content any time through c-span video library. we take c-span on the road with our local content vehicle. it is washington your way, the c-span networks. created by >> up next on c-span, house majority whip james clyburn it talks about the democratic initiative. after that, secretary of state hillary clinton on u.s. and global health care initiative. later, former u.n. weapons inspector testified before a commission. >> it is important that everyone know that i will stand up for the people of florida. i will not be part of this culture of special interests. i will fight only for the people

of florida. >> it is campaign 2010, and the c-span video library makes it easy to follow. all free on your computer any time. >> house majority whip james clyburn spoke on an islamic community center near ground zero. he also spoke about legislation passed by the democratic majority. this is 25 minutes. >> good morning. thank you so much for joining us today. over the district work period, house democrats were talking about the ways we are fighting for the middle class. this week, as students head back to school, families prepare for back-to-school, we are

highlighting the strong consumer protections enacted in the areas of student lending, health care, credit cards, and finance. the recently-enacted wall street reform created the first ever agency to look out for consumers in our financial system and gives them more protection. the act establishes a new, independent watchdog agency. it creates a national consumer complaint hot line, so consumers will have for the first time a single toll-free number to report problems with financial products and services. it allows consumers free access to their credit card score. if there's court negatively

affects them -- their score negatively affects them. lending,'s mortgage eliminating hidden fees and abusive practices that trap so many families in loans they cannot afford to repay. those who paid attention to the news this morning, for 13 counties around atlanta, georgia, the foreclosure crisis has hit astronomical numbers. we in this bill require lenders to disclose the maximum of consumer can pay on a variable rate mortgage.

that i have seen it take a tremendous toll in my congressional district. it prohibits unfair lending practices. -payment s freepre penalties. i do not talk about this a lot, but for 14 years, immediately before becoming a candidate for congress, i spent on one of the boards to my predecessor to bank of america. i was on the board of cns, and amazed at some of what was considered to be just regular banking practices that could have a tremendous

adverse impact on consumers. while we were doing all this, our republican colleagues strongly opposed establishing the consumer protection bureau. as well as the provisions ending bailouts for wall street in this new law. they preferred to stand with wall street and with the big banks, and it was kind of interesting to see some of the arguments used to stop us from doing this. in 2009, congress passed and the president signed into law, a credit card holders a bill of rights. that is a piece of legislation that protect consumers and cracks down on excessive fees.

it contains three separate implementation dates. the final implementation date, 15 months after enactment, takes place on august 22, next week. the last of these new credit card protections will take effect, including the banning of unfair rate increases, abusive and fees, and penalties that require credit card companies to reconsider the interest rate hikes they put in place before the new law took effect. we got complaints earlier that many credit-card companies started doing things in anticipation of what would be prevented in 15 months. but when it came time to stand with the middle class, once again, house republican leaders

and voted no. these new credit-card restrictions, along with overdraft limits recently instituted by the federal reserve, will save united states consumers at least $5 billion this year alone. i mentioned earlier about my bank experienced. well, i remember one day we were sitting around the board room talking about what we can do to improve this standingof th of te bank, and i raised the issue of overdrafts. i found out that day what is meant to be a skunk at a party. overdress a work one of the biggest moneymakers we had in

the bank -- overdrafts were. with this new act, we are going to prevent things like $35 penalty every time you swipe a debit card if there is no money to cover it. just imagine having an overdraft, you may not even realize it, it may be limited at 8 $5 or $15 purchase you made -- two purchases at a department store in one day, less than $50, but when you look at the cost of the penalty, you could incur a $200 penalty very easily. these are the kinds of things that we are bringing to a close today, but i have with me two young people who are headed back

to school. one, emily -- i have been practicing this name -- from nebraska. emily has an autoimmune disease that requires her to seize several specialists. her pre-existing conditions and health care costs will limit her career decisions. but thanks to this new health care law and the patient's bill of rights, she will be able to stay on her parents' plan when she graduates. with that, i would like to ask emily to come before us. >> good morning, everyone. i would just like to share with you a little bit today how health care reform has seriously impacted my life. i will start at the beginning.

when i was 17, i experienced a lot of odd symptoms, and none of by doctors could figure out what caused them. after two years of specialists and cat scans, i was finally rarenosed with a ar conditions. a lot to deal with as an 19- year-old, but i was one of the lucky ones, in that my parents have a wonderful health care. and my condition was completely covered. i did not have to worry about where my care was coming from. the disease was changing everything about my life. after i started to recover, i realize that just because i had good health insurance under by parents, did not mean that the chronically ill from a young age was not going to impact my life.

when your health care is tied directly to the job you hold, your career opportunities become a lot more limited than you might imagine. all of a sudden, i could not take a couple years of before i went to law school because i would drop off my parents' insurance plan. i had to be careful not to ever drop of because i am diagnosed with the disease, and that would mean i would be paying for my own health care because of pre- existing conditions. thankfully, with the passing of the affordable care at last spring, none of that is an issue for me anymore. a dependent coverage clause has been a godsend for me. it allows me to stay on my parents' insurance until i am 26. it gives me time to figure out what career i want to pursue. take a couple years and wait to go to law school or grad school. that is something that is invaluable and has impacted by life. the decisions i make now about

my future two years down the road, but even more important than that, the patient's bill of rights has made it so that i cannot be denied health insurance at any point is simply because i have a disease that i cannot control. and that -- it's changed my life in so many ways. i am here today to share with you how it as possiblitively impacted me. i am one example of of millions of americans helped through this legislation. and that's why we need to pull young people into this conversation about health care. we are the generation that is the most uninsured. i want you today to think about all the different ways that young americans are affected by this reform. it is really important.

i would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to congress for taking this issue and doing something about it and improving not only my life but the lives of other young americans, too. health care is something that it is easy not to care about when you are young and healthy, but someday, all of us are not going to be young -- and in my case, a lot sooner, not so healthy -- and health care becomes something that matters more than anything else. for those reasons, i think this is the best bill that congress has enacted in a long time and i am extremely grateful for it. thank you. >> thank you, very much. costs have soared in recent years, increasing by 4% in the last five years. students graduating from college with more debt than ever before, and many would-be students are

holding off on going to college or skipping it all together because they cannot afford it. with a college cost reduction act, we cut interest rates in half on subsidized student loans over the next four years. with the student aid reform bill, we converted all new federal student lending to the stable, effective, and cost efficient direct loan program. it is a more reliable lender for students and more cost- effective for taxpayers. we invested $750 million to bolster college access and completion support for students. it will increase funding for the college access to challenge grant program and will also find innovative programs at states and institution's that focus on

increasing financial literacy -- to retain and graduate students. we made a federal loans more affordable to repaid by investing $1.50 billion to strengthen the income based repayment program. we invested $2.55 billion in historical black colleges and universities and minority- serving institutions to provide students with the support they need to stay in school and graduate. we invested $36 billion over 10 years to increase the maximum annual pell grant to $5500 in 2010 and $5975 by 2017.

starting in 2013, the scholarship will be linked to match the rising cost of living by indexing to the consumer price index. i am also pleased today to be joined by sara para, a pell grant recipient at chapman university in orange county, california. an increase is helping her to pay for college. and this event today provides her with her first opportunity to come to our nation's capital. sara? >> thank you, for having me today. i am with the u.s. public interest research group. i am here today to talk about why this reform is going to help pay for school and share a bit of my personal experience with the pell grant.

on march 20, 2009, my father unexpectedly passed away due to a stroke. on top of losing one of the most important people in my life, this tragedy it led to a financial crisis for my family. i got a call a week after from my mother saying she could no longer afford to keep me in school. i missed my father's funeral. i worked multiple jobs so i could continue to go to school. thankfully, the pell grant gave me the financial piece of mind to refocus on my education and stay in school. because of this reform, now i will be able to continue school and a chief my dreams and achieve a bachelor's degree in english literature, become a teacher, and i am so happy to be here today because the college cost reduction act will help millions of other students be

able to afford school and stay in college during a financially difficult time for them. this legislation will help half a million students, will prevent half a million students from losing their pell grants, and prevent an additional 8 million students from getting their pell grant cut by %60. it will make it easier for students to pay back their student loans after they graduate. today is my father's birthday, and i am incredibly happy to be standing here talking about how this stronger program is going to keep helping me support my educational career and help many million other students in america. because of this legislation, thanks to congress, i will be able to stand with my head held high, look up into the sky and

tell my dad his little girl made it through. thank you so much. >> thanks to you all for being here today. we will answer any questions. >> how should president obama had handled the new york mosque controversy? >> i think the president made statements, i guess it was yesterday, clarifying that he was talking in the micro-sense of religious freedoms in this country. i grew up a pentecostal. i recall as a child, because we were not considered mainstream in religion, the larger were more mainstream baptist and

methodist and they did not u.s. way. uisus in a wholesome my father was a minister. i learned a lot in the parsonage. one of the things i learned was religious tolerance. today, pentecostals are considered a lot more mainstream. and i think that with, over time and what have you, we will be able to view the broad array of religious freedoms in this country in the way that we ought to. when it comes to where and how any structure, and the wectuary should builte built, have community standards.

community standards ought to be left up to the community. so the decision on permitting for any building, be it a mosque or a church or whatever, it may be a place of worship, or be it a grocery or liquor store, but those things are left up to community standards. in this instance, that is what the president made clear. >> the cause more trouble? >> i think as president of the united states, articulating the constitutional principles on which this country was founded and calling for tolerance on the part of all of its people is a presidential act. >> "the wall street journal" had

a report that found that 1/3 of stimulus funds that were supposed to be spent on infrastructure projects has been spent. you have frustration with the slow pace of that getting out? and do you think that money should go elsewhere? >> we had a lot of debate when we were putting together the recovery act as to what was the meaning of shovel-ready. now, for a project to be shovel- readay and still meet all of the various tests that have to be met at state levels, for granting permits and its center, are to be zero different things. for a project to be sitting on at the shelves of any transportation department, you do not go out and do bids and other kinds of purchasing right

away on a dream. you do that when you have the money to do the project. so i think what we are suffering from here is the fact that there is a big difference in what we do here in washington and where the rubber meets the road out in these communities. sure, i am frustrated. if you keep up with the newspapers in south carolina, you know i am frustrated at a lot of the inertia when it comes to this bill, especially. >> -- diverting that money to where i could be spent more quickly? >> diverted to another project, it would still have to go to permitting as well. no, i do not think we ought to do that. i think we need to recognize the fact that the permitting

process will be there no matter where you are, and maybe next time, we will be a little less energetic in how we define shovel-ready. >> the economy appears to be going back into a slow down, and there has been some talk that there are concerns of those at the beginning of the stimulus debate wanted more money put into infrastructure and less to tax breaks. some of those people are now saying that we see the economic effect has been limited, the jobless rate is still high, so that vindicated their concerns that the stimulus was not big enough and directed enough towards spending. you agree? >> i was one of those. you may recall, the stimulus bill or the recovery package, it left the house at a much bigger

more was, and much directed towards programs and investments then in tax credits. but the reality in what came out of the senate set in. so we got a smaller bill out of the senate. we got much more tax credits and direct investments out of the senate. and that is what we are living with. so, yes, i wanted a much more direct and much bigger bill. a lot of made of the clyburn amendment, an amendment i put forward in order to limit governors around the country from getting in between this directive and the communities where they would go. i think we are seeing that in some states right now, that even we just passed a bill to help teachers.

we came back here last week to do that. now we are taking a look at the clause in that bill that a lot of states have rented themselves in eligible for this money -- rendered themselves in eligible for this money. these of the kinds of things we are all thinking about. >> the think the slowdown out as part reflected in the fact that the stimulus was not big enough? >> what i am saying is that i thought that much more, a much larger percentage should have gone into direct projects rather than as a tax credits. it would be of value judgment i do not feel equipped to make as to whether it should have been bigger. but i do believe it would have put more people back to work

much more quickly. >> would you like to see more jobs legislation? >> i have in mind the transportation bill. i really believe that we should find a way to get the transportation bill done. it has always been a big, big job-creator. not only are you creating big numbers of jobs, but you also are providing a tremendous amount of service. i represent a state that has been determined to have more than 6000 bridges in disrepair. and i would love to see us find a way to get the transportation bill done so that we can fix those things. that would be of tremendous benefit to various communities and also create a lot of jobs all over this country. thank you so much.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> on tomorrow morning's "washington journal", economist s will discuss china's growing economy. after that, the national security correspondent on the taliban in afghanistan. we continue our look at the new financial regulations. james chessen of the american bankers association will talk about the impact on banks. each morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. later, the heritage foundation releases a policy position on a number of issues including the federal budget, the u.s. economy, and foreign policy. live coverage begins at noon, eastern.

