freedom. the end of the mukhabarat state system. they want the rule of law. they want accountability. and egypt is very much in the forefront of this.

egypt will be the leader as it has always been in the arab world. that is more true today than ever. if the revolution had stopped in tunis in january, we wouldn't be here. it was the egyptian revolution that led to the spring of arab revolutions. the drama of tahir square, a televised revolution that you could watch around the world was one of the reasons giving egypt its special prominence today. but much more fundamental is egypt's role as the critical arab state. it is at the geographic center of the arab world and it has been at the cultural center of the arab world. and the university has been the religious and cultural center arab world for years. it's demographic weight in the world gives it more prominence

of the world. for 30 years its prominence was ceded of the mubarak government. to take egypt off the center stage, that, i think, is coming to an end as well. and, of course, egypt is important for another reason. it is at the very center of the global islamic jihad. egypt has produced many of the key ideological figures of the global islamic jihad. today egypt's revolution confronts numerous challenges. before we look at those challenges, though, it's worth pausing for a minute just to think about the last 100 days. with less than 1,000 people killed, egypt has been transformed from a country with a dictatorship of 30 years to a

country where the dictator is now under hospital arrest and his sons are under formal arrest. if someone had stood at this platform, january 1st of 2011, and told you that would be the case by april, 2011, you would have thought he was from mars. he would have been from mars. but that is what egypt has already accomplished. so as we look at the challenges ahead, we should not diminish the extent of what the egyptian people have already done. i think they face three or four major challenges ahead. challenge number one is to manage the transition to new political institutions and to new political process. they have to build an entirely new political culture, something which they have very little familiarity with. to help do this, though, egypt

is also in a unique position because it's had a revolution this year and it's also had a military coup at the same time. one way to think about it is that one foot in egypt is on the gas and the other foot is on the brake. and this shows in egypt's political development now -- we see a certain herky jerky movement. that -- while disparaging and discomforting to a certain extent, is also good for the long term because there's ballast in this system as well as momentum to change. it's clearly an uneasy partnership. the army is not enthusiastic about being the instrument of change. field marshall must be the most surprised person in the entire world. think of where he was in january and think where he is today and think of where he is taking his country. but to give him credit, so far,

he seems to be doing a fairly decent job. so far compared to other revolutions egypt is surprisingly smooth. it's bumpy, there's no question. there's a lot of suspicion. there's a lot of dissent. there's some disorder but on the whole i would argue this is a surprisingly smooth transition so far. egypt is on track to hold elections this fall. some think it's too soon. the egyptian people have had their voice heard. they want it. egypt is also deep into the process of dismantlingly the mukhabarat state. ripping apart police headquarters, searching through documents, arresting former members of the mukhabarat state. even omar suleiman, egypt's spymaster for the last 25 years

is now being questioned by egyptian courts. it's a remarkable effort at trying to change the system. now, in the near term, this is obviously good news for bad people. tearing down prisons, letting prisoners go, dismantling the security apparatus is a boon for al-qaeda and others. arresting field counter terrorists like omar suleiman is a boon for al-qaeda. it's no wonder al-qaeda's ideologues wrote that he has, quote, great expectations for the future. but i think one shouldn't be overwhelmed by focusing on the immediate. yes, this is a setback for counterterrorism. yes, this is an opportunity for al-qaeda to meddle but in the long run, and obviously not too

far off, developing a security force that is responsible, that is accountable and which obeys the rules and laws of the country is a long-term threat to al-qaeda and i'll come back to that in a minute. the second challenge egypt faces is managing the inclusion of islamists in the political process. egypt has the oldest and best organized islamist party in the arab world, the muslim brotherhood. many are fearful of what the muslim brotherhood intends to do in the future. some have suggested the muslim brotherhood is playing a very careful game of not really contesting the first election in order to secure the last election, the second time around. that may be the case. but i think it's far from clear that that is the case. the egyptian muslim brotherhood i would argue to you is a much

smarter political party than that. it is one of the smartest political parties in the islamic order. it is careful to not overreach. it is careful to signal it does not intend to overreach. it has been careful to work with the army behind the scenes. it is despised by al-qaeda for all these reasons. al-qaeda is terrified at the prospect the muslim brotherhood could play an effective and central role in governing egypt. the muslim brotherhood itself is not monolithic. it's clear divisions between young and old are beginning to rise. its successful conclusion in egyptian politics in a nonviolent way offers remarkable hope for the future of the arab world. the third challenge egypt face is, of course, the revival of its economy and expansion of its

economy. i am not an economist. and i don't pretend to be able to understand how egypt's economy can expand dramatically. there are innumerable challenges facing the egyptian leadership today. trying to get jobs for all those who wants them will be a herculean task. the near-term task is much simpler. trying to get torque back. 1 out of 7 jobs in egypt is in the tourism market. and tourism market today is shattered. one of the reasons it's shattered is the united states travel warning. when united states says don't travel somewhere, most people don't pay a lot of attention. insurance agents pay a lot of attention. they don't want to be caught in that situation. we need to early on revoke travel warning on egypt and

encourage the return of tourism. egypt's problems couldn't come at a worst time. there's a lot of loose talk about a marshal plan for egypt and the arab world. well, i got bad news for you. we're black -- broke. there are no marshall plan. there is one with you there isn't going to be any dollars behind it. united states and arab is in the midst of a global fiscal downturn. the tea party is not going to endorse spending billions in egypt. the challenge, therefore, is going to have to be in the realm of trade, not aid. and that challenge more than anything else will have to be done in europe not any place else. europeans need to see the trade enhancement with egypt and the rest of north africa as the area

where they can really do the most to help. the fourth challenge egypt faces its difficult foreign policy environment. first, look at egypt's arab neighbors, libya, sudan and palestine. all three are broken states right now. libya is in the midst of a civil war with foreign intervention. halfhearted foreign intervention. this civil war currently looks like it could go on for the indefinite future. sudan is a country literally breaking apart. after trying to be held together over the last 100 years, egypt, of course, was one of the most prominent supporters of the unified sudan. now it sees that dream is gone. and palestine is also divided. we wanted the two-state solution. we ended up with a three-state solution, hamas, gaza, fatah and

the west bank and israel, of course. egypt now has on one border to the west a rebellion about which many of us know very little. and on the other side, a jihadist mini state in gaza. egypt sympathies are clearly with gaza. second, egypt also confronts the problem of revolutions. egypt's old friends are changing dramatically. egypt's old enemies may be changing as well. third, of course, egypt has to deal with a very nervous east partner. a senior israeli diplomat said to me just a few weeks ago, we liked being the only democracy in the middle east. we understood where everyone else played.

