let's not leap ahead. >> you are not a member, and you have taken great pains to make clear you are not a member. i'm just wondering, are you looking at having an ad hoc tribunal? >> again, as i was trying to say, you are leaping ahead of the process. we will be gathering facts as an international community about what happened in libya, and the responsibility of the government for the violence and violations of human rights that have occurred. once we have a consensus on what has occurred and who is responsible, then the international community working through the united nations will determine next steps. >> really depends on where you want to go. is it conceivable, looking

again at what britain is doing, that the international community, the u.s. could be looking at the possibility of working with the international community to launch some type of concerted -- shall we say -- military action to go into libya and protect those people in spite of gaddafi because he has given up his sovereignty? >> as i said, we have a range of options. we are concerned about the humanitarian situation on the ground, and that will be, you know, one of a number of areas that we focus on in coming days. as we have said, the military is a full participant in the policy development process that is going on, and we have not ruled out any options at this point. >> your comments reflect the

fact that the united states has made a determination that the gadhafi regime -- the gaddafi regime or the libyan government has lost legitimacy. what about the degree of control he maintains over his territory? >> that is one of the reasons we highlighted that we are devoting increasing intelligence and intelligence assets without getting into particular intelligence matters to fully understand what is going on. it is clear that gaddafi and the libyan government do not control major swaths of the country at this point. >> what about tripoli? >> at this point, i believe that the situation in tripoli differs somewhat from the situation in other parts of the country, but there is obviously a very fluid

situation. i do not know that i can do a play by play, but -- >> and not asking you to redistrict tripoli, but does he appear to be in control of the majority there? >> that is a hard judgment to make from here. the situation in tripoli today was described as relatively stable in the city itself. obviously, we were able to get some citizens to the airfield to depart. we were able to get some citizens to the dock to join others who were on board the ferry. there is a different area function in tripoli itself. i cannot speak how far outside tripoli does the situation changed dramatically, but it is clear the government no longer

has control of major population centers in the country besides tripoli. >> can we move on? >> sure. that a sense of the american personnel [inaudible] did you also have is rationale a new decision to evacuate some not to the demonstrators to say essentially the we cannot also told 3 indiscriminate shooting of civilians? >> i do not see those as being mutually exclusive. the decision to suspend operations at the embassy was about our concern about the security situation and the welfare of american diplomats there. the fact that as far as we could tell, we had successfully evacuate as many american citizens as had identified themselves to us, and, 3, given the chaotic situation, from a practical standpoint, what else

could our embassy accomplished on the ground? we do maintain diplomatic relations so that we can continue to try to understand what is going on, and to the extent that we can working with others in the international community, try to influence future decisions by the libyan government, but that is something we can do, obviously, from outside the country. >> one more on libya? i'm sorry. the one thing that no one has said, now that all the americans are out, the u.s. continues to condemn the violence, but no one is calling for colonel gaddafi to step down yet. why is that? >> this is a situation that continues to unfold. ultimately, as we have said, who leads libya in the future is not for the united states to determine. >> i'm not asking you to

determine if -- >> i understand that, but we are consulting with others in the international community about how we assess the situation on the ground, and, you know, but that is an issue that we continue to analyze. >> just to be clear -- >> [inaudible] that would suggest that the united states -- >> again, ultimately -- but that -- that will be -- that looked ultimately be determined inside libya. >> by your determination. >> do you still acknowledge him as the leader of libya? >> i believe, from a legal standpoint, he is still the head of state and head of government, but, clearly, he has, you know, lost legitimacy in the eyes of

his people, which influences our perceptions of him as well. >> he has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the united states as well? >> yes. >> [inaudible] if he actually is head of government? >> i have one other. why exactly did she call blair about libya? because of his dealings with gaddafi over the lockerbie bombing? >> he has important, valuable contacts inside of libya. >> and used those contacts to assist the united states? >> again, i'm not tony blair, so -- tony blair's spokesperson. he actually has an able spokesperson. >> do we know anything about the american who was detained today? and i want to ask you about the

second american. >> i am staring at a statement by the, you know, that came out of pakistan today. we have seen reports that dehaven has been detained by police, and we're trying to obtain access. that is all we know. >> what about the other american who had the court appearance? >> i do not know that we have had consular access yet. i did not think that requesting the report that there is an american in detention, but beyond that, it is hard for us to know exactly what the circumstances are. >> you have no reason to understand why he has been detained or whether it is connected to the other case of

the tension? >> i would not suggest is connected to the other case. >> about the other case, what is your understanding of what happened today in court? >> mr. davis was in court today. he presented the court with a copy of a diplomatic notes that affirms his full immunity from criminal prosecution. the court received the document and indicated that it would take the matter under consideration, and i believe there is another hearing scheduled for march 3. >> he presented the court with a diplomatic note from home? the u.s. government? >> a copy of the diplomatic note presented to the government of pakistan -- >> is that like a note from your mother? presenting this diplomatic note -- how does that -- that note has been presented to the