[applause] >> now secretary of state henry clinton on the obama administration's global health initiative. she will discuss the $63 billion investment that focuses on the health of women, children, and new boards throughout the world. the remarks are at johns hopkins university's school of international service. it is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> welcome, madam secretary, honored guests, and the community. i am the dean. this is the school of advanced international studies known as sais. this is a special greeting for me to our first -- who i hav e officially welcomed the students yet.

students come from more than 70 countries, and even with u.s. and cabinet officials, it is our custom to highlight the stepping stones in the careers of every speaker at the school. secretary clinton needs no such introduction. her fame extends around the world and across the generations. so let me offer instead two brief comments on why it gives me such a pleasure to welcome you here today. first, i would boast that i can think of no university in the united states which offers a more distinguished and appropriate venue for the secretary's speech on the global health initiative. johns hopkins medicine, the bloomberg school of public health -- mayor bloomberg is certainly from the same -- and the school of nursing are all preeminent not only in education

and research, but involving people and nationalities who come to baltimore to study their and institutions with partners all over the world and programs beyond. at sais, we are proud to be trailblazers in health, having established the global health and foreign policy initiative. and the professor has been chosen as the white house fellow and will be joining the director of u.s.a.i.d. to go and work in aid in the health field during the coming year. sais is especially happy to host you, madam secretary, and to welcome the director of u.s. aid, because of our lifelong affiliation with the state department. as we prepared for your visit, my colleagues compiled a long list of the many senior officials who were graduates of

sais. we presently have about 300 alumns working in the state department and another 100 working and a.i.d. our graduates work in more than 100 countries. my second comment has to do with our speaker today. students come to sais because they have chosen an education to prepare themselves as leaders in global affairs, whether in the profit, nonprofit, or public sectors. they are on the lookout for role models. what a privilege as a dean at to welcome the secretary of state to our school. you could imagine how many of our american students would consider that position, as demanding as it is, to be the pinnacle of their career ambitions. but our young men and women, i would stress, that the lessons from any career required looking through the famous to the

ingredients of success. secretary clinton at seemingly on ending a curiosity about the world around her, a passion that she has shown throughout her life to improve the lives of others, and the discipline of hard work she brings to every task -- those traits, curiosity, passion, and diligence are the recipe for building a worthwhile career at any age. when they are enriched by the wisdom of vast experience, the public is especially well- served. madam secretary, the podium is yours. [applause] >> thank you. well, it is such a pleasure to be here again at sais, and i want to thank dean einhorn for that very warm and thoughtful introduction.

but this is such an exceptional educational institution, and i had no idea we had 300 of your alumni, but i see in action every day the results of the work, the research, the study, and preparation that goes on here at sais. we are the very proud employer of many sais alumni, and i hope that there are more of you who are going to be joining our ranks in the years to come. in addition to the contributions that johns hopkins has made in the fields of diplomacy and international law, i want to add to what dean einhorn said about the contributions in health. hopkins is, of course, home to excellent medical and nursing schools, and home to the bloomberg school of public health. that school's motto, "protecting health, saving lives, millions at a time,"

captures both the possibility and the responsibility inherent in the pursuit of better health, whether here in our own country or in communities around the world. new breakthroughs and new knowledge about how to fight disease and save lives only add to our responsibility as researchers, teachers, students, government officials, and as a nation. each of us, i believe, is called to find ways to bring those solutions to the people who need them, wherever they are. and many contributors to global health are here with us, including representatives from several partner and donor countries, ngo's, the private sector, multilateral institutions, and public- private enterprises.

and i want to acknowledge your and their outstanding contributions to saving lives around the globe, often millions at a time. and that is the mission i'd like to discuss with you today -- how the obama administration is building upon our country's long-standing commitment to global health by bringing life- saving prevention, treatment, and care to more people in more places. this is a signature of american leadership in the world today. it's also an issue very close to my own heart. i have been privileged to visit many parts of the world on behalf of our country over the last 20 years. and in my travels, i've come to know countless people who are living proof of what successful global health programs can do. i've met hiv-positive farmers in kenya who now have the strength to spend their day in the fields earning a living thanks to antiretroviral drugs, children in angola who wake up every morning under bed nets and then head off to school eager to learn, unafflicted by malaria, new mothers in

indonesia who proudly show off healthy babies brought into the world with the help of trained midwives, men and women who have grown into adulthood resisting diseases because they had childhood immunizations against polio or measles. now, these are but a few of the faces of global health that i have seen, people who are not only alive, but also contributing as parents, workers, and citizens, thanks to the governments, organizations, foundations, and universities like johns hopkins who collaborate to bring medical care and education about healthy behavior to more parts of the world. these are also the faces of america's commitment. no nation in history has done more to improve global health. we have led the way on some of

the greatest health achievements of our time. smallpox plagued humankind for thousands of years until we helped end it through the world health organization's eradication campaign in the 1960's and 1970's. the expanded program on immunization has brought life- saving vaccines to nearly 80% of the world's children, up from less than 5% when the program began 36 years ago, and it has done so in large part thanks to u.s. dollars and support. the global distribution of micronutrients, which we helped pioneer, has protected the health of many millions of young children and pregnant women. and we are the global leader in the fight against neglected tropical diseases, treating 59 million people in the past four years alone. we help prevent and treat

malaria for more than 50 million people every year and we provide nearly 60% -- 60% of the world's donor funding for hiv and aids. all told, 40% of the total global funding for development assistance for health comes from the united states. this is clearly not a democratic or republican issue, this is a nonpartisan issue that really comes from the heart of america. and our leadership in this field has been possible because of strong support on both sides of the aisle. i commend the bush administration for its ground- breaking work in global health, and in particular in two of our country's flagship programs -- the president's emergency plan for aids relief, or pepfar, and the president's malaria initiative. i'd like to acknowledge two people who helped make these programs possible -- mark

dybul, the former global aids coordinator, and admiral tim ziemer, the current head of pmi. now, beyond government, american organizations are making extraordinary contributions. from the bill and melinda gates foundation, which has given billions to revive immunization campaigns and discover new vaccines and other tools to prevent and treat disease, to the carter center, which has led the global campaign to eradicate the debilitating guinea worm parasite, to the clinton foundation, which has worked with pharmaceutical companies to make aids drugs more affordable for millions, and to hundreds of other organizations across america that are finding innovative ways to deliver life-saving and life- improving care to people worldwide. churches and faith communities have also led the fight to bring treatment to those in

need, including by deploying health volunteers, who sometimes face dangerous circumstances to serve people in places where little or no care exists. just two weeks ago, medical volunteers from several countries, including the united states, were murdered in afghanistan as they traveled from village to village to treat eye conditions and run a dental clinic. that was a terrible loss for the families, a terrible loss for the world, and it was a terrible loss for those people who had been and would have benefited from their help. so stories like these remind us that strengthening global health is not only a deeply held priority for our government, but for many american citizens and our nation as a whole. and it is an important part of our national story, one that isn't told as often or as thoroughly as it should be. today, on behalf of the obama

administration, i'd like to share with you the next chapter in america's work in health worldwide. it's called the global health initiative, ghi for short, and it represents a new approach, informed by new thinking and aimed at a new goal -- to save the greatest possible number of lives, both by increasing our existing health programs and by building upon them to help countries develop their own capacity to improve the health of their own people. now, before i discuss the specifics of the initiative, let me just take a step back. some may ask why is a secretary of state giving a speech about global health, there are a lot of other crises in the world, as i am well aware. some might accuse me of taking a little break from those crises to -- [laughter] -- come to sais to talk about global health. what exactly does maternal health, or immunizations, or

the fight against hiv and aids have to do with foreign policy? well, my answer is everything. we invest in global health to strengthen fragile or failing states. we have seen the devastating impact of aids on countries stripped of their farmers, teachers, soldiers, health workers, and other professionals, as well as the millions of orphaned and vulnerable children left behind, whose needs far exceed what any government agency can provide. the destabilizing impact of aids led the clinton administration to categorize it not just as a health threat but a national security threat, a position later echoed by then secretary of state colin powell. and the center for strategic and international studies, a think tank focused on national security, launched a commission on smart global health policy co-chaired by helene gayle of

care and retired admiral william j. fallon, to find new strategies for global health, because we believe that will help us build a safer, more secure world. we invest in global health to promote social and economic progress, and to support the rise of capable partners who can help us solve regional and global problems. we have seen places where people who suffer from poor health struggle on many levels. poverty is usually widespread. infrastructure is usually incomplete. food production and school enrollments are usually low. people who would otherwise take the lead in driving progress for their families and nations are instead dragged down by disease, deprivation, and lost opportunity. we invest in global health to protect our nation's security. to cite one example, the threat

posed by the spread of disease in our interconnected world in which thousands of people every day step on a plane in one continent and step off in another. we need a comprehensive, effective global system for tracking health data, monitoring threats, and coordinating responses. the need for such a system was driven home in recent years with the spread of sars and the h1n1 virus. it is cheaper and more effective to stop an outbreak when it emerges, before it becomes a global threat. but that is very hard to do in places where health and public health services are scant or nonexistent. we invest in global health as a tool of public diplomacy. for millions of people worldwide, the prevention, treatment or care that the united states makes possible is their main experience of us as a country and a people.

and it can be a very powerful one. giving people a chance at a long and healthy life or helping protect their children from disease conveys as much about our values as any state visit or strategic dialogue ever could. and we invest in global health as a clear and direct expression of our compassion. millions die every year simply because they lack access to very simple interventions, like bed nets, or vitamin-fortified food, or oral rehydration therapy. as a nation and a people, we cannot, we must not, accept those senseless deaths. it's just not in our dna. that's why americans frequently report that they support their tax dollars going to global health programs -- not because of what the money can do for us, but because of what it can

and does do for others. few investments are more consistent with all of our values and few are more sound. global health is a prime example of how investing our resources strategically can have an immediate and lasting impact on people, communities, and countries. the list of diseases and deficiencies that threaten lives and livelihoods across the world is nearly limitless, but our resources are not. so therefore, we must be strategic and make evidence- based decisions in targeting the most dangerous threats, to ensure that our investments that, after all, come from the american taxpayer, deliver results. and we must also must stay focused on the long-term picture -- not only addressing the urgent needs that people have today but building the foundation for better health tomorrow and for the next generation. this thinking informs every aspect of the global health

initiative, which president obama addressed last year. the united states is investing $63 billion -- first, to sustain and strengthen our existing health programs, and second, to build upon those programs and take their work to the next level by collaborating with governments, organizations, civil society groups, and individuals to help broaden the improvements in public health that we can expect. we're shifting our focus from solving problems, one at a time, to serving people, by considering more fully the circumstances of their lives and ensuring they can get the care they need most over the course of their lifetimes. consider the life of a woman in one of our partner countries. she lives in a remote village that has been home to her family for generations.