we could predict what mubarak's egypt would do. we can't predict what egypt is going to do today. israel is fearful of the unknown, fearful of unpredictability. it already faces tense situations with hamas and hezbollah. the prospects of another war in the middle east this summer are always there. and now israel faces the prospect that palestine will be admitted to the united nations this september. and many israelis predict, i think, wrongly -- many israelis predict a third fa-at that tima will come from that. a challenging agenda but israel is clearly preoccupied primarily with its own domestic problems. the best case outcome is not impossible by any means. i think there is a reasonable possibility egypt will produce a new elected government this

fall. my bet is egyptians will choose musa to be their new president. what passes for polling in egypt tends to support that argument. i think the muslim brotherhood will play by the rules, will be part of the system. i think the army will with some enthusiasm give up the reins of power while it continues to hold on to many of its perks. we will begin the transition to the post-mukhabarat state. it will be enormously difficult. changing culture and ethos of a security system is very, very, very hard to do. it won't happen overnight but i think there is reason for confidence that it will happen. even in this best case scenario, of course, there will be difficulties, there will be bumps.

if i'm right, and moussa wins, we may have the spectacle of his inauguration being played with the pop single, i love moussa and i hate israel. it will make managing the ties even harder. an awful lot can go wrong. i'd be the first to admit that. revolutions tend to devour their own, bonapartism is always a danger. another war with israel between hamas and hezbollah could make the situation very difficult. there is, of course, the potential that al-qaeda and other jihadist extremists will try to play in these troubled waters. but there's also much potential for good here. a more vigorous egypt than mubarak's could assist in moving forward a real middle eastern

peace process that could help stabilize libya. that could help resolve the problem of gaza. it would be an example of reform and change working in the arab and islamic world. above all, it would be a symbol that twitter, not terror, is the way to transform the arab world. twitter, not terror transformed tahir square and that is extremely bad news for osama bin laden and al-qaeda. the challenge for the united states and egypt is to keep calm. don't overreact to change. don't overreact to the unpredictable. but do it with a low american footprint. we don't need to have hundreds of thousands of -- hundreds or

thousands of american aid workers suddenly depending on egypt. we don't need to hijack this revolution. we need to support it and help it. of course, the one thing we could do more than any other to help egypt's new government is to move forward on the middle east peace process ourselves. secretary of state clinton promised such a move at the last brookings u.s.-islamic world forum just a week ago. i hope the administration will live up to that. arab moderates have for years asked us to do more on this front as the single thing that we could do to help them more than any other. if you don't believe me, read king abdullah's new book "the last best chance for peace." let me just take two or three minutes to talk about one other revolution and that's the one that's brewing now in syria. syria may not be the hardest of

the hard mukhabarat states but it's certainly pretty close. and change in syria, i think, is now beyond the tipping point. the demonstrations in homes this week demonstrate that the sunni center of the country is now demanding fundamental change. there is talk of political compromise. i don't see how you can have political compromise with the mukhabarat state in syria. it is all-or-nothing. it is also a very, very brittle regime at the end of the day. because it's a regime that fundamentally depends on the support of about 13% of the population. and a few other supporters. it is a regime that has worked because it instills fears like any other mukhabarat instill

fear. we all know that when it did that in hamma in 1982. once that fear is broken, as it seems to be breaking now, fractures in syrian society are likely to come to the top. this will have enormous effects upon all of the levat, libya, iraq, turkey, and jordan. the biggest loser, if syria dissolves into full scale civil war is iran and hezbollah. the second biggest loser is everyone else as we try to manage what happens there. but let's not cry for the asats. they deeply deserve to be sent to the home for retired dictators. the sooner the better. if egypt is the revolution will show how reform can succeed in a

peaceful way, i'm fearful that syria is the revolution that will show even more than libya how it can be done with violence. but at the end of the day, the spring of arab revolutions is not something controlled in washington, not even on massachusetts avenue. it's going to be dealt by the arab peoples who have now decided it is time for the end of the mukhabarat state. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'd like to hold the questions until both speakers have finished and we'll have a free for all at that point. without any further ado, i would like to go to our speakers and you'll be speaking from your place so gary sick, please. >> i'm too old to stand up that long. [laughter] >> i was very interested to hear bruce's talk. and i'm glad that he's an

optimist. i basically am too. but with some caveats and i think he had many caveats of his own. i've, you know, watched some revolutions take place, even very closely watched some of them take place. and, you know, revolutions -- well, as one of my old colleagues have said, revolutions revolve 360 degrees. and that is, in fact, i think, what we're going to see in some of these cases. and certainly what happened in the iranian revolution which set out to get rid of the shah and has now created a new one. and is behaving almost exactly the same way that the shah's government did after all of this time. the events starting early this year, starting in december, really are unique. and, of course, they were way