pakistani government already. >> right, but we wanted to but that no before the court as well. >> and he declined the offer of an attorney. is that correct? or has refused to hire an attorney? >> i cannot comment. he does have, you know, legal representation by pakistani lawyers. >> he does? >> i cannot speak to their particular status. we had consular officials present at today's hearing. >> he did not know that that is the original note he had when he went into the country? >> my understanding, it was the new we provided to pakistan's government earlier this month. i ask that question. it was not the original note from last year. >> [inaudible] >> it was not a new note? >> no, it was a copy of a note

we have already presented the government of pakistan, but we presented to the court. >> thank you. >> have a nice weekend. >> another chance for you to see more of the news about the political unrest and violence in libya. on c-span, starting our prime- time programming at 8:00 p.m. eastern. we have weakened coverage of the national governors' association -- association meeting tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. eastern. then, discussions later in the day saturday on keeping states competitive and also improving education, improving k-12 education. they will wrap up on sunday with a discussion on the sustainability of the medicaid program and hear from the former budget director. coverage starting saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, sunday at 11:00 a.m. eastern, all live here on c-span. the u.s. house and senate return next week, and they'll take of debate on a resolution to keep the federal government funded

past the march 4 expiration of the current continuing resolution. earlier today, republican and democratic staff members on the house budget committee took part in a discussion on federal debt, the prospects of a government shutdown. this was an even hosted by the national press foundation. it is an hour and 20 minutes. >> glad you're here this morning. on behalf of the national press foundation, i want to welcome you. i think everyone who has come this morning, in particular, our speakers. we are going to talk about the federal budget, such as it is. the national press foundation is an independent nonprofit based here in washington, d.c. we are not affiliated with the national press club. we do not take money from the

u.s. government. our goal is to help reporters understand complex issues and do their jobs better. i want to thank our partners in this series of briefings. first, the center on congress at indiana university, which has been a tremendous partner, and politico, which has been helpful in getting this organized and together. i also want to thank the wilson center, our beautiful than you here, which has been very hospitable. i particularly want to thank our speakers who will be introduced in a minute. at least a couple of them probably have not slept much over the last few days, so we are particularly grateful that they are here. to introduce them, i will hand off to the congressional editor for politico. >> thanks, linda. we have a great panel today. i'm glad everyone turned out here. this might be one of the more exciting times to talk about

spending and the federal budget. we initially scheduled this with the president's budget was going to come out, and we were going to talk about fiscal 2012 budget position, but we are not quite past the fiscal 2011 budget problem, and we are one week away from the government running out of money if we do not cut a deal, so that will take up a chunk of our time. let me introduce our great panel here. on my left is the minority chief of staff for the house budget committee. i'm not going to read the entire bio, he has worked for congress for almost 30 years in the minority, the majority, back in the minority. if you listen to israel, back in the majority in two years. in the middle, the president of the committee for responsible federal budget, which sounds like something everyone would like to have at this moment. that is part of the new america foundation. then, on the right here is a

staff director for the house budget committee, run by paul ryan, who is not only a really happy guy because he got to give the state of the union response, but because the green bay packers won the super bowl. we will see how long paul ryan remains happy as they get into the fiscal 2012 budget negotiations. like a said, we are not going to quite going to 2012 yen because we are not done with 2011. this is the dominant topic in washington. a lot of people think it is 1995 all over again. anyone who was here during the last shot down know that there was an upside -- there was a lot less traffic. the metro was a little more and the, but there was a huge political downside for some, a lot of fallout that we are still talking about, and now, we are talking about it again. i want to talk about the prospects for a deal before we get to next friday. you guys are on the appropriations committee. you work for the budget committee, but still, this is

topic number one in washington. i want to talk of the possibility of a deal by midnight next friday. let's start with tom. what do you think are the chances for some sort of middle ground to be struck between the house and senate and president? >> first of all, thank you for inviting me and for hosting this program, which is important and timely, and we are grateful to the wilson center and foundation. in terms of the chances of a deal, i'm an optimist by nature, and i'm hopeful that there will be a deal cut before the end of the cr. it is too critically important for the government not to continue operating because there are so many people who depend on its critical services. i'm a little less optimistic for the following reason. if the key players were senate democrats, house democrats, mitch mcconnell, john boehner, i would say chances were very good, but there is an unknown factor -- there are about 90 new house of publicans, many of

whom were elected on the tea party clot form. it is not clear to anybody the degree to which the speaker really can control what those, particularly freshmen republicans want. that is an unknown factor. we saw a couple weeks ago when the bill came to the floor, the original number before it came to the floor, the number that chairman ryan had put forth, the cut had to be significantly increased in order for these freshmen republicans to vote for it. so that is why i add the caveat that i'm an optimist by nature and i think the stakes are too great for a government shutdown. >> do you want to weigh in as we work our way down the line here on the prospects for a deal or shut down by next friday? >> if you had asked me a couple of weeks ago, i would say that nobody really wants to go through the experience again and we are not headed that way, even though there will be a lot of big talk, but with each passing day, we are starting to see that