her parents went their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor, but now, thanks to the hard work of the international community, some quality health care is available to her. within walking distance, there is a clinic supported by pepfar, where she first found out that she has hiv and now receives the antiretroviral drugs that keep her healthy. if she makes a longer journey by bicycle or bus, there is another clinic where she can receive prenatal care and where her children can receive immunizations. sometimes health services come right to her door, in the form of health volunteers bringing bed nets to protect her family from malaria. but while she can receive care for some health problems, for others she is on her own. her local clinic is well- stocked with antiretrovirals,

but it is empty of antibiotics or contraceptives. if she has trouble giving birth, the nearest facility equipped to perform emergency surgery is hundreds of miles away, so she faces the very real risk of becoming that 1 in 22 women in sub-saharan africa who die in childbirth. and while her home has been sprayed for mosquitoes, she has no access to clean water, so her children may escape malaria only to die from diarrheal disease. there is no question that this health landscape is much improved from just a few years ago. but its short-comings are significant. there is too little coordination among all the countries and organizations, including in our own government, that deliver health services, so critical gaps in care are left

unaddressed. there is too little integration. diseases are often treated in isolation rather than bundled together, forcing people like this woman to travel to multiple clinics to meet their and their children's basic health needs. there is too little innovation focused on designing technologies and strategies that can work in resource-poor places and help the people who are hardest to reach. step back even further and another problem comes into view -- a lack of in-country capacity. in many places, donor countries and outside ngo's have stepped in to deliver critical services that countries didn't have the money or the expertise to deliver themselves. but while that is absolutely the right response to an emergency, it is a temporary fix, not a long-term solution.

yet in too many places, it has come to serve as a long-term solution. as a result, this woman's current access to care is erratic, and her future access to care is uncertain. she is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of funding cycles and development trends in places far from where she lives. she has little control over the quality of care provided to her and her family, while if her elected leaders were more directly and more heavily invested, she and her fellow citizens would have more of a voice in the system. the fundamental purpose of the global health initiative is to address these problems by tying individual health programs together in an integrated, coordinated, sustainable system of care, with the countries themselves in the lead. we are taking the investments our country has made in pepfar, the president's malaria

initiative, maternal and child health, family planning, neglected tropical diseases, and other critical health areas -- building on the work of agencies across the federal government, such as the centers for disease control -- and expanding their reach by improving the overall environment in which health services are delivered. by doing so, our investments can have a bigger impact and patients can gain access to more and better care, and as a result, lead healthier lives. to illustrate how the global health initiative will work, consider how it will impact one of our most successful global health programs -- pepfar. in the past seven years, pepfar has provided millions of people with prevention services across africa, asia, and the caribbean. it has also changed the conventional wisdom about treatment.

before pepfar, many believed that treating people with hiv in poor countries was impossible, because the drugs were effective only if they were taken according to a precise daily schedule and with sufficient food. for people living in places with food shortages and without health clinics, pharmacies, or health professionals, it seemed like treatment would forever be out of reach. but the united states could not accept the injustice of allowing millions to die when we did have the drugs to save them. and through pepfar, we set up clinics, trained health professionals, and improved shipping and storage. so the experiment worked. seven years ago, the number of people in sub-saharan africa on antiretrovirals was fewer than 50,000. today, more than 5 million people in the developing world are safely and effectively using these drugs, and pepfar

is supporting about half of those people. under the global health initiative, we will continue pepfar's success by increasing its funding. in 2008, funding for pepfar was $5 billion. for 2011, president obama has requested more than $5.7 billion, the largest amount any country has ever invested in the fight against global aids. and we are raising our goal for treatment. through the global health initiative, we seek to directly support treatment for more than 4 million people worldwidemore than double the number of people who received treatment during the first five years of pepfar. we are raising our goal for care, to more than 12 million people, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children. and we are raising our goal for prevention. through the global health initiative, we aim to prevent 12 million new hiv infections.

to do that, we are embracing a more comprehensive approach and expanding on what we know works. we are moving beyond a-b-c -- abstinence, be faithful, and consistent and correct use of condomsto an a to z approach to prevention. because we need to use every tool we havethe full combination of medical, behavioral, and structural intervention. that includes male circumcision, the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, improvements and the investments of making detection more available and affordable, education, and when needed, legal, policy, or regulatory changes that will make it easier to protect populations. despite all the investments the united states has already made and that the world has already made, to stop this epidemic, we know we confront 2.7 million new infections every year.

so if we are going to win this war, we need to get better results in prevention. and our strategy under the global health initiative will enable us to do so. so the immediate impact for pepfar is clear. its funding will increase, its impact will increase, and its prevention strategies will become more comprehensive. similarly, we are strengthening our support for the other health programs we fund around the world. we are increasing our support for the president's malaria initiative, with the goal of reducing the malaria burden by 50% for 450 million people. against tuberculosis, we intend to save 1.3 million lives by increasing access to treatment. and we are scaling up our work in family planning and maternal and child healthareas in whic -n which the united states can and

must lead. every year, hundreds of thousands of women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, nearly all of them in the developing world, and for every one woman who dies, 20 more suffer debilitating injuries or infections. and every year, millions of children in the developing world die from wholly preventable causes. saving the lives of women and children requires a range of care, from improving nutrition to training birth attendants who can help women give birth safely. it also requires increased access to family planning. family planning represents one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available in the world today. it prevents both maternal and child deaths by helping women space their births and bear children during their healthiest years. and it reduces the deaths of women from unsafe abortions.

the united states was once at the forefront of developing and delivering successful family planning programs. but in recent years, we have fallen behind. with the global health initiative, we are making up for lost time. all told, we will save millions of additional lives through our increased support to existing u.s. health programs around the world through this initiative. but what about all the systemic challenges that surround pepfar and usaid programs and other u.s.-funded health programs in the field? the constellation of logistical, structural, legal, and political problems that decrease health and make life tenuous for the woman that i described a few minutes ago. as long as they persist, that will limit our or any donor's impact. women we save from aids will die in childbirth. children we save from polio

will die from rotavirus. and on a broader levelin ter --n terms of the scope and quality of medical and public health services available in communities and countriesthe future will not look much different than the present. we need to lay the groundwork now for more progress down the road by tackling some of those systemic problems, and working with our partner countries to uproot the most deep-seated obstacles that impede their own people's health. that is how we can make our investments yield the most significant returns and save the greatest numbers of lives, today and tomorrow. so let me explain a few key ways in which we are pursuing this goal. first, we are working with countries to create and implement strategies for health that they take the lead in designing based on their distinct needs and existing strengths, and we are helping them build their capacity to manage, oversee, coordinate, and operate health programs over

the long term. now, in practice, this will mean different things in different places. in some countries, our development experts are training community health workers to deliver basic care and answer basic health questions. in others, we are setting up supply chains and establishing drug protocols to ensure that medicine will reach patients efficiently. in still others, we are helping set up health information systems, so health workers can collect and analyze more data -- from the number of births and deaths to more complex information, like the number of women who receive prenatal care at a clinic and return later to deliver their babies. countries need a sustainable system for capturing and understanding data, to continuously monitor and improve their own performance. second, we are focusing on the needs and contributions of women and girls, who are still frequently overlooked and

underserved by health professionals who don't notice their suffering or hear their concerns. our commitment to promoting the health of women and girls is, of course, for their sake, but also for the sake of their families and communities. because when a woman's health suffers, her family suffers and then there is a ripple effect throughout a village as well. but when women are healthy, the benefits are similarly broad. too often, the social, economic, and cultural factors that restrict their access to health services -- such as gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, lack of education, lack of access to economic opportunity, and other forms of discrimination -- remain unacknowledged and unaddressed. we are linking our health programs to our broader development efforts to address those underlying political, economic, social, and gender problems.

and we're working with governments, civil society groups, and individuals to make sure that the needs of women and girls are recognized as critical not only by us, but by the health ministers, the people at the grassroots who administer care every day, that they are taken into account in the budgets and the planning of finance ministries, prime ministers, and presidents. third, we are improving how we measure and evaluate our own impact. this includes shifting our focus from "inputs" to "outcomes and impacts" -- that is, determining our success not simply by how many bed nets we distribute, but by how many people actually avoid malaria by using them correctly -- a fuller picture that demands that we invest in improving how we ourselves collect, analyze, and share data. fourth, we are investing in innovation, with a focus on developing tools that will help

diagnose, prevent, and cure disease in the communities where we work, which are often remote and poor in resources. many of the tools and techniques we use to keep people healthy here in the united states are unsuited to the realities of life in other places. so we need to be innovative about how to reach people effectively. one example is by using cell phones. in several countries, we're working with public and private partners to help prevent maternal and newborn deaths by sending timely and critical health messages to pregnant women and new mothers via cell phone. the cell phone has penetrated where health clinics have not. in another exciting example of the impact of innovation, we achieved a significant breakthrough just last month, when scientists in south africa successfully tested the first microbicide gel to help prevent the transmission of hiv.

this proof-of-concept trial was made possible with funding from pepfar through usaid and the south african department of science and technology, and it has the potential to be a major breakthrough in the prevention of aids, because it is an affordable tool that women can use without needing permission from their partners. too often, the men decide whether condoms will be used. but with such a gel, women will have the power to protect their own health. fifth, we are improving coordination and integration. and that begins with aligning all u.s. government programs within a country by finding opportunities to bundle services -- much like pepfar did in kenya, by linking hiv and aids programs with maternal and child health, tb, and family planning. coordination starts at the top, here in washington.

the global health initiative brings together experts from across our government. and here today are the three extraordinary heads of agencies -- who also happen to be three exceptional doctors -- who are leading the day-to-day operations of the initiative. dr. raj shah, the administrator of the u.s. agency for international development. dr. eric goosby, the u.s. global aids coordinator at pepfar. and dr. tom frieden, the director of the centers for disease control. their agencies, along with the national institutes of health and other agencies from the departments of health and human services, defense, the peace corps, among others, will work together under the guidance and direction of deputy secretary of state jack lew who is also here with us today. now, this is a unique leadership structure and it embeds our commitment to coordination at every level,

from the white house down. sixth, we are working with existing partners and seeking out new ones. we want to align our efforts with that of other donor countries and multilateral organizations, many of which do outstanding work to improve global health. let me just mention one in particular. the global fund to fight aids, tuberculosis, and malaria. this organization has had a transformative impact on the world, not only in the millions of lives it has saved, but by creating a new model for how global community can come together to contribute and to coordinate in the fight against epidemics. the united states was proud to be the fund's first donor and its largest donor. we remain the largest donor under president obama's request for 2011. but our most critical collaborations will be with our partner countries, and we are going to be calling on them to bring their full commitment to

this effort. because after all, their contributions will determine whether we succeed with our goal of building integrated, coordinated, sustainable systems of care for more of the world's people. we need only look around the world today to see how critical country leadership is. in places where governments invest in their people's health, where civil society groups are empowered and engaged, where health is recognized as a priority in every sector and at every level of society, health improves and people thrive. consider the progress in south africa with respect to hiv/aids. this country has one of the world's highest burdens of hiv. for too long, some of south africa's leaders had a view of the epidemic that denied the link between hiv and aids. but that has now changed. under president zuma, the south

african government has come forward with a real, renewed commitment to battling the epidemic, with increased funding and strong goals for increasing testing and treatment. the united states has demonstrated our support with additional funding to help south africa build its capacity to meet those goals and address the epidemic over the long term. to galvanize country leadership, we are bringing to bear the full weight of american diplomacy. our diplomats are working closely with their counterparts worldwide to embed a deep commitment to health -- not only in the office of the health minister, but the foreign minister, the defense minister, the finance minister, and especially at the top, in the offices of prime ministers and presidents. too often, we've seen health relegated to the sidelines and treated as a lesser priority in terms of how much money is allocated and how much attention is devoted. in fact, we've seen that the

united states and other donors come in with money and countries actually take money away from health thinking that we're going to make up the difference. the united states is willing to invest our money, our time, and our expertise to improve health in countries. but we are now asking their governments to demonstrate a similar commitment, in terms of human resources, serious pledges to build capacity, and where feasible, financial support. we expect these countries to step up. and their people expect the same. now, this will not be easy. the changes we are working to achieve through the global health initiative are broad and deep, and there are many obstacles standing in the way. but if we succeed, we will have transformed how health is delivered and received across the world. now, we have already come so far as a nation and as a global community in saving and improving lives.