overdue in the arab world. i mean, there should have been changes going on for years but there weren't. and as a result when the dam broke, it really broke and now we're seeing a flood of activity that is really bewildering. i think to find any kind of a parallel to the events that are going on right now, you certainly -- i would go back, for instance, to 1967 and the six-day war, which if you recall, actually the six-day war humiliated the arab leaders. israel won very quickly and very decisively. it also not humiliated but invalidated the whole idea of arab nationalism which had been the retailing cry and all of a sudden, it was seen that these arab nationalists and these leaders like nasr were incapable of defending their own people,

defending their own land. and most of them got kicked out. in fact, if you go back and look, most of these dictators who are present in the middle east or were present in the middle east until very recently actually followed along after the six-day war. they all came in at a different time after the war was over; got rid of the previous rulers and they stayed and stayed and stayed. the other thing that happened, of course, was that with arab nationalism gone, as a rallying cry, what do you look to? well, you look to islam. and the islamic, you know, movement, the islamic renaissance really began during that time, too. and that is, you know -- so it basically islamism replaced secularism. and arab nationalism which were

perceived to have failed. the dictators that came and stayed for that long period of time are now sort of dropping one after the other. and i don't think we're at all clear as to what is going to take its place. what the reaction is, but just as we might not have predicted that the six-day war would lead to the rise of the mukhabarat state in a form that it had ever been before and the rise to islamism i think we are not very good or we have no reason -- we should be very modest about our predictions about where things go from here. another place, of course, that you could look back to if you wanted to see the tectonic plates moving -- shifting in the middle east is basically back to 1916 and all the borders that were there. actually, in both of these cases if you look back in 1916 and the

advent of the colonial period and then look at 1967 and the transfer -- or the shift in power that went on at that time, i guess the key thing is that neither of these worked out all that well. and that we should be aware of the fact that just because something is changing doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to improve. but as i say, i do come down on the side that bruce took which is basically that we have a real prospects here of something that is different than it has been before. that could be very positive. and that's worth working for. in looking at this mess, .. going to go, it sometimes is helpful to keep your eye on sort of fundamentals.

what can we look at? what kinds of things can we expect to see? what are some of the -- either the assumptions or the like likelihoods that we face, since everybody loves list, i made a list of the things we ought to watch out for or keep our eye on along the way. i, however, am short in imagination so you're always supposed to have a 10-point list, you know, starting with no. 10 and down to number one which is the most important of the bunch. i only came up with 9. and so i apologize for that, but i figured in a crowd as smart and with this much background maybe somebody can suggest to me which one i'm overlooked and add to that and i could have a 10-point list like everybody else. so i'm going to give you my 9-point list and nothing else will tend to give you something

else to think about and plenty of targets to shoot at if you want to shoot back. number 9, we have to start from the top and work down, and one that we don't talk about right now but which i think is actually worth keeping your eye on, and that is the iraqi oil situation. that basically iraq has the prospect of actually doubling its production by the end of this decade. it's almost certainly going to pass iran as the second largest oil producer in opec. and according to what we're reading, if you can believe it from the geologists and others, iraq has unexplored resources in the oil reserves that are on the neighborhood of saudi arabia. i mean, really massive. and those haven't really been tapped. and the reason they haven't been tapped is because saddam was

busy carrying out wars and there were other -- and they were -- and kept iraq under sanctions almost indefinitely. and they couldn't do the exploration. they couldn't do the drilling. they couldn't do all the things that were necessary to develop those fields. if, in fact, the present government is able to maintain enough stability to actually carry out all of those tasks, iraq could become a bigger player than it has been in a very, very long time. this is not going to happen overnight. iraq isn't going to turn into a 10 million barrel a day producer by -- you know, in 10 years or anything like that. but it might in time. and it might turn into a, you know, 4, 4.5 million barrel a day producer by the end of this decade. and that's not bad given where things are and given the fact that it's one of the few places

in the world where massive oil reserves still exist that are unexplored. that it seems to me is going to make iraq a very interesting country to watch in the near future. there's all the political side that goes with that, too and that, i think, is important to watch. but they're going to have negotiating leverage that not every country has. and that will give them resources to do things if they can work out their -- it will give them an incentive to work out some of their internal problems so that they can proceed to develop what could be really the golden goose. okay, this is slow but it's important. item 8, i agree completely with bruce that islamism and particularly osama bin laden took a huge hit in this current set of events. no matter how hard you look on

al-jazeera english which i hope one of these cable companies will pick up hopefully in new york. there's place you can watch them on computer and i would much rather watch it on the television set if that were available, but one of the things that was true of that and i think many of us even given the fact that they didn't have a cable channel of their own spent a lot of time watching it. i think there is one -- you can watch it here in washington, can't you? which is you're privileged in a way. but the one thing that you didn't see on those videos coming out of those different places are people carrying signs saying "islam is the solution" or "hooray for osama bin laden." that was completely absent. no hint of that whatsoever. truly there are islamist parties. there's a major one in turkey

and there's a major one in egypt. and they're going to try to make a comeback. clearly they're going to try to play. i would argue that in the past, much of the success of the islamist parties was due to the fact that they owned a certain amount of political space, i.e., the mosque that wasn't available to anybody else. there was no political space for anybody else to operate in these states that were police fund. so the islamists had the place to themselves because they had a space that they more or less controlled and they could use that to actually organize and think about politics and the like. something that wasn't available. so they actually thrived on some respects on a repressive environment. the harder you made it for everybody else, the more

advantage they had to some degree. and you don't want to overestimate that but it was necessarily true. if these revolutions go anything like what they appear to be doing and that is to open up a lot of political space that other people can come in, the islamists have a bit of a head start. they've been there a little bit earlier. they've been organizing and so forth. but the other parties are going to catch up. i've joked that the -- what we need in a situation like this in states that have been repressed for a very, very long time where no politics was permitted at all is you needed freeze-dried politicians. [inaudible] >> i hit the wrong key. you need freeze-dried politicians and freeze-dried political parties that you could just sprinkle a little water on them, and boom, they pop up and could begin functioning as

