the general is handing 80% of what needs to be done there. an enormous amount of food is being provided by the military. they're doing their best. i think it's a marginal issue. we should not get hung up on this. >> i have a question. and in turn at the council. my name is daniel johnson. my focus is china. could you comment on the status of pakistan-china relations. is there a difference between the military relations and the civilian government? any thoughts? >> we have had a long relationship with china. it's been a military relationship in the sense that we have procured equipment from

china in the past and we have a joint production of fighter aircraft and battle tanks with chinese collaboration in pakistan. we have, on the civilian side, and has been offering incentives and encouraged to comment on the economic side in pakistan. right now they have not come in strongly, but somewhat in the telecommunications sector. they have a big telecommunications company operating there. they have come in on infrastructure. some mining and other projects as well. the civilian government and military both have been pushing for greater collaborations with china. to the effort on the civil side

has been to bring china more and more into the economic sphere. we have not really had a problem with china. minor issues may be like one group operating somewhere in the border areas was taken seriously and settled bilaterally between china and pakistan. there was a subsequent report that china was coming in to build capacity on the counter- terrorism front in pakistan. so it's a good relationship we have with china. >> if i may ask a question, general. you spoke about the fact that pakistan has the capacity, the government and the military, have the capacity to deal with insurgency, but there are gaps in the equipment. could you talk about what

pakistan needs and what is the prospect of getting the tools it needs from the united states? if not from the u.s., then some other sources? what are the possibilities? >> the operations have been very hard on aviation, particularly helicopters. we did not and do not have a large fleet of helicopters which can operate in those areas. we have had to divert aviation from other areas where the support was needed like the operations at high altitude and other areas. also, when some of the helicopters, i won't mention the name or make, may have had a problem of the operation in certain conditions in that particular area, so that is one

field where we need support from the u.s.. the mi-17 has performed pretty well with regard to the agreement with the united states. we have those already. were operating those. the other things are minor items like night-vision capabilities, which are not enough. there's body armor, which is not enough to go around and troops have been exposed from that point of view. there is communication equipment. because of the drug money available, the weapons we are still using our rocket-propelled grenades. nothing higher than that. on the hamas side there's a full range of weapons available, whatever you want is available.

but there are little gaps which need to be filled. we are in constant communication with the united states to fill those gaps. there are bureaucratic procedures you have to fight through and then procurements difficulties and so on. but everybody is working through that. some requirements have been met. some still remain to be met. >> i am here from the rand corporation. my question, you've given a comprehensive snapshot of pakistan, giving insight of the economic situation and military affairs and everything. one thing that constantly comes in the news and i want to your feedback was about the water issues between india and pakistan and south asia, if you could comment on that.

>> it is a big issue. it is an issue which will come up more and more. we have tried very hard to harness water resources within the country. there have been political difficulties in doing that, because provinces have not always agreed to what the federation has proposed in terms of major dam construction. one particular damn which has gone through feasibility, which seems the best thing to do, is not been approved across the board politically. so there's a problem. it should have been tackled yesterday, but it is not tackled. if it is not tackled it can create a problem for the country. the other is the water problem with india, there is a treaty

backed by the world bank's which we have invoked from time to time whenever there has been a violation by india. the methodology has worked well in the sense that the world bank a point a neutral technical expert that goes in to inspect the site, tells everybody, yes, you're right, or you are wrong. then corrective actions were taken. blessed such thing was this your last year when india had a dam project in kashmir. we thought it needed to be reduced. i did the design has been modified to accommodate the complaint. that is one issue that's been resolved. there will be other issues with india. going through this whole process

of experts coming, there needs to be bilateral dialogue between india and pakistan. not only a bilateral dialogue that we had, but maybe a back channel dialogue has helped very much with resolving these issues. it will be an issue in the future. you're right. >> we have news that counterinsurgency operations across the border from india tends to last a long time, particularly when they are internal to a country and you have 10 or 15 years sometimes or to 25 years. we just spoke about that lack of relationship. is there a possibility the indian and pakistani armies could begin talking to each other, to learn from each other's experience? >> we are a long way from that.