and we are grateful to all who brought us to this point, particularly the heroic health workers, and the visionary leaders, the determined scientists and researchers, and committed activists. thanks to them, we are able -- and i would argue, we are obligated -- to go even further. to save more lives, to take on more difficult tasks, to commit ourselves to the patient, persistent work of building the foundation for a healthier future. this is a challenge worthy of us, as a nation and as a people. and we are rising to meet it, as we have done many times in the past. together, we can give millions of people the chance at healthy lives, and create a healthier, more stable, more peaceful world. coming to sais to talk about this is truly a privilege because this is a place that will be providing the leaders we need in the future to realize this vision, to ask the

hard questions about just because this is the way we've always done it before and we've had some success, is this the way we should continue. to challenge the congress whose own structure often creates stovepipes that prevent our own government from working together. to do the difficult, but essential work of convincing countries' leaders that investing in their own people's health is not just a worthy goal, but critical to the future of security, peace, and prosperity they claim to be seeking. so we're aware of all the pitfalls and all the obstacles, internal and external. but we cannot sit idly by. and we have to do all that we can in our power in this time to make a difference. and that's what i know you came to sais in order to find your own way forward in achieving. and we welcome your

participation and we invite you to be part of helping to solve some of the world's greatest challenges now and in the future. thank you all very much. >> thank you for that comprehensive and compelling description. no one in this audience thinks they heard a speech for a day. this is a speech that people

will be standing and that young people will be learning about four years to come. secretary clinton has agreed, most graciously, took some questions from our community here today. so let me return this program back to her and many thank you again. >> i would be happy. i do not know what the arrangements are. >> i can call on people for you. ok. please stand up and give your name and your affiliation and be brief and only ask one question. >> thank you for a terrific speech. i appreciate the attention that secretary clinton has brought to global health issues. you said that robo -- that

global health hazard to do with foreign policy. what do you think about -- global health has everything to do with foreign policy. >> i would start by making the point that i think the united states has both strategic and humanitarian interests across the world, not just in the headline places that we are so well aware of right now. whether the problems that the united states and the world will deal with in a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years from now if we do not begin thinking about them and acting on them now held this such a clear example of

that. -- acting on them now. health is such a clear example of that. of course, it has to do with foreign policy, national security, the health of our own people, the values of america, how we present ourselves in the world and what's we are seen as really committed to. when it comes to how we better integrate and coordinate this, diplomacy is a key role. from the very beginning of my time as secretary of state, i have talked about elevating diplomacy and development alongside the fence. of smart power, if you will. when i look at the real world in which we live, they are not separate. they are all connected. perhaps the military takes a lead in some places, like

afghanistan. but arab diplomats and our development exports are in there -- but our diplomats and their development experts are in their everyday to improve government, health and education, and agriculture. it is now a necessary cooperative integration of american power. we're trying to look at every program and policy is that we have across the government and more effectively design and execute those to deliver on that promise of integrated networked power. we will be releasing the first- ever quadrennial development review that the defense department has done. having watched the effectiveness for both the defense department and congress and the public in putting together a statement of mission and goals and strategies and tactics, we're doing the same.

this global health initiative gives life to what we are trying to put forward as our new approach to this integrated approach. there are many real world examples. when you think about a country like nigeria, we have that far, cdc, and usaid all operating in nigeria. yet we had a polio outbreak in northern nigeria a few years ago. we had our aid programs and development expert on the ground doing extraordinary work. but we did not anticipate and quickly respond to what became a series of rumors about how the polio vaccine was a design to sterilize children. and no matter how hard our development experts or are doctors or nurses or anybody from one of our agencies worked, that problem and did much of the

efforts that we were engaged in -- that problem undid much of the efforts that we were engaged in. so when jack lee was with dr. flues be in northern nigeria recently, he went to see the chief of the area, the emir. we were pleased that the mayor? it -- that the air vaccinated his own grandchild. that was better than any in lecture we could give or argument we could make. we cannot do one without the other. we have to have a coordinated effort. what has half -- what has happened too often is that people have worked so hard. i have not seen harder working people than these people.

they worked so hard to save lives, improve lives, change governments, all the things they do on a vehicle -- on a daily basis. but too often, they do not work together. i have had members of congress tell me repeatedly who are interested in our development work that they go to the embassy in a country in latin america or africa or asia and they asked to meet everyone working in development. but that is the only time they come together. we have to end that. we have the smartest, most able, dedicated people working in development and health in the world in the united states government. but if they do not work together, they cannot possibly leverage what they are doing to get anywhere near to the goals that we set. so this is a passion of mine. i want to see our development

efforts be viewed as the best in the world across the board, led by usaid, which i want to see a return to become the premier development agency in the world and working with all of the other agencies and departments that do help. we cannot afford, in a time of limited financial resources, to have everybody doing their own thing. if we are going to have a clinic, then that clinic needs to do hiv/aids, but family planning, polio vaccine, and other matters. if we're going to have a country team in a country working together, they do not only their own suv's. [laughter] we have got to get smart about how we spend our money in. we do not have limitless resources. i feel a particular obligation,

as i have said on numerous times in the past 18 months or so, a time when american unemployment is recorded as slightly less than 10%. structural unemployment is worse. we are asking hard working, maybe unemployed americans to keep paying their taxes and some of that money will go to fund our development and diplomacy efforts worldwide. i have to be able to look them in the eye and tell them they are getting their money's worth. we just can keep doing what we have been doing and be able to tell them that. we have to get smarter, more agile, and i have seen wonderful efforts by russia and eric and tom and others in their own agencies to really bring that idea fourth. now we're going to try to do it across governments. those of you who are checking in for your first year here at ncis, it is -- at sais, it is

not easy. [laughter] we're committed to making these changes for the long term. >> any students over here? this young woman with the brown hair. yes. please wait for a microphone. please remember to give your name. >> my name is monica, a second year student. thank you so much for coming here and speaking to us. it is quite an honor for all of us. i am glad to speak on behalf of my class when i say that. as a current in turn -- i am not speaking on behalf of the u.s. government here -- [laughter] rwanda just underwent elections. another sub-saharan country are

coming -- have upcoming elections. how do you keep up with the leadership in africa where a lot of our global health funding is going and the impact on if that goes forward and recommendations for key with african leadership's? >> great question. at the core so much of the work that we do and the analysis that we undertake every day. that is why i mentioned south africa. leadership matters. it matters enormously. for years, the south african leadership, unfortunately, was in denial or was refusing to except the facts about hiv/aids and the account -- and the epidemic exploded in south africa. they have the highest percentage of hiv-infected people anywhere in the world.

president zuma has changed that. we were in south africa last year this month. we saw first hand, on the ground, what a difference it makes 20 president says, you know, we will start treating people. we will work with drug manufacturers to produce more drugs. we will open more clinics. we are appointing a health minister who is young, dynamic, and very committed. it was stunning and wonderful to see. so leadership matters. we can go into countries and deal with emergencies and we can even set up parallel systems, which we have done in many places because there was no other way to do it. clinicsun our own health coul and immunization programs and save lives and improve the quality of life. but if there is no buy-in from the leadership, this is not sustainable. not just in africa, but in asia

as well, there are some who are becoming quite wealthy in one respect of of natural resources. yet you see very little of the money going into health. at some point, which is really the underlying what the global health initiative is attempting to do, we have to tell countries we cannot help them any more than they are willing to help themselves. maybe their help is just getting the right people appointed to the right jobs because they do not have any more resources than that. but sometimes it is allocating their own resources so they have skin in the game, so to speak, and they all the seven care about where that money is going. some of it -- and they all of a setting care about where that money is going. some of it is having government

show their commitment. leadership is the outside and mas to whether you're going to have sustainable, effective health care in any country. i am hoping that, through this partnership, this global health initiative, we will see greater buy-in by leaders. our argument has to be that this has to be a comprehensive approach. of course, you need a road to bring people to the clinic, but it cannot be won or the other. we also want to do more work -- it can be one or the other. we also want to do more work

with ngo's and other institutions. we would like to see more integration globally. we're talking with countries that have programs in the countries that we are doing the global health initiative and we try to see where we can maximize the impact of our resources. ideally, someday, i would like to see a map of the world all lit up. if the united states is doing a health system in country x, then the scandinavian countries take the resources and go to countrywide, which the united states cannot do and -- and good to country y, which the united states can do. you can see how this can become the integrated system we hope for. but it is very difficult. we have also started discussions with china on development. at the last strategic and

economic dialogue that i and secretary geithner lead in beijing, we put development beyonon the agenda. china are present in africa and asia. in africa, there are millions of chinese who are working and are involved in the contract and the businesses that are being developed to there. often, the chinese will offer some kind of development aid in return for a mining contract. what we're trying to do is to make sure that, it they're going to do it, that it's somehow gets integrated. we have had conversations about one country where the chinese are building a road and we are building a hospital and we would really like it if the road would come to the hospital.

[laughter] those discussions are ongoing. we are trying to look at this holistic way. both buttressing and supporting leadership, trying to get help higher up on national agendas has to be one of our biggest and diplomatic efforts because our development experts cannot accomplish what they are trying to do it they do not get the support from the pilot -- from the country's. >> i am hopeful there are some students in the back who want to ask questions. >> madam secretary, my question is about the relationship between the health initiative and the mpg. a number of targets under the initiative, even if they are

achieved, will still show up the mdg's. do you see them as no longer achievable? if you do, what sort of that comes will you be looking for in the summit next year in new york? >> i do see them as achievable, but i also see their achievement as taking longer than any of us would have hoped for when there were first adopted back in 2000. i'm looking forward to the summit during the united nations general assembly in september. i have agreed to participate. what we are doing is continuing on the path toward the millennium development goal. but we are also taking stock and we have met with the u.n. officials responsible for the summit and the work on behalf of un mdg's through the various organs. everybody takes stock. we'll have to ask ourselves

where we have made progress n.y., where have we fallen short and what, what do you do to fill in the gap as we continue to the path toward achieving the goals that were set forth? i am sensing a greater openness to accountability, to measurement. it is not enough to carry locked and get -- to carry a lot and got into good -- to care a lot and go out and do good. you have to ask yourself what am i really doing? what am i doing to maximize progress toward mdg's and other goals that have been set? the picture in 2010 is a mixed one. i think we can take some pleasure and pride in the progress that has been made. child mortality is down, for example. there are some positive milestones that have been reached on the way to the goal.

but we have a long way to go. we hope to use the u.n. process in september as a form for bringing a lot of the multilateral organizations and the country donors to get to have this very frank discussion. robert shaw has started this extraordinary usaid to maximize the use of science and technology in tackling and solving global development challenges. we have some great ideas. in the united states, we work to implement them, but we want to spark this kind of effort worldwide. we think that technology can make a big difference in collecting and disseminating information that will help us better educate people about what they can do for themselves. we see the glass half full, but it has a long way to go to get to the top.

we are absolutely committed to mdg process and the eventual achievement of them. >> ok, the last question hopefully from a student. you are very eager back there. we will call on you in the green. you have been would patiently waiting. >> my name is allison, an incoming student here. what metrics do intend to use to measure the success of the global health initiative, specifically with regards to promoting women's health? >> we will be rolling out metrics, right guys? [laughter] let me answer that in a brief, non-scientific, non-statistician way. another initiative thatraj and eric had taken, cdc is the epicenter of the statistical

evaluation and reporting. they can give the rest of us some real guidance and help as to how best to do that. there are many different indicators on women's health, for example. we are focusing on maternal mortality because that is so measurable. we know where we have a better idea of what works and what it will take to have more women deliver babies successfully. there are all kinds of interventions from the very simplest, like a safe birthing kit, a piece of twine and a clean razor blade and a bar of soap and a piece of plastic to put under the woman, all the way up to treasury care for complicated pregnancies. we do will see the ad comes of how many women safely are able to deliver a healthy baby and how do we best meet the needs along the way.

that is built into our country ownership concept. we will also be looking at family planning distribution. i believe strongly is that better access to family planning is directly related to lower and fraternal child mcanally. people will be able to better -- child mortality. women will be better able to space their children and the births will be safe and successful. we also would like to see increases in the legal age for marriage. we know that young girls are more likely at physical risk for pregnancy and delivery. this is another way that development and diplomacy work together. we are encouraging countries to pass stronger laws and enforce those laws against child marriage so you do not have children between ages a of 10 and 16 trying to deliver babies.