normal. that doesn't happen as normal. politics, parties develop over time and that has not been permitted. i do think, however, they'll make up for lost time very quickly. and the islamist parties, like the muslim brotherhood, if they do even -- whether they like it or not, they'll probably at least at the beginning have to play by the rules. and those rules are not as helpful to them as the past was. that they could -- they could be the only game in town. in effect, if you wanted to be against the regime, that is where you had to go. so at least these parties will now have to compete on a more level playing field and i think that's something that they probably are just beginning to realize what that really means as far as their activities are concerned. item 7, syria and iran. bruce talked about this and i

think he was absolutely right, again, it's really interesting to note that iran has trumpeted, you know, all of the uprisings and all of the countries of the middle east, all of one arab leader after another, enemies in many cases of iran, the iranian media is not permitted to say a word about what's going on in syria. they're not only not trumpeting it but they don't want you to know about it, and they really don't want to think about it because this is in a way and i don't think we have to tell this crowd why that's important. syria and iran have been allied for a period of time after the iranian revolution and syria is the channel by which iran maintains contact with hezbollah

and lebanon as well as the group inside syria itself. and the various -- the various groups like islamic jihad and others who that -- that's where they go to meet is in damascus. if damascus, no matter what happens, if this changes away from a sort of

plan b in terms of how they do do do business with regard to israel the islamist yard or hezbollah or hamas or any thing that is basically west of syria. and that's got to be a huge concern. so in that sense i think iran has not been the winner in thisa drocess. and that's my .6 is that iran really, despite its claims to have been the big loser in the ar arab spring. iran didn't play a role in any of these. nobody was waving signs saying we want to be like iran. we want to have mahmoud ahmadinejad as our leader. that we like their economic system. that we think it's the way to run a government, really, no sign of it. and, you know, iran can stand up and make all the statements that it likes about the fact that these are all modeled after the iranian revolution, but there was no sign of it in actuality. and iran was not a model for any

of them. moreover, these uprisings really provided a reverse model for iran, and i think have actually inspired the green movement in iran which was certainly declining more rapidly and has given them new heart. that doesn't mean they're suddenly going to kick out the ayatollahs and take over, but i think they've seen that they shouldn't give up too easily because, in fact, things can happen that they didn't dream about and i think that's important and also iran right now is probably more divided than i have ever seen it since the revolution. fighting is going on internally. this most recent situation where the mahmoud ahmadinejad, the

president basically fired the minister of intelligence and then the supreme leader says, no, no he has to stay in his job and he couldn't make up his mind and he finally went back and it turned out if you look carefully at what was being said, mahmoud ahmadinejad wasn't talking about the ministry of intelligence. he was talking about the intelligence organization. he was actually getting ready to start his own intelligence organization under the presidency rather than having it being dominated by the supreme leader and the revolutionary guards. that rivalry pretty much out in the open is pretty new. we have not seen a lot of that and we're seeing more and more of it all the time. i have really serious problem with mahmoud ahmadinejad. i really, you know, publicly announced -- you know, he comes and gives this dog and pony show every year at the u.n.

and a bunch of academics like me get invited to go and have dinner with him and sit around and talk. and last year i said, enough. i've been to three or four of these and the performance has been pretty bad and as much as i appreciate the good iranian food, i really was not -- i was not going to go back the next time. and needless to say, i haven't had an invitation since that time. and a lot of this had to do with the crackdown after 2009 and the election and the way he behaved and so forth. but that being said, the guy is fascinating in his own way. the kind of politics he's playing of getting ready of the subsidies in iran -- that was a really gutsy move. and nobody in the past -- anybody else who tried it got their hands burned very, very quickly. and thus far he has succeeded

where everybody else failed. he tried to start his own foreign ministry. he got slapped down and he did it on the side and he's got his own advisors. he's creating a separate government. and -- or trying to create a separate government. and the guy just won't quit. he just keeps at it all the time. and his good buddy mashied he's obviously grooming for something and i'm not sure what it is, is playing a bigger role. and these guys are -- they're not intimidated easily. and they won't back down. and so it's fascinating to watch. so iran has this fractured environment in which things are going on, which again i wouldn't have predicted either. so i think in the next few years, it's very possible that we'll see some really significant political changes, but i have no idea what those are going to be. but it's hard to imagine this system with a lousy economy and

all of these fractures that run all the way through it will continue to exist just as it is in this continuing state. we'll have to wait and see. the revolts in the rest of the middle east have not made it easier for them to do what they were doing before. item 5 is egypt. and again, i have no qualms, in fact, i agree with bruce and his analysis. the key thing to me is egypt had been in the past a regional leader. it was an agenda-setter. it was the country that actually was responsible for determining the direction and the speed of politics in the region. and in the last -- at least the last decade and a half, that just hasn't been true. i mean, mubarak was sort of a walking corpse and he was really only interested in maintaining his own power. he wasn't doing anything

imaginative. egypt just didn't exist in the foreign policy realm. i suspect that they're going to exist now. i'm not sure what they are going to be saying but it's probably -- well, it's not going to be the same thing that we've taken for granted. the u.s. and israel in particular have taken for granted over the years. any egyptian government going to take the kind of pressure and opposition that it takes to maintain that wall on the southern end of gaza to prevent people from coming in. is the egyptian government really ready to do that, to cooperate with israel on, to keep gaza. without talking about, you know, giving up egypt's -- the -- you know, the things that egypt agreed to do, its commitments to the peace process -- even without -- even if they accept