i think it's going to take a very long time and resolution of issues before we can start that kind of cooperation, but you are right. india has insurgency problems in its northeast which have been there for years. they are particularly bad right now. it's living with those problems and constantly fighting the situation there with resources, military, police, and so on. that is why i said that the political and the military aim of the operations year should not be to end the talha ban. that would be very ambitious. nobody's been able to do that in certain situations for very long time. we still have to see what happens in iraq. already a bomb blast coming out. what happens in certain

settlements, whether it preserve -- whether it resorts to civil war. the major trust always been in southern afghanistan, so you have to see what the impact will be. these things take a long time to evolve, even after the military operations are over. you have examples of an insurgency that been going on 15 years and others that have gone on for 10 or 20 years. we are already in the sixth year. >> any other questions? there is a follow-up. >> two questions. can you list three main confidence-building measures

between india and pakistan which we can pick up to improve the relationship? the mistrust which we have just mentioned, what we can learn from each other militarily or economically between the governments, what we can do? three major cbm's? >> one good one would be to demilitarize the kashmir area and another area. those are the two areas where the military has actually deployed and are in a state of readiness for actual conflict on the line of control and line of contact there. not only will it help the situation there, by bringing the factor of longer response times and getting to a conflict situation, that is one that should happen. the second one, again, it could

be a restraint regime, which starts building trust and reassurance between the two. perhaps in the sphere of creating deployment zones closer to the border. other things like that that could be worked out and perhaps extending into the nuclear field. the third, i think, a good thing would be political interaction between the two countries. that has not been there to the extent it should be. you have parliamentarians and so on, but proper political interaction between the two countries, we could learn from india. they have more experience on coalition politics. it would build trust. >> i think that would be a good

and hopeful stage at which to thank general tara grakaramat. now he's part of the think tank community. i think we did not expect anything less than what we got today. on behalf of the council i would like to thank all of you for coming, especially general karamat for an exciting and stimulating discussion today. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008]

>> you are watching public affairs programming on c-span. yesterday northern virginia president obama held a town hall meeting on health care. that is next. topics on this morning's "washington pernell" include next week's russian summit, talking about iraq, iran, and north korea. later, a federal communications commission meeting on high speed internet access. we will get an update on the recent transition to an all digital broadcast tv signal. live coverage begins at 11:30 eastern.

>> this morning, a discussion from american presidential succession -- on american presidential succession in the event of a terrorist attack. we will hear on a new report on the topic. live coverage begins on c-span to. >> how is c-span funded? >> publicly funded. >> donations. >> government. >> it is funded taxes. >> federal funding. >> public funding. >> how is c-span funded? 30 years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service. a private business initiatives. no government mandate, no government money. >> now town hall meeting with u.s. president obama on the health care system. in virginithe president will tae questions from the audience here

in virginia as well as from facebook, myspace, and to order. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the governor of virginia tim kaine. >> thank you very much. thank you. please have a seat. northern virginia community college is the second largest community college in the united states. and it's the largest trainer of health care work for professionals in the washington metropolitan area. i want to thank bob and glenda, the chancellors of the community college playing host today. we're joined by numerous elected officials. we have federal, state, and local, from the board of supervisors to u.s. senators here on such an incredible

topic. were glad to have them. the president has had plenty to do in the last five months, working to bring our american economy that, properly a range are frears with the world and make our kids safe, create equity for women. he's not failed to pay attention to virginia. he has not failed to pay attention to fairfax county. in february he and i stood together at the eastern edge of the fairfax parkway and long dreamed project that still was not done. we talked about the recovery bill pending in congress. thanks to the support of our representatives from congress, that bill has passed and was signed by the president. today of the dollar is going to virginia for transportation infrastructure from the recovery act, the single largest project is two sections of the fairfax parkway, that happened because of this president.

and in may at mount vernon i stood together with lisa jenson, the president's cpa administrator as she announced the first-ever presidential executive order about the chesapeake bay, coordinating all the activities of numerous federal agencies to save the bay. it was a historic day. it happened because of this president right here in fairfax county. today we are here to talk about an important issue, health care. we've done wonderful things in virginia, but we are working at the margins. in virginia and in the nation one in seven americans don't have health insurance. those that do, often find serious difficulties in cost and access and quality. our president is joining us today to talk about that. it's great to be able to welcome him here. i want to introduce a very special individual who will be

the moderator of the session at the president gives remarks and then take questions from the audience and previously submitted questions. valerie jarrett is senior adviser to the president who is the senior adviser and assistant for intergovernmental affairs in public engagement. she's a longtime friend of the president. she's worked enormous capacities in the corporate and philanthropic works in chicago prior to coming to washington. this topic, the need for health- care reform, is one that she knows a lot about. she was the chairman of the new university of chicago medical center board of trustees, working on medical school training, training of health care professionals and provision of care at university of chicago hospital. please join me in giving a great northern virginia welcome to valerie jarrett.