we're looking at access to care, which is the variable that i gave. hiv aids now has a woman's face in africa. -- hiv/aids now has a woman's face and africa. continuing sexual abuse of girls and women by men infected with hiv, some have the very unfortunate superstition that having sex with a young girl cures you of the disease. so there are a lot of educational component of how we tried to change behavior and protect girls and women. those are just some of the examples of how we will, on a broad matrix, a judge ourselves, but also try to get partner countries. we would really like to see with themdg's, which sort of upset the format, i agree to our

measurements. we do have some, but we do not have enough. they are often more in the breach than in the actual implementation. i think there is a lot that we can do by just pulling together what we already know and trying to, frankly, publish it in a more digestible, understandable form. it was fascinating to me, in our last strategic dialogue with afghanistan, both when i was there last month and then there recent visit by president karzai and members of his government. their number one development request was to help on the issue of maternal mortality. when you think about it, year round back all the way to the first question about foreign policy, diplomacy, and development. there are varying degrees of latitude within afghan culture about -- degrees of attitudes

within afghan culture about health. working with other partners, in a concerted effort on maternal mortality in afghanistan, the u.s. and others, it gives you an opportunity to connect with segments of the population that may or may not be particularly supportive of anything else that we and others are doing. you have to look at how this fits into the overall strategic goals that we have in foreign policy. that is why i would end where i started. sometimes, a humanitarian emergency, like we are seeing in pakistan and with the 80th, you just act. you just do -- and with the heavy earthquake, you just act. you just do it because you have

the moral imperative to do so. but once the disaster has receded and the wreckage of andan cost of death o destruction and injury and farmland is left, then we have both a humanitarian and a strategic imperative. we are at our best when we are able to produce results where people see us as we see ourselves. the american people see us, and i certainly see our country, as a incredibly generous nation that has gone time and time again to the aid of others with whom we do not have much of a connection and perhaps the cold realpolitik would not dictate that we did so, but we have. if we're going to be investing

time, money, blood, in our efforts, i would like to see that we go into it with a clear view of what we're trying to accomplish and that we take into account the value and culture -- the values and culture of others as we do so. there certain things we have to address, with leadership absolutely at the top. i am optimistic about the global health initiative, about what it can mean in terms of results, and what it can also represent as a new model for a -- as a new model, how we better presenter sells to the world, where the united states leads by our values and the world can see what that means to them. thank you all very much. [applause]

x united nations inspector has books said last month that britain and the united states -- they found no weapons of mass destruction in iraq. after that, house majority whip james cliburn weighs in on a proposed site of the islamic community center near ground zero. he also talks about the congressional agenda. >> tomorrow morning, a conversation about congressional housing finance, timothy geithner, tom donovan, and other administration officials. live coverage from the treasury department begins at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 2.

>> the c-span network, we provide coverage of politics, public affairs, nonfiction books, and american history. it is all available to you on television, radio, all mine, and on social media networking sites. find our content on c-span the library. we take c-span on the road, bringing our resources to your community. it is washington bureau we, the c-span networks now available in over 100 million homes, created by cable, provided as a public service. >> former u.n. weapons extensoir hans blix testified last week. the british-wrecking great is an independent panel examining british involvement in the war. from london, this is almost three hours.

>> good afternoon and welcome. welcome to everyone this afternoon. our witness is dr. hans blix. you, sir, served as the executive chairman for the united nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission, which i think we are allowed to call unmovic, from march 1, 2000 until the end of june 2003. as chairman of unmovic you had overall responsibility for the inspection process in iraq. the process itself ran, we understand, from november 27, 2002 until march 18, 2003, just two days before the commencement of military action. we hope to look today at some detail about the inspection process, the context in which it took place and the stage it

had reached by the time the inspectors were withdrawn from iraq on march 18, 2003. now i say on every occasion and i repeat it this afternoon, we recognize that witnesses give evidence based on their recollection of events and we of course check what we hear against papers to which we have access and which we are still receiving. i remind every witness on each occasion you will later be asked to sign a transcript of the evidence to the effect that the evidence they have given is truthful, fair and accurate. with those preliminaries out of the way i will ask sir martin to gilbert to open the questions. martin? >> dr. blix, we would like to begin by looking at the history of inspections in iraq and in particular the legacy of the unscom inspections in the 1990s that set the context for unmovic's creation and your subsequent work. you were of course at the time

the director general of the international atomic energy agency, which also played a significant part in iraq. we have of course read your "disarming iraq" and all your reports. could you start by explaining to us what the wmd-related obligations of iraq were following the conclusion of the 1991 gulf war and the adoption of unscr 8711? >> right. yes. they were set out in resolution 687 of 1991 and iraq was to declare its weapons of mass destruction and the logistics of it to the facilities and such. then unscom was to verify the biological and chemical and missile part of the program and the iaea was to verify the nuclear part of the program. both unscom and iaea were to ensure the destruction of items they had found proscribed. the leverage were the sanctions, and the sanctions were quite draconian, simply

that no state was allowed to import any oil from iraq. so they were cut off. this question should have referred to unscr 687 altogether from their income. now the resolution 687 also foresaw that when everything was destroyed and eliminated there would be monitoring by un inspection and there was no time limit set for that. so they assume that the ban on import or weapons would remain for an indefinite period of time. at least it was not decided when. secondly, that monitoring would be there for a very long time. now the means to verify the iraqi declarations were by the

right to go anywhere and to request to see anybody, and to check with exporters and to receive intelligence from national intelligence organizations. the thought was at the time that it would be a relatively short time for disarmament, that it would be quick, that the sanctions would be so effective that iraq would declare everything. that proved a false assumption. the iraqis did not declare any biological program at all and they first denied there was a nuclear program, but very shortly thereafter they came up with some declaration and they enlarged it as we went along. now due to this lack of cooperation by the iraqis, the suspicions arose. there was no confidence at all between unscom and iaea on one side and the iraqis on the other. a verification developed from a

checking of their statements to a hide and seek as we saw it. in reality we know by now that saddam ordered the destruction of the weapons of mass destruction already in 1991. some would declare some chemicals remained and were later destroyed under unscom's supervision but a very large part was destroyed unilaterally by the iraqis without inviting the inspectors, which was of course a violation of the resolution. >> can i ask what were the particular areas in which unscom was successful and what were the areas which it was unable to resolve? >> i think that rolf ekeus, who was the first chairman of unscom, is fond of saying that more weapons of mass destruction were destroyed in iraq during the period of inspections than during the gulf war and that may well be right, though most of it perhaps was destroyed by the iraqis without the presence of the inspectors.

so it very much was discussed and someone has said this was really achieving disarmament without knowing it is going on. at the same time, of course, there was an attempt by the iraqis to keep as much as they could of their capability -- well, at least of their resources, that they saw huge buildings that had been used for the weapons program, and they would be judged, or sentenced for destruction. they presumably felt they could use them later for some other peaceful purpose or perhaps even to think one day they might revive the program. so they were trying to preserve as much as they could, and on the missile side there was -- they had a particular chance to do so, because the missiles were not proscribed except for those that reached, attained a range of 150 kilometers and more.

so that meant that continued work to the missiles area was legitimate. they could keep their engineers, they could keep their research institutions, and that also enabled them to stretch a bit and to exceed what really was acceptable and we discovered that later on, as we will probably come to. now i sometimes ask myself could one have, and i have seen the question has been asked in this commission before, could there have been a somewhat less exacting approach? the approach both we had and the unscom had, and that came originally from iaea, was what we called the material balance approach. we got their declarations. they had so-and-so much before the war started with iraq. they consumed so-and-so much during the war. they destroyed so-and-so much,

and was there something that should be left? this was the material balance. there were uncertainties in this. how much actually had they consumed in the war with iraq and how much had they destroyed, and moreover there was the question of how meticulous was their bookkeeping? i for one agreed with the majority that the iraqis were very good bookkeepers. it was a well organized state. therefore i became suspicious if the figures didn't tally. afterwards i think we have to recognize that perhaps it was not all that good, especially at the end of the gulf war. there was a rush and things were hurriedly buried and i think the british found some in the south of iraq after the war that had been hurriedly buried. there was not a recording of all of that. could there have been this meticulous material balance approach, could one have had a different one, less exacting?

it is not easy to devise one, but i remember well that in the iaea when we in 1991 said that the safeguard system that we had was inadequate, inspectors were not allowed to go to places they were not declared, and we switched then -- developed the reinforced safeguards, the so- called additional protocol. at that time we also said it is a bit too mechanic a approach in the material balance and this was easy and good for department of administration, bureaucracy to have such a rigid and simple, straightforward system, but didn't one have to exercise one's common sense as well? didn't one have to look at the country as a totality? some people complained to the iaea and said, "look, you are spending more time on canada than you are doing on libya and

that's not reasonable." we said that well, a police department, they can decide that this particular area is crime-infested and therefore we spend a lot of time, but international inspectors are more like inspectors at the airport. we assume everyone could be violating the rules and whether you wear a tie or not we examine you the same way. so that was our defense, but at the same time we had to admit that yes, maybe you have to combine this approach of the material balance with looking at the country in totality. if they are well-behaved -- you wouldn't use that term, but if they were very good at reporting, if there was a good order and there was an openness, well, then a certain sort of rebate could be given. maybe something in that direction could have been used in the case of iraq. one has to admit that over the years this tremendous search

for a few items, that was perhaps not worthwhile, that it would have been better to have something a bit more flexible. scott ritter who was an inspector for unscom came out after the war and said in his view iraq had been technically disarmed. well, i don't think he had sufficient evidence to back it up, but what he meant was probably that, yes, we knew after the war there were no nuclear weapons. there never were any, and moreover that the nuclear infrastructure was gone. so on that area the iaea, both i in 1997 and muhammad al- baradei in 1998 said that we did not think that they could resurrect a nuclear program within a very long time, but we could not guarantee there were not some minor items like prototypes of centrifuges or computer programs, etc.

so we wanted to write off the nuclear program, but of course it was not for us, it was for the security council and i have seen from some testimony here that i think the uk also wanted to close the nuclear dossier but the us refused, which we noticed at the time. >> if i could just go back to the general perception of unscom's work, our former foreign secretary jack straw told us in his evidence, "the iraqi regime had for four years following the gulf war and notwithstanding the best efforts of unscom inspectors and intelligence agencies been successful in wholly concealing an extensive biological weapons program." what impact did this have on the credibility of the inspections as a tool for achieving disarmament? >> well they had, of course, destroyed -- at least most of the biological weapons in 1991, but they denied in 1991 that they had the program and it was

not -- unscom was on its track to it and by 1995 unscom had concluded and the iraqis had admitted to unscom there had been a biological program. the big breakthrough came in the so-called chicken farm, kamil, the son in law of saddam hussein who defected to jordan and admitted there had been a biological program. i think the fact that unscom did not discover this from the beginning, although there could have been suspicions, shows the difficulties of finding traces. iraq is a big country. there were many bases. they had suspicions -- they came into facilities where there was fresh paint, etc. so there were suspicions, but they didn't find the iraqis red-handed on it. nuclear in a way was easier, because if you find a, nuclear, you say where is b?

if you find b, then where is c? nuclear was the easiest and biological was probably the most difficult. >> can i ask you when you came into your own unmovic position, what lessons did you yourself learn from the unscom experience with regard to what your work would be, the problems and the prospects? >> well, one reason i accepted the task was that i thought that some of the resistance met by unscom was due to the way in which they conducted their inspections. at the iaea we often thought they were too "rambo," if i may say so. they thought that the iaea were like diplomats coming in with striped pants. i thought -- i never thought that humiliating iraq was a very good way.

some of the content, i will not generalize, but some of it was i think humiliating. the iaea developed techniques of conversation, of seminars even with iraq, interviews and eventually we got ourselves a clear picture of the whole nuclear program. unscom i think also imitated some of that approach and learned a great deal, but this was one lesson that i took from the unscom affairs. otherwise we had many similar means. i mean, there was the inspection. we used overhead imagery received from the us and from france both at the iaea and unscom, and when we resumed in unmovic, we did the same. we also had people who were able to read these images. we also bought images then commercially, which was not

doable in the 1990s. there were big differences in the approaches and techniques. unscom frequently had very huge groups of inspectors that came in swarms, 50 or even up to near 100. they flew into bahrain through something called gateway, which was located in the american marine base. they were briefed there. they went in for the inspection. they came out. they were also debriefed at the american base, which i did not think was a very good idea. iaea did not use that. when we set up unmovic, we did not continue with gateway, but we set up a transit place in cyprus, which i think was a better arrangement. that leads me to another lesson which we drew. you recall that at the end of