those completely, and i think they're very likely to accept those and continue those, there are going to be certain policies that you just won't be able to take for granted now and i think israel and the united states has been taking israel for granted for a very long time and we're not going to have them to take for granted. if, in fact, egypt does emerge again and begins playing a major role in the middle east, we're going to have that old triangle of the three ancient states, egypt, turkey and iran sort of defining the outlines of the middle east, and that's a fascinating thing. and that doesn't mean that they'll all get along with each other or that they will form a phalanx or axis but i really do think it's possible that those three countries will be, in fact, the agenda-setters for the future and then there is the wildcard of iraq as i mentioned earlier because of its, you

know, potential growth in power but that will be slower in coming along. my fourth point relates to saudi arabia. in a way the saudis have adopted in the course of this series of events an entirely new policy, at least for them, as a sort of serial interventionist. they are now suddenly intervening everywhere. they intervened in yemen and now they've sent troops over to bahrain and they may go back into yemen again. and they're being very much -- their elbows are much sharper than they used to be and we're not accustomed to see the saudis behave that way and they have taken the gulf cooperation council into a kind of monarchial protection shoat it reminds me very much of the brezhnev doctrine for those of you who are old enough to remember. basically any country -- any country that adopted socialism

was not prepared to go backwards. once you got there, you couldn't return to a different shape or form. in a way, the dcc is doing the same thing. or saudi arabia is trying to enforce the same thing that any monarch -- any sunni monarch that exists in the gulf is not permitted to revert to any other form. and as a result, saudi arabia, i think, is trying to define the gulf as a safe place for monarchs and despots to some degree. and it's interesting to see saudi arabia playing that game openly. and i'll get to the point of why i think that's going on. but my third point and i'm supposedly increasing in the importance of these as they go along but anybody could argue about any of these. united states, today the united states -- you know, when i was a young naval officer, which i was once upon a time, my first real

tour was in the persian gulf. and in bahrain. and at the time that i was there, the u.s. military had two destroyers that occasionally came in and out of the region. and we had a flagship that couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag with a -- with an admiral who rode it around and we made port stop to remind people that there was a united states of america and don't forget that we actually exist. that's changed a bit. and today we have the largest military footprint of any country in the region. we are dominant in their economy and their diplomacy and everything that's going on. and we have a string, if nothing else, just look at the string of bases. we have, i think, 30 or more bases up and down the gulf

starting in iraq and running down. some of them really enormous. i don't know how many of you have been to alludade but this is right outside of doha and nobody wants to talk about it and they try to keep it quiet but my god it's the biggest air base i've ever seen. it's really miles and miles of airplanes parked and actually fighting two wars from there. my question is, on things to watch, we have very carefully -- nobody has asked how much that's costing us. and what's it buying for us? and that's -- that's been a subject that has been taboo sort of in washington. you just don't ask that question. i think that's not going to be taboo in the near future as the two wars wind down and i think they will one way or the other, iraq and afghanistan, we're going to have to ask what -- do we really need all of those

facilities that we have now? in the indefinite future and are we prepared to pay for them and maintain and also the political costs that goes with it. i think for any of us who are thinking somewhat longer term, it is not a good idea to start with the assumption that the u.s. presence never changes. i think we're likely to see some changes and i think those changes are likely to be headed down rather than up. how much security do you actually need to make sure that these oil-rich monarchs keep selling their oil? not very much actually. i remember the iran/iraq war when there was actually a tanker war going on. people were shooting at the tankers going through. what happened? we had a glut of oil. the price of oil was low. the insurance rates went up and it didn't make a bit of difference and people just came and kept taking the oil. well, it doesn't look so bad in

retrospect and it does mean that that market is pretty robust. it is not going to just fade and go away because somebody, you know, sneezes. so i think that this is something that people are going to start thinking about. my number two point and one that i will not talk about is israel-palestine. i think it's going through a transformation and i already made the point that i think that israel and the u.s. are no longer going to be able to pay -- just make certain assumptions or take certain things for granted. i think we don't realize how many things we've taken for granted from a political point of view in that part of the world and we've just assumed that will just go on forever. and it's not going to go on forever and we don't know necessarily where it's going to go but our diplomacy and our ability to think about this is going to be challenged in the very near future starting now and going on for really the

indefinite future. this is not something that will be over in the next six months. the changes that are going on are going to be with us for a very long time and at the end of that, at the end of it in the sense of a short period or a long period, the assumptions are going to be very different than they used to be in the past. my final point, number one, is that the sectarian card is being played. .. fit to send an ambassador to the coming. i think they're making a stake about what they're willing to accept. basically the saudis have indicated quite clearly that ifh

you just scratched any she a scr little bit, yoau find and iranin sitting there underneathfine waiting, there is.iting. and so basically she means iran means subversion subversion. so anything that is shia is unacceptable. you know, there's not really much evidence that the iranians had much to do even with the business, let alone any of the other things that have gone on in the world. but if we are, if we decide to look out all of these events, and certainly the events in the gulf through a purely sectarian lens, we're going to come out in a different place. and it's not so much that our intelligence leads us to say that's when it came from, but let's face it. if we are all accusing iran and doing all these terrible things, they may decide if they're being accused of it anyway they might as well go ahead and do it.