>> thank you, governor. good afternoon, everybody. we are delighted to have you all here at president obama's health care reform form. we're trying to get everybody engaged. i want to thank the people from the northern virginia community college. we have students, administrators, faculty, staff. thank you all for being here. we look forward to your participation. and all of you hear from the m&a community, a community hard hit by the health-care crisis we face in america. -- and thethe annandale community. we want to engage the public and have the president answered their questions. in addition to the people here today, we are live streaming this session over the internet. we want to make sure that

everybody has a chance to get in the action to participate. we will have a multi dimensional session. three different ways. first, we will have a chance to hear the video responses to the questions that were put to us here today. and the weekend the president did a youtube video and so we will have video questions first. the white house is doing the live cast on whitehouse.co m and on our facebook page and questions coming from twitter. all that goes on as the president will be asking questions. a nice gentleman named nathan will be handing me questions. of course, we want to hear from those of you and the audience as well. the audience, the facebook, as well of the videos, all coming at us at the same time. so let's get started.

without any further ado, i would like to introduce the person whose first priority is passing health care reform this year. please welcome to our town hall president barack obama. [cheers and applause] [cheers] >> thank-you. good to see you guys. thank you, everybody. thank you, northern virginia. thank you very much. everybody, please have a seat. what a wonderful welcome. i'm so grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here.

a couple of quick announcement. i want to thank president temple and chancellor intdubois for their hospitality. we have extraordinary elected officials. a few of them i want to mention. one of the finest governors in the country, has also done a great job. to give tim kaine a round of applause. part of the reason he such a good governor is because he took notes while being lt. gov. to the former governor and now a senator for the state of virginia, an outstanding public servant mark warner. three outstanding members of congress, bobby scott, jim moran, and jerry conrad. thank you for the great job you do every day. there are all kinds of things

valerie was explaining. don't worry. she's in charge. so she will organize this. i just want to give a few remarks at the outset and then we will save most of the time for questions. first, it's wonderful to be here. i'm looking forward to answering questions about what is one of the most important issues facing american families, american businesses, and the american government. before i begin, i want to say a few words about where we are as a nation. and where we need to go. we are living through extraordinary times. i don't need to tell you that. this generation of americans, our generation has been called to confront challenges of a magnitude that we have not seen in decades, perhaps unlike anything we have seen in recent history. challenges that you generations of americans are asked to face. in a daddition to the immediate

threats, we have two wars going on at a deep recession, our economy has also been weakened by problems that have plagued us for decades. the rising cost of health care, the state of our schools, the continuing dependence on foreign oil. there are some who say we cannot tackle all of these problems, it's too much, congress can't handle it. the president is juggling too many things. my administration has taken on too much, too soon, moving too fast. i say america has waited long enough for action on these issues. it is not too soon to fix our schools when we know that if our children are not prepared, they will not compete in the 21st century. it's not too soon to wean ourselves off of dirty sources of energy so we can grab hold of a clean energy future. we've been talking about clean

energy since richard nixon. it's time for us to act. i congratulate the house of representatives for beginning action this past week on a historic clean energy bill. it is also not too soon to reform our health-care system, which we've been talking about since teddy roosevelt was president. we are at a defining moment for this nation. if we act now, then we can rebuild our economy in a way that makes us strong, competitive, sustainable, and prosperous once more. we can lead this century the same way that we led the last century. if we don't act, if we let this moment pass, we could see this economy sputtered along for decades. a slow, steady decline, in which the chances for our children and grandchildren are fewer than the opportunities that were given us. that is contrary to the history

of america. one of our core ideas has always been bad we leave the next generation better off than us. that is why we have to act right now. i know that people say the cost of fixing our problems are great. in some cases, they are. the cost of inaction, of not doing anything, is even greater. unacceptable. that is why this town hall and this debate we're having on health care is so important. let me give you a few statistics. many of you already know this. in the last nine years, premiums have risen three times faster than wages for the average family. i don't need to tell you this, because you have seen it in your own lives. even if you have health insurance, 46 million people don't, if you have held insurance then you have seen your costs double. they've gone up three times faster than wages.

if we do nothing, then those costs will keep going higher and higher. in recent years, over one-third of small businesses and reduced benefits. many have dropped coverage altogether since the early 1990 pose-- early 1990's. they cannot afford it. if we don't act, that means more people will lose coverage and more people will lose their jobs because those businesses are not going to be competitive. unless we act within a decade one out of every $5 we earn will be spent on health care. those wearing about deficits, the amount our government spends on medicare and medicaid will eventually grow larger than what our government spends today on everything else combined. everything else combined. the congressional budget office did a study that showed that when you look at rising cost of

entitlement, 90% of it is medicare and medicaid, not social security. 90% comes from the federal share of health-care costs. if we want to control our deficit, the only way for us to do it is to control health-care costs. those are ecstatic -- those are all at abstractions. those are numbers. but many of you know this translates into pain and heartache in a very personal way for families all across america. i know this because during the two years i campaigned for president, every town hall meeting i had, people would raise horrible stories about their experiences in the medical system. now that i am president, during those same stores. i get 10 letters a day out of the 40,000 or so that the white house receives, my staff selects 10 for me to read every day. at least half of them relate