1999 and the beginning of 2000 there was a scandal about unscom, that they had had very close relations with the intelligence in the us in particular, but also with the uk. there were inspectors in the teams who actually came from the intelligence services and performed a sort of dual function. how often i don't know, but this certainly happened and it exploded in the media and the whole of unscom was discredited at the time. this was one reason why the security council concluded they wanted to have a new agency, a new instrument. it was certainly my determination coming from the iaea where we would never have tolerated, if we had known it, any dual use of inspectors, that we would not have it. the cnd in the resolution that set up unmovic in 1284, it was taken that the staff should be under un contracts and un

obligations. this was a leading idea for me. i came from the iaea where we saw ourselves as international civil servants in the tradition that was started by a famous brit, sir eric drummond, the first secretary general of the league of nations who was very firm on this, and louis avenol too, on this, although he as the secretary general also had under the charter political responsibility. but the secretariat was the same. they were to be international civil servants. this was the way we saw it and i would not go along with any too close cooperation with intelligence. if you set the rule, both mohammed al-baradei and i, that yes, we would love to have information from intelligence. we would love to have sites given to us by them, but the traffic is one way. they tell us and we try to find, use this intelligence, try to find out on the basis where if there was something, i think that we would probably -- i think we probably told those who gave us the intelligence that, "yes, this is what we

found," or, "this is not what we found." however, if one had been rigid one would have said, "you listen to us in the security council," but i think it was a little more flexible than that, and i think that moreover had been reasonable. so we saw ourselves. this was even more good lessons. we were international civil servants. we had the mandate from the security council, not from the cia, the us government or the uk government. >> thank you very much. that's very helpful. >> i will ask sir roderic lyne to pick up the questions now. >> i would like to move the story forward to the autumn of 2002, getting into the frame of reference that we are really focusing on in this inquiry. unmovic, as you say, was set up by resolution 1284 passed on december 17, 1999. march 2000 you had taken up i think your new duties. then on september 16, 2002 iraq

finally makes an offer to allow the inspectors, the unmovic inspectors to come into iraq. why it was that iraq at this point, having rejected the inspectors up to then, turned around and invited them to come in? >> i think the main reason was the military build-up by the united states. the idea had begun gently in the spring of 2002 and it accelerated in the summer of 2002 and in august 2002 you had the us national security, what's it called --doctrine or paper in which they said some sensational things. to me at any rate it was sensational. they said that the us can use

force without -- when it sees a growing threat. i had always seen and still see the un charter as a fundamental progress in the international community when it says that states are not allowed to use force against other states in territorial integrity, etc, with two exceptions. one was the self-defense against an armed attack and the other is when there is an authorization from the security council, but the us here did not even refer to the un charter article 2, paragraph 4 or article 51, but simply said that in the time of nuclear weapons and of missiles this doesn't apply. of course, this was against the background of 9/11 and the whole reasoning that with 9/11 you cannot sit and wait for a danger growing.

if you do that, then it gets too late. you have to do something before. well, that is a very fundamental issue even today, because if you say that you must wait for the attack to occur before you can do something, well, then it is rather late. on the other hand, if you say that you can take action before that, then you have to rely upon intelligence. there is something in between this and that is the imminent threat which already came up in the 19th century with the famous case between the uk and the us. if you don't have to wait until they cross the territorial border, but if you see the rockets coming, then you can intervene. well, that was probably not good enough for the united states. we have seen other strains on this. it is still fundamental today. we saw in kosovo how there was a bombing without an authorization by the security council, much criticized by many since, and i am not convinced

myself it was a legal action. we saw the british intervention in sierra leone. we saw the indian gobbling up goa, or an even better place perhaps nyerere's attack on uganda, amin's uganda. that was also not without an authorization. so there has been some stretch on this, but the us in 2002 at the time you refer to, threw it overboard, i simply say. i think they were high on military at the time. they said, "we can do it." >> you commented in your book, "disarming iraq" you said and i quote, "i did not see that increasing military pressure and armed action necessarily excluded a desire for a peaceful solution." in this particular case, as you just said, the military pressure -- had from your point of view the useful effect of getting you and your inspectors into iraq. >> that's right. >> at that point -- this is before resolution 1441 is actually passed -- what were

the timelines under which unmovic was expected to operate and was it focused just on verifying the destruction of weapons or also of programs? >> well, resolution 1284 was a sort of -- not a resignation. that's saying too much, but they certainly took a step back. they felt that the approach they had was too rigid, and things were not moving in the un's direction. the inspectors were out in 1998. the sanctions were eroding and there was also disagreement within the security council between those who wanted to do away with the sanctions altogether and those wanted to retain them. however, under the leadership of

mr. amorim, who is now the foreign minister of brazil, they came to an approach which was less rigid than the 687. they said that you are not -- the emphasis is to identify key unresolved disarmament issues. i say not the whole lot necessarily, but key unresolved disarmament issues, and if we were to report that iraq had cooperated to achieve this 120 days in a row then the security council would consider suspending sanctions, not lifting sanctions but suspending sanctions. the third element that was new then was that we should also have international civil servants. they wanted to cut off the connection with the intelligence. so unmovic mandate was a milder one than 687 and 1441 that came later was sort of clawing back

or at least giving the impression of a greater impatience. unmovic gave us time lines, but they were to start inspections i think, present a work program some 60 days after we had gone in, which curiously became to be defined as i think in march 2003. i don't remember quite why, but it was rather late at any rate. they wanted to give us time to find our way through inspections before we formulated our work program, which was a reasonable thing to do, but they didn't put any end to unmovic inspections. it was 120 days and if we were to report that the iraqis were not cooperating, then they would suspend -- they would impose sanctions again. so there was no end set except one was sure monitoring would continue. >> but it therefore appeared that 1441 had changed a timeline from 120 days to 60

days, although it was not expressed as a final deadline, it was a period within which you were asked to report. is that right? >> well, 1441 did not give any other timeline than update in 60 days after we have started inspection. i am a little puzzled i must say at how they calculated, because the impression was that the invasion would take place through turkey and that it would occur even in the beginning of january, and that would have given very, very short time to the inspections. as it turned out, we only got three and a half months, but had they gone into turkey it would have been even shorter. there was nothing in 1441 to say we could not continue beyond march. >> were you consulted on the drafting of 1441? >> yes, but not on this particular point. the first draft -- the american drafts were draconian, more than draconian in the beginning and i thought absurd, and i think the community in new york felt it also.

over time it became more reasonable. i wanted the resolution for different reasons. first of all, i think we were in a new ball game, and secondly, they wanted to strengthen the rights of the inspectors. i thought that was very important, because unscom had so many conflicts with iraqis about their mandate and i thought, "let's settle that." muhammad al-baradei and i had negotiations with iraqis and settled a great many of them but not all. eventually the security council in 1441 said, "on those points which blix and al-baradei have not been satisfied we decide the iraqis have to abide by what they said." so it was the first time in my life that anything i had written in a letter was elevated to world law, which was nice, but the main point on it was really that it strengthened our position and we thought we could thereby avoid having a lot of debates with iraq about the mandate. >> so you were broadly content with 1441? >> i was content with it and there was one other reason. that was i liked the idea of a

new declaration. the declaration i felt might give iraq a chance for a new slot. if they had weapons, which i thought might very well be the case, they had an opportunity now. here it is, and they could put the blame on some general or other. so i was hoping for that. i was in favor of the resolution. >> did you feel that it gave iraq a realistic possibility of meeting the requirements of the resolution? >> yes, except that it was very hard for them to declare any weapons when they didn't have any. >> no, but we didn't know they didn't have any. i mean, i ask the question because we have had at least one witness that has said that actually the way it was drafted was actually as a trigger for military action, but that's evidently not what you felt at the time from what you have just

said. >> no. there is this big discussion as to whether a second resolution would be required. i for my part thought that to me it was clear that a second resolution was required. i have seen from some of the testimony that some of the british felt that it was desirable, but it was not absolutely indispensable. i saw that jeremy greenstock had said that he certainly wanted a second resolution, but he also recognized that the views in the security council were very divided on it. i think it was ambassador meyer who said there were the three groups. there were the americans on the one side who said, "no, nothing is needed." there were others who said, "you need a second resolution," and the british were somewhere in between. now the resolution, as you recall, simply says that if something happens, in the inspectors' report or status report there is a violation, then the council shall convene and they shall consider the situation. well, in diplomatese of new york maybe this implies that

something will happen, but i don't think that's necessarily how i would read it as a lawyer. if i sat on the other side of the security council, i would say, "no, we will convene and reconsider but it is an absurdity that we should hand it out, give a free hand to anyone in the security council to decide that this resolution has not been respected and therefore we have the right, unilaterally, individually, to take military action." it would accrue to the russians, to the chinese, to anyone. this to me was not a very reasonable invitation. >> in your book, just talking about the divided views, you say that the french consent was given on the understanding that a material breach could only be registered and acted upon on the basis of a report from the inspectors, i.e. from yourself. now some witnesses have argued

to us that when the french were voting for resolution 1441, they were fully conscious of the american position that no further security council decision was required to determine a further material breach. were the french really of the view that the council would have to take a further decision or had they, as some witnesses have put it to us, lost that battle? >> no. i don't think they had lost the battle. i think they were aware of the american interpretation. they had wrangled about it. my reading is that the french and the germans too had tried to get it clearly put into the resolution that there would be a new resolution needed, but they had not succeeded. they had to give up on that one. so they went into the resolution accepting it with the open eyes that some interpret it one way and others interpret it the other way, which not a very

exceptional event in the un, i may say. but reading simply the words of it, i would have said that "convene and consider" does not really give an authorization to go to war. i think jeremy greenstock first also was of that view but later said maybe it could be interpreted otherwise. >> so was it then your understanding that it was the reports of unmovic which would be the element that would determine whether or not there had been a further material breach, or did it leave it open to members of the security council to determine on the basis of the reports you made a failure by iraq to meet its obligations? >> well, i think our job was to provide evidence and we might say that, yes, we think this is a breach of their obligations, but in the last resort i think it would be for the security

council to judge whether in their view it was a breach or not. not only that, but also decide would it follow from there that they would authorize armed force? this is not what 1441 said. this was sort of implied and i think jeremy greenstock in his testimony said, you know, there was an expectation that the council would take action, but i would have sided clearly with the french and the germans that this was not a necessity. i find it also sort of absurd that the security council would sit there and say, "yes, if any one of us comes in and maintain this is a breach, then any one of us can take military action." i don't think that's the way the security council operates or we want it to operate. giving it a clean hand -- i am sure they will be more cautious in the future about drafting their resolutions and not leaving any such implication open. >> so, just to be clear, there are really three points there. the first is that the

responsibility for determining the material breach did not rest with you. you were providing evidence on which the security council would, as you say, make a judgment. >> no. >> that we are agreed on. secondly, your interpretation of 1441 was that a judgment needed to be made by the security council. having a discussion was not enough. there was an implication that a judgment was needed, that iraq was in further material breach. am i right on that? >> also a decision to authorize. >> then the third point is that before using military action, in your view, an actual decision was needed to authorize that? >> an authorization, yes. >> this was absent from security council resolution 1441. i know you are among many other things a very distinguished lawyer and the legal argument has been made that you didn't need a decision, because you reach right back to security

council resolutions 678 and 687, which had not been revoked, which would authorize military action against iraq in the event of a breach of the ceasefire conditions. so was it necessary to have a further decision? >> yes, i still think it was indispensable. first of all, the 687 and the earlier resolutions, they were authorizing use of force against an iraqi aggression against kuwait. we were not in such an important situation now. secondly, i think that when condoleezza rice, for instance, said, and i quoted in my book, when she said that the military action taken was simply upholding the authority of the security council, it strikes me as something totally absurd. here you are in march 2003 and they knew that three permanent members, the french and the chinese and the russians, were

opposed to any armed action, and they were aware that they could not get a majority for a resolution that even implied the right to military action. to say then that yes, the action upheld the authority of a council that they knew was against it i think strikes me as going against common sense. >> although the military pressure from the united states had helped to uphold the authority of the security council, because for the first time in many years iraq had paid some attention to the security council resolutions. >> yes. >> so your distinction is between pressure and action. >> that's true. threat is a different thing from actually taking action. >> but at a certain point someone calls your bluff is the problem. >> that's true. you might be called a paper tiger eventually but the charter prohibits you from using armed force. it does not necessarily prohibit you from exerting pressure. there is a grey zone there. you are not allowed to go too far in the pressuring either.