i think at the possibly of a self-fulfilling prophecy here is that when we might not want to see. also, since it is so useful to have a universal enemy, you organize your foreign policy and security policy around one enemy, iran makes really this, it's terrific for the. so the sectarian card plays out that way into the sense that we can explain everything by what iran does, and if we are just tough on iran will take care of all of our other problems, that's wrong. but it's a very seductive idea because it is simple, straightforward, and has a lot of political support in this country and elsewhere and with some of our friends and allies. i think i've got other things i get a, particularly on the sectarian side because i think this really is one of the big problems that we do have to face, but i think i've used up my time so i'll stop there and see if anything comes up in the

discussion period. [applause] >> actually, i think we could listen to you for a long time and be quite happy with it. it's fascinating. i want to thank our two panels. i want to open it up for questions. there's enough food for thought for a year, or two in these two presentations. i'd like to ask the first question of both panelists, and that is something in the spirit i think of gary six-point that things just don't stay the same your assumptions change. and one of the things that we've kind of grown to respect, to understand i guess is china and their activity in the middle east. but could both of you say a word about how you see china moving as it gets more muscular in terms of its military and it

continues to need the resources of the region, and it will need even more, and that if you talked to any egyptians they're concerned about agricultural projects in sudan. they're concerned about this, concerned about that. but i suppose just in the sake of order, either of you can go first, but bruce, you spoke first, can you address it? >> i'm afraid i'm not a china expert. what i know about china is mostly about ordering on the menu. [laughter] what i would say is simply this, the counterrevolutionaries whom kerry has i think correctly identified as the saudis have already made it clear that they are looking towards china. the prince, the famous saudi ambassador to the u.s. literally seems to fallen off the face of

the globe for much of the last two or three years, reappeared last month going to beijing and to islamabad looking for support. in beijing he wasn't offering sweetheart financial deals and investment deals in the kingdom. and looking for chinese political support for the brezhnev doctrine as transfixed so nightly put it, that saudi arabia intends to impose on the gulf. and pakistan he was looking basically for mercenaries to be used to suppress revolution in the arabian peninsula. and i think he was able to find that those would be available for the right price. plus 10% off the top. for the president of pakistan. [inaudible]

>> so if prince bandar's travels are any indication that the chinese will be a player, they were probably be a player on the side of the counterrevolutionaries. but i think the chinese also have the same fundamental policy dilemma that the united states has, and that is we want to play both sides of the revolution in the middle east and in the arab world. we want to be on the side of history when it succeeds in egypt, because egypt is very important. but we also need to be on the side of the counterrevolution because, after all, we do want to fill up our tanks and go home after this event today, and we know we need the saudis. this means american foreign policy, and i would suggest chinese foreign policy and european foreign policy, has to play an inconsistent game. many would say american foreign policy is good in playing an inconsistent game, but that's usually unintentionally. [laughter] it's a lot harder to do it

intentionally, and i think for the problem the obama administration has right now, i'm sympathetic to this problem come is it knows it has to play both sides of the game here. and it knows that's a very difficult policy to articulate, because it looks like your inconsistent and it looks like you are not putting your values ahead of your interests. but that's precisely what we, and i suspect every other player, will have to do. >> also not a china expert. let me make one quick comparison. i mentioned what the u.s. footprint looked like in the gulf, back as late as the mid '70s. i guess not much. we really had almost nothing t >> during that period of time, we were freed riding on the british. they were in charge, doing the politics and security works, and we were riden --

riding on their backs, and we were comfortable with that. we came into the home port of bahrain and tied up to a jetty owned by the british, and we stayed at their base and were guests while we were there. we really had no desire -- we had a really good deal, and we had no great desire to go in and do all of this ourselves. that was forced on us. i mean, the iranian revolution in particular made us do that, but we did everything we could. you know, after the revolution and we lost our, you know, the shaw of the persian gulf, we looked around for ways to solve that problem and came up with, you know, the twin pillar policy which was basically to let iran and saudi arabia doing the policing for us so we didn't have to do it ourselves. we did everything we could to avoid getting involved in that

process, but, in the end, we could do it. at some point it came along, and they wanted us to come in, and we did with avengeance so this a all fairly new. i think the chinese are in the same situation now. they are free riders. they enjoy the fact that we provide security for their lines of communication. what's not to like about that? do they want to come in and compete with us head for head in the persian gulf? i find is very hard to believe that if even given the opportunity they want would to do that, so basically circumstances may worsen into those situations, but i don't think they are out looking for blood, and we have to worry not about them coming in taking our job away from us. >> open it up for questions. yes, sir? >> [inaudible] much of the oil that you're

speaking about in iraq is in the north particularly in the nearer term, and i don't see the kurds who are actually the ones at the moment controlling how it's being accessed have any intention of sharing it with a full government in iraq, not to mention what else is happening in turkey and iran. it's a candidate, and i think it's a good candidate actually, and is for things to watch and not to lump iraq all in one bag because obviously that's probably not fair to do it because there's more to do it with that. >> let me say a word how they got to the point they're in right now. some of you will remember 9/11 and what happened afterwards. the united states went directly

into afghanistan and scattered the taliban thus removing iran's worst enemy to the east, and before that was over, we turned around and marched up the valley to baghdad and got rid of iran's worst enemy to the west, saddam hussein and provided over the installation of a shia government because there had not been such a thing literally in simple ris -- centuries. then we discovered iran was more powerful than before. this was a gift from us. iranians thank us and believe me, there is a part of the middle east particularly in the gulf, and one of our problems right now with the saudis is, well, i want to ask a senior american official, he was ranting about how iran was up to

all these terrible things and how their power was growing, and you know, inserting themselves elsewhere, and i said, fine, i agree with you, but didn't we have something to do with that? we created this set of circumstances, and he stopped and said, well, we didn't mean to. [laughter] >> yeah, right. >> that's very likely true. [laughter] but the saudis don't believe it. they do not think that this was just a fit of absent minded -- absentmindedness on our part. we knew we were going to do a deal with the shaw, and they are very suspicious about this whole process, so we created this set of circumstances, and that, of course, is what complicated the situation very much because you got another player that is involved in the process, and i permly, and glen and i were on

this wonderful trip to najaf and we discovered they were not terribly enthusiastically encouraged about iran and wanted nothing to do with the former government or anything like it. it left me feeling the iranians will exercise some influence in iraq, but it's not going to be a colony, and they're not going to take it over, and particularly, if we're right about the fact if iraq begins to develop much larger oil resources than say iran has, i think iran has got its work cut out for it to keep up with that. they're going to find it difficult to deal with iraq during that period, but they would have something to say in terms of -- or maybe make the situation worse because their relations with the kurds are