in any case i would have tolerated that and i think that's frequently done, economic and military pressure. today we have economic pressure against iran. i do not think that's illegal. i think the use of weapons or force against iran today would be illegal. >> without a security council resolution. >> without a security council authorization. as you say, the americans, to them, it was indifferent. they had already a doctrine that said, why should we have a permission slip from the security council? so they didn't need it. i admit i agree with you that the pressure was the one that moved the iraqis and as the pressure mounted, yes, they became also more cooperative. >> i think we will want to come back to that a little later on in the story. i am going to turn to sir lawrence freedman in a moment. we are in for quite a long afternoon and it would very much help with the transcription if we could take a measured pace. thank you. >> just following up from what

has been said, i mean, you have made the point about the americans suggesting that they were upholding the security council resolutions and you noting that the security council as a whole did not seem to go along with that at that time, but, as i recall, part of the american argument was to challenge the security council to uphold its own resolutions. there was a concern that from the late 1990s a number of key security council members had lost interest in pursuing this question and therefore this whole exercise might peter out. do you think that was a reasonable concern? >> well, i think there was at least implied from the us side that if the security council doesn't agree with us and go along with our view, then it sentences itself to irrelevance.

i think that's a very presumptuous attitude. i think the us at the time was high on military. they felt they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable to do so. i think this has changed with obama. obama says yes, they will still retain the right to -- they reserve the possibility to take unilateral action but they will try to follow international rules. >> even before 9/11 and the bush administration even there was a concern that the security council was losing a grip of this issue. >> well, from the cold war, of course, the security council was paralyzed. the security system of the un did not work during the cold war, but i think it changed completely with the end of the cold war. in 1991, 1990 the russians and the others went along with the action against iraq, and bush the elder, the president, said that this was a new international order. well, that collapsed with his son and i think that the world has changed dramatically with the end of the cold war.

it is only recently in the last few years some american statement with samman and others have said, well, we ought to re-discover, the cold war is over. so the security council in my view was not paralyzed in the 1990s. they are still not paralyzed. that's why it is reasonable to look to it and to have respect for its decisions. >> thank you. what i want to ask you about is the various assessments that were published on iraq's weapons of mass destruction. there is a number published in 2002, the september 9 one by the institute for strategic studies, the british government's dossier of september 20 and then there was an american one in october 2002. i would just be interested in your views of these assessments at the time you saw them and read them. obviously we are particularly interested in your view of the british dossier. >> right. well, the british dossier was

shown to me in new york. i read it and i said to the young diplomat who took it to me that i thought it was interesting, useful. i think i probably also said, as he has quoted me saying, that i did not think it was exaggerated. however, i said this at a time we had not restarted inspections even. much of it of the dossier was taken based upon unscom's accounts, but there was this big difference that unscom never said these items exist. they said these are unresolved issues. in fact, i don't think there is any resolution of the security council in which they assert affirmatively that the weapons exist. so this was a big difference. however, it seemed plausible to me at the time, and i also felt -- i, like most people at the time, felt that iraq retains

weapons of mass destruction. i did not say so publicly. i said it perhaps to mr. blair in september 2002 privately, but not publicly because i think there is a big difference between your role as a trustee of the security council, "investigate this and report to us," and the role of a politician. individual governments here could prosecute and say, "we are accusing you, you have this," but that was not my role. the security council did not assume it and therefore i didn't say anything about it publicly. privately, yes, i thought so. there was one particular type of weapons of mass destruction of which i was suspicious and that was the anthrax. we had an inspector in australia, rod barton, who later wrote a book about the whole thing. he came to me and said, "here is the evidence we have on anthrax." it seemed to me to be very convincing. it had one element that was worrying me. that was that it relied on some cia document, finding. they were not willing to show it

to us. i was not willing to say or affirm then that, "yes, we assert that there is anthrax," but we were very suspicious. i came out right from september 2002 on to the very end when i said, "yes, there might be weapons of mass destruction." i had this in mind. i could not exclude that others existed but when i saw this dossier that was taken to me, yes, i thought it was plausible, because what unscom has said in its report 1999 was these things are missing and they assert that is there. they might have had information which we have not had. i hoped that at any rate. so that was my view on the british dossier. the american dossier differed somewhat. in some respects it was a little milder and others a little tougher. the institute, iiss, i have not been able to recheck, but they were fairly severe as well. they all went in the same direction. they were not directly useful to us, because they didn't say how did they come to this

conclusion or where was the stuff. they simply asserted "yes, it is here." >> just then to confirm what you have just told us, your feeling at the time was that there probably was something there. >> yes. >> and that, as you say, you were sharing quite a broad consensus. i would just be interested in your views at this point about the difficulty of modulating assessments of this sort. whethera question of iraq was in violation of past un agreements which could actually have been quite trivial amounts of material or non- disclosure of documents, but would nonetheless strictly be a material breach. there is questions about the degree to which iraq was preparing for reconstitution should the opportunity arise. there are questions about

whether they actually had a program and stocks working at the time. was it your view that these things could get rather muddled up in the way that the issue was being discussed, whether in these papers or in the wider public debate? >> well, in september 2002 i don't think anyone really was talking much about the reconstitution, but it was about the actual existence, and the british dossier simply said that iraq has b weapons, it has c, and it has missiles. it didn't assert nuclear. i think it was talking about the possibility of reconstitution and bush certainly in the autumn of 2002 pointed to various buildings and said these were connected with nuclear in the past and they are now rebuilding them. the iraqis shortly thereafter opened the buildings to journalists and they were empty. so at that time i don't think the reconstitution was a major problem. on the nuclear side we were fairly sure -- we were sure in

1998 there was hardly anything left. like i said, we wanted to close the dossier. this was an area that i was no longer responsible for, it was iaea, but in the autumn of 2002 we began to hear about the contract allegedly made with niger about the import of raw uranium, of uranium oxide, and i reacted -- that was perhaps the first occasion when i became suspicious about the evidence because i thought to myself, "why should iraq now import raw uranium which is very far from a weapon? they have to refine it. it has to go through enrichment and all these things." so i became a bit suspicious about it. that was muhammad's responsibility. as we know, in march 2003 he came to the security council and the iaea had eventually got a copy of the document and concluded i think in less time than a day that it was a forgery.

he said it was not authentic. it was a diplomatic way of saying it was fake. perhaps it would have been better if they had said that. that to me and also the nuclear business about the aluminum tubes which figured very long -- i forget which one was in the british dossier but they mentioned one of them. they also mentioned the mobile laboratories i think. the niger document was scandalous. if iaea could conclude in a day's time that this was a forgery and this document had been dancing between the italians and to british and the americans and to the french and they all relied upon it and bush alluded to it and mentioned it in the state of the union message in 2003, i think that was the most scandalous part. >> i would like to say something about the niger question just in the light of what you have said because the butler committee, which you recall, concluded the british government had intelligence from

several different sources, that the visit to niger was for the purpose of not actually the acquisition of uranium but acquiring it, the forged documents were not available to the uk government at the time it made its assessment. so the fact there was forgery does not actually change the british government's assessment on the niger issue. i thought for the record i should just say that. >> i am glad they didn't manage to misinterpret that one. >> just then to conclude this bit here, i suppose what i am interested in is the question of threat. your job really was to say this is the evidence. it was not up to you to say you should be really worried about this. your job was to say, "this is the evidence of the extent to which there is a breach of un resolutions," based on the evidence you had.

it was not to go further than that. >> well, i think you would have to distinguish between different types of revelations or evidence that you find. you know we were given sites to inspect by the uk and the us and we wanted these sites and felt, "these people are 100 per cent convinced that there are weapons of mass destruction, but they also then should know something about where they are." we went to these sites and in no case did we find a weapon of mass destruction. we did find engines that had been illegally imported, we found a stash of documents that should have been declared. they did not reveal anything new. so there is evidence of more or less grey things. even the missiles i think falls into that category. they certainly violated their

obligations on the missiles, but we concluded that the al- samoud 2 type missile was prohibited, because it had a longer range than 150 kilometers and they had performed a test flight i think with 180 or 183 kilometers. so our international experts that we consulted concluded they were banned, but still it was on the margin. perhaps even more serious was their plan to combine several engines and make missiles of much longer range than they really had tried. here in answer to what you said i think that yes, you still have to retain your common sense, that there are some things that are more serious violations than others. >> just on that, i mean, i recall an argument i think from rolf ekeus that it would not be surprising if the iraqis were concentrating on delivery

systems because it is not that difficult if you are determined and have the know-how to rebuild your stocks of chemical and biological weapons but there is no point in doing that unless you had a delivery vehicle. would that be -- would you share that view? >> yes. above all, they were allowed to have this. so it enabled them to continue to do research and development, and to cheat a bit which they did. >> thank you very much. >> dr. blix, i have really a single question, which is about the burden of proof and where it lay. i know from your book you have formed a view about it. so here we are. we have resolution 1284. we have resolution 1441. now we are at the end of 2002. there is much international concern about iraq's failure to comply with the will of the international community and some nations more troubled than that about possible holdings of weapons.

so was it up to iraq to prove through your inspection regime that it, saddam's regime, was innocent, or was it up to the international community through yourself to prove that iraq was guilty? which way did that go, because it was both a political question, i take it, and a legal question? >> i think the iraqis tried to say that the general legal rule is unless you are proved guilty, you must be presumed innocent, and i tried to explain to them that this was not a parallel when it comes to a state, that a guy may be accused of having a weapon illegally and if he is not proved guilty, then he will be innocent. however, i said with regard to iraq, you had these weapons, and people would laugh at me if i said i should presume you were innocent.

we make no assumption at all. we do not assume you have weapons and we do not assume you don't have weapons. we will simply look for evidence. of course, it was difficult for them. it is difficult for anyone to prove the negative, to prove they didn't have it. they said so, "how can we prove this?" i admitted in public, "yes, it is difficult for to you do so but it is even more difficult for us. you after all have the archives and people, etc. you must make best use of this." >> in effect then the work of your inspectors could go forward without having to form a final view. that would be for the security council in your judgment. >> yes. >> yes. thank you. i think i will ask sir martin gilbert to pick up the questions. >> i would like to turn now to the iraqi declaration which was received by unmovic in baghdad on december 7, 2002. unscr 1441 required that iraq

make "a currently accurate full and complete declaration of its wmd holdings and programs." how important did you expect the declaration to be in assisting you in your objectives? >> well, my hopes were that they would declare whatever they had. i did believe at that time that yes, they might well have something and that this would be the occasion to put the blame upon some authority or some general in iraq. so i was quite hopeful that this would come. now that was also the reason why i was very disappointed when it came. it was 12,000 pages. it could have been slimmer if they hadn't repeated several things several times over, but they had only had one month and it was a lot of work.