good. it's a political conundrum, but that's an interesting point. >> next down the aisle? >> quick question regarding sort of the trajectory of the next few years. if say egypt and other countries in the middle east do begin to transition to stable political sort of democracies, what are the implications for saudi arabia in terms of will it be vulnerable to the long term political effects of the arab spring, and then what are the implications of u.s. foreign policy moving forward over the next 5-10 years? >> want to say something, gary? >> well, we're going to have a problem. first of all, your original assumption or assertion that

these turn into democracies along the way may or may not turn out to be the case, and, in fact, we know that things can go very wrong and things can happen that you didn't anticipate, so, you know, a friend of mine said the other day, you know, be careful that the arab spring doesn't turn into an arab winter, and, you know, that's something really worth keeping in mind, but, if, in fact, democracy is the new guide word in the arab world as it has been accepted not because we imposed it on them, but they came to the idea themselves in the sense of finding for political space and openness, indeed i think, you know, if you look at the way saudi arabia is behaves right now, a lot of it is just sheer peak. i mean, they are really angry that their old buddy mubarak is gone and we didn't rescue him, and it isn't clear how we could

have, but they think we should have paid a higher price on the along the way before he collapsed and the situation in bahrain and syria and certain relations there, and so they have a whole set, as does everybody else, a whole set of new political circumstances to have to contend with, and i don't think they know what they're going to do, and i don't think we know what we're going to do. this is -- it's very difficult, and that's why i focused on long term things or things we really should look at to think about at the end of the day when you have gone through this list what do you aim at? what is your political -- what is your octoberive? orb objective? what do you want the middle east to look like 15 years from now, and then set that as a kind of model or target, and then

organize your diplomacy and military and other things to try to facilitate coming to that kind of a conclusion. if anybody has to target defined even in their own head, please let me know. i'm interested in this, and i think this is the kind of thing we need to think about, and it's the kind of thing the saudis need to think about, but i don't think they have any answers. i mean, basically, they are behaving and saying hold back the tide, turn it around, make it go the other way, and in the short term with the money and support they will have from various places, they can probably succeed, but, you know, there's going to be a panel i think on saudi this afternoon which i'm sure can answer the questions better than the two of us up here. [laughter] >> yes, lady right here. >> hello, mr. sick, i have a

question about the tent list over there. why do you omit turkey from the list or do you think it's to not have the impact, regional impact in the middle east or a country that like -- what do you think about turkey's power? >> i -- i guess it's probably because i'm not a turkey specialist and i, you know, i know a little bit about the gulf and a little less than the arab middle east. i know relatively little about turkey, and i see turkey as an outside player although i pointed out that try angle where -- triangle where you have the turkey and iran could insert itself between the interplay of the three, but it's an extremely good point, and i was personally really disappointed when the

obama administration rejected the intermediary help that turkey was offering to us on the whole nuclear thing. i think that was an error on our part and one we'll end up paying forment i do think turkey can play a role, and why don't you go ahead, bruce. >> no, i agree with all of that. i add one point. i suspect when we look back five years from now and try to figure out why did this happen in 2011 in addition to the factors demography, it may be the example of turkey. turkey, we turned to the middle east in 2009 and 2010, and most dramatically was the flow, and that was a wakeup call in the democracy where you could have a

role in the world stage and have a thriving booming economy in an islamic country, and i can't prove this, but i have a suspicion there was a bit of turkey envy going on in the arab world. there's pretty good polling that shows that turkey's leadership is far more popular in the arab world in the past year an any arab leader, and i think that says something about the impact the turkish example may have had. we'll know better when the dust is settled, but that's my suspicion. >> about the turkey's leadership like the envy going on in the middle east, i was in syria in 2010, and everybody was talking about the turkish prime minister, the syria people, and how they love their prime

minister. i was in iraq, people in the kurdish side, people were talking about the arab prime minister, and the whole construction in arab world, 70% of the construction is going on by the turkish firms, and right now, as far as i know, these are agreements that turkey had initiated between iran, iraq, syria, and turkey and totally an opposite way to the visa agreement, and they need an economic forum wants to be created with jordan, syria, turkey, and iraq again. i think it's impact in the middle east, what impact that it wants to have in the middle east should be something to be observed. thank you. >> yeah, i think actually you've given me another contender for

my point that is missing out of my list. >> more questions? i saw, yes, you. wait for the microphone. >> i want to offer a counter narrative and ask for a comment on that. >> sorry. >> oh, okay. i want to offer a counter narrative and your response on that both on syria and egypt. many fine observers of the syria scene said while there's sizable protests, and that may be the tipping point, that's there's a sizable portion that while they may hate the regime, they feel the alternative is chaos and the sectarian and ethnic breakdown that iraq experienced, and that that's worse than anything they experience under the present regime, and this is a

stabilizing factor than going over the tipping point. can you comment on that? also, there's many people who feel the situation in egypt is not going well at all. you had said that they seem to be dismantling the security state, but the military is still very much in control. the process of this so-called transition is lacking tremendously lacking in transparency, security bodies are being dismantled, but then seem to be reput together under a different name. many people were unhappy that the elections were not postponed to give other parties longer time. there's a sense this is not going well at all in egypt, and i'm wondering if you can respond to those sentiments, and then a quick question -- [laughter] >> which many think is the best process. >> i'll take a stab.