so i was very disappointed. it did give some news regarding the period 1998 to 2002, and especially on the biological it gave some news, but it didn't really resolve any major point on the unresolved issues. >> what were the major deficiencies you saw in it at the time? >> i don't think that anyone would have been satisfied unless they had come up with a report that, "here are the weapons." certainly the americans would not have been satisfied with anything less than that and i was also perhaps unfairly saying this is a deficiency in the document. they had the difficulty. they could not declare something very much because they didn't have it very much. >> but in terms of the material breach did these deficiencies as seen by you at the time constitute a material breach? did they go some way towards resolving that? >> no, we were disappointed that they didn't come out with them, but we had never maintained they had them. so i didn't --

i certainly could not construe it as a material breach. >> i mean, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight and what we know, is there more that iraq could have done with this declaration? >> yes, maybe, because when we look forward to the 2003 in february and march, then they became more proactive, as the term was. the resolution required active, unconditional and immediate cooperation, and as the us pressure mounted and they really saw the dangers, then they also became more active. maybe it was also a difficulty for the iraqi leadership, i mean under saddam, to persuade him to go along with something. that is possible, but certainly i have been criticized and people said that at the end of january 2003, "you were very critical of the iraqis, but

then february 14 and march 7 in your statements you became more upbeat." they say, "why did you change your opinion?" i say, "look here, if i am there to observe and the circumstances change i damn well ought to also change my report." that is what happened, the iraqis became more cooperative. let me take examples. a major matter was what had they unilaterally destroyed in 1991? unscom had undertaken some excavations of things, places where they had destroyed things, but not all. some places they had not dared to, because it was dangerous. the iraqis then in february 2003, i think it was in february, offered that we will excavate some of these things again. they came -- i remember we were in baghdad, mohammed and i. they said, "look, with modern techniques we might even reconstitute and re-find the volumes that had been destroyed."

i was a bit skeptical, as a scientist. i thought if you pour 10 liters of milk in 1990 will you be able to ten years later find there was 10 liters? i was a bit skeptical. our scientists said, "yes, we can go along and excavate and look for this." that was one thing the iraqis did in 2002 and it did give results, actually, because the place we dug up, they did not find the anthrax or chemical weapons but they found the fragments of the bombs that had been exploded. they were able to reconstitute them and come up with a conclusion that the iraqi statement had been fairly correct. so it was an active cooperation. i take another example. that related to who participated in this destruction, and we said, "look here, you must have some idea of who did it. can we talk to them? can we interview them?" they came up with quite a number of numbers actually. i think 50 or 60 names, maybe more. i said, "if you have a list of people who participated, don't you also have lists of what you actually destroyed." they had shown earlier on a diary of somebody who did

something but not so much. that was another one. another item was interviews. i was always skeptical about the interviews of iraqis because any interview in iraq would be -- they would probably know about it. they would have a tape recorder hidden somewhere if they were alone or they would have a minder. very frequently the witnesses wanted to have the minder present because thereafter they could have their testimony that they had not revealed anything they should, but we were given both on the us side, especially on the us side but also from the uk, they say that -- why don't you take them abroad? at first i had the feeling they just wanted us to kidnap these people and take them abroad. i thought it was an atrocious idea. later on there was a great deal of pressure and i concluded that you must ask the iraqis to say that you will release people to go abroad, but i must say i never thought we would get very much from them even abroad.

the americans said they can take their whole family with them, ten people, but they will still have some relatives, someone against whom reprisals could have been taken. now in retrospect we know they would have said they did not know about anything. these were areas in which the iraqis were forthcoming in the end of february and the march, under us military pressure, to be sure, but nevertheless that was a big change. i was cautious in reporting it to the un security council, saying, "i note these things but at the same time we must see how much does it actually produce." so i was cautious all the way through, but this was the reason why i changed my view. i talked to prime minister blair on february 20, 2002 and then i said i still thought that there were prohibited items in iraq but at the same time our belief, faith in intelligence had been weakened.

i said the same thing to condoleezza rice. both condoleezza rice and prime minister blair, i sort of alerted to the fact that we were skeptical. i made the remark that i cited many times, wouldn't it be paradoxical for you to invade iraq with 250,000 men and find very little. so certainly i gave some warning that things had changed and there might not be so much. >> thank you very much. >> just for the record i think you were referring to a discussion between yourself and prime minister blair in 2003. we heard 2002. >> yes. >> by the way, it would be very helpful if we could keep it as slow as possible. >> i talk too fast. >> i will now turn to sir lawrence freedman again. >> there was a lot of interest in the potential of the smoking gun and you have already given an indication that's certainly not what you found, but you have mentioned a number of other things that you did find which were small in themselves but not without significance.

i think you have mentioned the chemical warheads didn't have chemicals in them but they could take them, the missiles, nuclear documents. was there anything else you found in addition to those that were prohibited items or indicated something suspicious? >> well, there were the missile engines. the warheads i think was the most important, i think that was in january that we found them, and i remember i was in london at the time when i was told about this, and i thought, "well, maybe this is it." maybe this is the tip of the iceberg that we are now seeing and maybe we will find more. as time went by and we really found more fragments, i think -- i concluded that it was an ice -- might well have been an ice that had been broken long ago and these were the flows that remain of it and that was the reality, but in january, yes, i still thought that maybe you

find more, but as to actually findings, no. it is true that we were -- we were looking for smoking guns, and rather towards the end the us when they wanted to discredit us came and said that, "look, we know that you have found the pile of automatic non-piloted --" >> the drones. >> the drones. "you have not reported that. you have also found a contraption for spreading of chemical weapons." i talked to our people about it and they said, "yes, we are dealing with these things, but they are not really significant" and these things disappeared. so there was very little we found. the missile was the most important. of course we ordered them destroyed even though they did not exceed the permitted range very much. we had time to destroy about 70

of these missiles, which was quite a significant thing. >> in terms of the things you have mentioned how did the finds come about? was it because of just regular inspections, because the iraqis had declared them or because of intelligence that you had received? >> the chemical munition was something that we found ourselves and it was at the site that had been declared by the iraqis. so it was a well-known site, and i think that the us later on tried to blow it up a bit, but this was something we found. we received altogether some 100 ideas, tips about sites to go to and we had time to go to about 30 of them during the period, and in no case did we find a weapon of mass destruction, but we did find something illegally imported. i think the missile engine was on the basis of a tip from the

uk maybe. the stash of nuclear documents also came from a tip from the uk. when i read some of the testimony made and given here, they seem to be very proud that, "yes, we made four hits out of ten." they should ask what was the hit? if the hit had been a weapon of mass destruction it would have been interesting, but these were hits of fragments. so they were not so important. >> so, just to conclude, what do you think these finds did indicate about iraq's level of compliance with past resolutions, including 1441? >> yes. i mean, they ought to have declared the documents. they should have declared the engines, etc. so that was a lack of compliance. you can say that. i think one can also say that was compliance with every detail of the instructions the most important, or was the weapons of mass destruction that we wanted? there is the different value and different types of evidence

and i didn't think the evidence we got was very important. >> thank you. >> i will ask baroness prashar to pick up the questions. >> thank you, chairman. dr. blix, i want now to look at the question of the iraqi cooperation with the inspection regime. starting first of all with issue of access to sites. access to sites was clearly a very key measure of iraq's willingness to cooperate. how did they measure up to this particular criteria? >> from the outset their cooperation on this score was good -- >> yes. >> and i said so. borrowing from muhammad al- baradei i made a distinction between cooperation on procedure and cooperation on substance. i said that iraq cooperates on the whole well on procedure, in particular on access. on no particular occasion were we denied access. in this sense, of course, it was a contrast from unscom which

were frequently denied access, perhaps sometimes because they felt humiliated and they were frustrated and wanted to demonstrate, but, of course, that was interpreted as a will to hide something. we never had a denial of access. we had some difficulties of access when we came to saddam's palaces. i think there was a short delay of a quarter of an hour or something like that, but there was never a denial of access. so i think they had made up their mind, and that was in marked contrast to unscom and should have been noticed. on substance on the other hand we felt that, no, we did not get that proactive cooperation in the declaration or in january, and i said even in january my statement on january 7 that was seen as very critical of iraq, that they don't seem even to have come to terms with the idea of disarmament.

it was a very harsh statement. perhaps partly out of disappointment, but also in part because i wanted to warn them that, "look here, if you are not more cooperative, this is the kind of reports you will get." i remember reuters reported from london that we had said that we would like to have the cooperation and if we don't get that, they will get critical report. so in january we came out with these very critical comments and then they changed, whether as a result of my comments or probably more as a result of a build-up, the military build- up, yes. >> you have already mentioned the question of minders. in your book you note that on one occasion you complained to the iraqis that the ratio of minders was about 10-1. how did you view this heavy presence of minders? did it signify lack of cooperation or were they a source of obstruction to you?

>> that case had regard to the helicopters i think. they wanted to have -- we said, "ok, you can send minders along with our helicopters." they said 10-1. we complained and they changed it immediately to 1-1. otherwise the minders, of course, were necessary, but they were not there to guide us. we could go anywhere we liked. the procedure was that in the evening before an inspection the chief inspector would tell the iraqis, "we will start at 10:00 from this place and you should have a minder to go along with us." he was not told where they were going. we never discovered or saw they had known in advance where we were going. then they were there to be a liaison, if you like. when you come to the site, if there is any problem, then they had authority and they could contact their authority. so minders were necessary, but 10-1 was an absurdity and they went away from there. >> did you find that obstructive, there were so many

of them? >> i think they were a necessity. they were sometimes helpful. we had an accident in which unfortunately the chinese inspector died on the road. the iraqi minders were there and they helped us for a hospital and all that. so they were necessary. they cooperated on procedure. >> but when you briefed the security council on january 27, 2003, you noted some recent disturbing incidents and harassment? >> yes. >> now that was a question of demonstrations and so on. how serious were these incidents and what did they signify? >> well, it is hard to believe that they could have occurred without the consent or perhaps even authorization from the dictatorial state. so we took them rather seriously and i didn't say i immediately reported them to the security council, because that's the means of pressure i could have on them. i can't imagine they were spontaneous. i saw one testimony here we had given -- i forget who it was testified that the uk had given them a lot of sites and all they met were demonstrations and stones

almost. that's not really true. we performed on 30 of these. yes, there was some harassment and some demonstrations, but by and large this was very useful. i certainly wanted to continue. we found material, but we didn't find material that was relevant to weapons of mass destruction. i think what was really important about this business of sites given was that when we reported that, no, we did not find any weapons of mass destruction, they should have realized i think, both in london and in washington, that their sources were poor. their sources were looking for weapons, not necessarily for weapons of mass destruction. they should have been more critical about that. we on the other hand had very rarely contact with any sources. we based our conclusions upon the overhead imagery or upon interviews, etc, and that did not hold these errors.

intelligence will be used to this, that there are people that defect and give them intelligence and they want to get some reward for it so they will be inclined to give what they think the interrogators want to hear. we were not subjected to that danger. so the lesson from this site affair would have been, i think, they should have drawn the conclusion that their sources were poor. >> can i come on to the question of concealment, because throughout this period there were repeated allegations by the united states and the uk in particular that the iraqi regime was involved in concealment activity. how did you view these allegations and was there substance in them? >> well, we had learned from the whole 1990s that they might have been concealing things, and we -- to take the case of anthrax again, that was the prime case. where was it? 10,000 liters, where? did they keep it somewhere? so we assumed that they might

be concealing something and we had lots of sites to inspect, inherited from unscom and also from the iaea. so there were lots of places we wanted to go. so we certainly did not exclude. no, no, we really thought if there is something, it will be concealed. >> i mean, in cases of small items, such as test tubes and technical documentation and so forth, what chances would there have been of you actually uncovering them? >> no. on very small items it will be difficult to do so and computer programs, etc, or prototypes of weapons, but stores, stocks of chemical weapons or biological weapons is another matter. we went to military sites. we went to the biological laboratories. we went to industries, to places where it could be plausible these things would be kept. >> do you want a break? >> yes. i think we have been going for an hour and a quarter. let's break for ten minutes and then come back. thank you.

>> ok. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> we were in the midst of some questions from baroness prashar. she is going to continue i think. >> i want to continue on the question of cooperation of the iraqi regime. can i look at the question of legislation? >> registration? >> legislation. you note in your book that the iraqi regime could perhaps have been much more forthcoming in some of its actions on the subject of enacting legislation, which you said could have been a requirement in iraqi law, the acquisition of wmd. where did this proposal first come from? where did it come? where did it come?