in the middle east, you can almost always see whether the glass is half full or half empty. in egypt it's easy to argue the case it's half empty. i really think that's lacking perspective, that's looking too close today-to-day. if you step back and look at the six step perspective, this is remarkably fast and nonviolent, remarkably orderly process. as i said, it's a coo and a military revolution simultaneously, and that helps to explain the hurky murky on this. they accepted there's profound change, and they want to protect the equities of the egyptian officer core which is understandable as long as they feel those equities are

reasonablebly protected, i think they are prepared to let the process of democracy go forward. now, clearly dismantling the state is not just a matter of opening the prisons. it's a matter of changing the culture of how the security services work, and that is an enormous challenge, and they may not succeed, but they have at least taken it on. on syria, you're probably right. there is a huge fear of chaos, and i thought i made it clear that i share that fear of chaos. the serian state is very brittle . they imposed order on it in the most ruthless draconian way, and people are happy for the peace that he brought, but i don't think it's a sustainable system. the -- and once the martyrs begin to arrive, and they are,

it will be harder and harder to turn back the clock to where we were in january. the problem that assad regime faces now is that there's no way to have political compromise because once you begin to interject the accountability into the system, then there has to be accountability, and the assad regime is accountable to murder not once, but several times. in egypt you can make the case that hosni mubarak was a relatively light handed dictator. i wouldn't mention it to egyptians right now because they would hoot me off the stage, but in comparison to the assads, this was a relatively soft state. it's all comparisons. my guess, and it's just a guess

is we passed the tipping point in syria, but we will see. it may be kicked down the road six months, but i think that we are passed the point of no return for the arab revolution reaching to damascus. >> i'll say one word and that's that i think it's not a dismantling -- choice, it's not between one state and the other. if any, it seems these revolts and uprising are creating new political space, and in many cases, that space has not been explored for the last 40 years, and we don't really know what they will do with that, but there will be new players, people we're not accustomed to seeing and new people are going

to emerge if they are given space and room to do that, and that is, you know, that's unpredictable, and it could go a variety of different ways. you could have another dictatorship. that happened before, or you could not or you could find something in between with more accountability and that's what they are playing with. to me, even though it's very, very complicated and difficult and we're not always e quipped to the -- equipped to deal with it, that we should try to moderate the process so the amount of political space is left open as much as possible to let things take their course, not to close it down. >> i take it we're going to leave tunisia for this afternoon, and i believe we've now come to the end of this panel, and i want to thank the audience, thank the speakers, it

was great. thank you very much. [applause] >> later, you can watch c-span's booktv on like web casting live from busboys cafe in washington, d.c. with "black tide" a book about the 2010 deepwater horizon oil rig explosion. he remembers the 11 men killed on the rig and the millions of barrels of oil that spilled into the gulf of mexico. again, that's a live booktv webcast starting at 6:30 p.m. eastern at booktv.org, and tonight here on c-span2, a discussion about investigative journalism from long island university. they discuss how they break down the wall of secrecy. we'll hear from "rolling stones" and others on topics ranging from police shootings to prison life and the article that led to the dismissal of general stanley mcchrystal. that's investigative journalism

from long island university tonight on c-span2. >> this week, they developed contracts of the cheaper longer lasting batteries that man uav's. here's a two part event on their uses first on come base and then intelligence gathering. intelligence officials discuss future strategies using drones. this is a little more than three hours. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. i'm senior fellow from military air space. if you're wondering about my arm, the last session i chair it got a little -- [inaudible] be warned. i just like to introduce the three speakers who will speak one after the other and go straight into the q&a session.

it gives me good pleasure to -- [inaudible] >> thank you for the opportunity to speak and the distinguished audience. our mission of how we are currently focused in ploying the missiles and think about the future that lies ahead, thinking about the next war, thinking about the next fight and the next campaign. currently, we've been focused and for a very good reason and learned lots of lessons and fought in a very permissive environment where there are no enemy attack against our aircrafts -- sorry about that. we have been very decentric, and

it's full-motioned video centric. when i talk about the institution, it's not as important as that full motion video. we will not send an aircraft out without full motion video or go to a manufacture and say give us an unmanned system that does not have that capability. that will change in the future. we've also had lots of basing options. it's been very per missive. in the environment we are in currently, we can stage our unmanned systems pretty much anywhere we want whether it's sea or land based. as we move the unmanned systems to other environments like the european theater, the south american theater or the african theater, basing options are important especially when we talk about groups of four and five assets such as the bigger airplane. the smaller groups one through three less than 20 pounds but account for 87% of our flight

hours are a little bit more robust and mobile, but we still have the issue of basing larger systems. we also have the system problems with systems that are proprior tear. we have industry producing unmanned systems that are not open architecture both in the hardware realm and the software realm. that has to change as we go forward in acquisition strategy. we have to require the manufacturers that all systems have standard hardware interfaces and software is open architecture so we can use multiple censors and fusions across the platforms. we also have training constraints right now, and that's not just platforms. i can't take a prod tore to a training center in san diego. i can't do that because we don't have any. they are all in theater right now. every time we produce one, we

send another one to theater as we increase the number of caps. caps is 24 hours, 7 days a week of an aircraft flying, so as we increase our caps overseas, we reduce the assets available for training knew pilots and integrated training from a joint perspective. we have the problem also with air crews, and i'm sure you'll hear that later on. we don't have enough air crews to provide subject matter aspects to our army brethren. how can i expect an army unit getting ready to deploy to afghanistan to get the theater, know how to effectively deploy an q9? you can't. you have to train them somehow with those weapons. it takes about three months for a group ready to deploy to be fully up on using a system. if you send them to theater and it takes three months to get up to speed, you could have cost many lives. we can't afford that anymore.

we also have an issue with mass access limitations, and that's national air space limitations. it would be very nice it we would just say fly all your unmanned aircraft in restricted air space. that would be really nice, unfortunately, our army posts are not associated with restricted air space, and those army posts are where we need to train our operators and our field units so from a dod perspective if you take away nasa, the department of homeland security, you take away the commercial applications of unmanned systems, from dod's perspective, access or training is critical. lastly, we've been in a very fiscally permissive environment, and i'm sure you all know that's coming to a quick close, so with a fiscally permissive environment, we could always say buy more. we c