this is not -- let me say i feel really lucky to be sitting here between tom and austin, getting a chance to talk to the two smartest -- the fee was modest budget people, i should say, because there are some great staff on the house and senate budget committees, but you will learn a lot from these two, no question. with each day that goes on, we are seeing that this is just a multi-faceted negotiation, sort of like saying republicans or democrats or white house and acting as though they speak with one voice, which is not the situation at all. maybe this is why i'm trying to feel like it is more likely we will see a shot down. maybe this is something that has to play out. i want to focus on what is going on at the house in spending cuts. when you run a group called the committee for responsible budget, it becomes a last line in most conversations these days, but it is something that everyone knows we want to be working on. one of the things i'm very

encouraged by is that the discussion is now so solely focused on the budget and fiscal responsibility. i will say that coming out of an economic downturn, we have two challenges to deal with, and that is how the economic recovery could be secured, could stick, and that is how we deal with the economic challenges we face. they have become much more immediate. we have to deal with it quickly. the idea model i came up with was put in place a multi-year plan that will fix the overall budget, get the budget to somewhere of debt levels that are sustainable by, say, the end of the decade. i probably would not have done anything this year. i would have let the economy continued to recover and perhaps done more on the stimulus front if we could find stimulus that is not politically motivated, which is one of the problems with all of this, right? when you do something for economic reasons, politics muddies it up. i would say this is probably a bit early for the kind of cuts we are looking at, but i'm pleased we are starting to talk

about cuts. for too long, we have been talking about slowing the growth or freezing, and the reality is we have to focus on cuts in the budget, so the discussion is a little bit premature from an economic standpoint, but useful to shifting discussion. however, the view is on the wrong piece of the budget. we are also focusing on domestic discretionary, which is the part that gets at least an annual review, and like entitlements, which are basically on automatic pilot and not getting these annual reviews, and the same as tax expenditures, which are expenditures through the tax code. i hope when we go through whatever the sector's size is, and we experience a short-term short down in it, if i were betting, the result would be that we went through all of that. it was pretty painful, and we did not fix the problem, and that quickly shifts the discussion to where it needs to be, which is larger ship shall reforms on title is, a bit comprehensive package, which

would actually fix the budget, and that we do not spend years focusing on this. it feels like earmarks, right? like all the attention is focused on this one small spot of the budget. i hope we do not get caught up and that helps eliminate -- that helps illuminate the reasons for this hearing. >> we are hearing a lot about the prospects for a deal. what are you seeing? tittle of staff nurses here are speaking for themselves, not for their committees necessarily. > first of all, to echo tom's commons, we are in an extraordinary situation. i think there are 85 new republican members in the house. 1/3 of the caucus are freshmen. we went through an extraordinary election. you have to go back a long time

before you find a time when the house had its many new members. i think it is back to the 1950's or maybe even prior to that. that is one extraordinary challenge. we just have a lot of new people in the house. the second challenge in my mind is that we did not have a budget last year, and we did not get any of the appropriations bills enacted. you combine with the fact that we got a lot of new members in the congress with the fact that none of the appropriation bills have been enacted. we are trying to get organized. members are trying to learn the process, and the first thing put in front of them is a bill that deals with every s -- not the internal program, but the internal challenges. the extraordinary fiscal situation -- we have deficits of $1.50 trillion this year. 14 $6 trillion according 6omb.

the debt just wit -- according to omb. anyone who looks at our budget situation, whether it is the congressional budget office, the gao, the federal reserve, omb, treasury, they all speak to the fact that we are on this enormous task. we have this enormous challenge. to echo maya's point, i found it remarkable that for the past three years, we had seen all this debate about how to increase spending. now, the debate is focused on how to reduce spending, and i would say that is encouraging in this environment, but i do not want to say there still is not an extraordinary challenge in terms of getting the cr done. the real issue will not be the long term.

it is going to be short-term because i doubt the two bodies can work out a long-term cr, but i doubt that your bodies can work that out. probably migrate to how we do a short term cr? the speaker has been very clear that he does not want to shut down the government. what he wants to do is not just continue funding at the current level, which, while most of the focus is on a stimulus, the base level of what we call discretionary spending, if you look to the non-defense accounts, they rose by 24% over to the we will use. they had double-digit growth. my net is right. discretionary spending is a small piece of the pie. i'm going to say two words you will only here in washington -- it is only a trillion dollars. [laughter] but it is a small piece of the

pie. that is about 40% of the budget when you look at it, but it is certainly a place we ought to start. certainly an area where congress can get a start and make progress, and i think we have to address the budget both in discretionary programs, the mandatory programs. colorado lyon also believes we should be doing as much as we can. we cannot overlook the real opportunities to achieve some savings in this part of the budget. >> tom wanted to weigh in on this. >> i should say that personally, i have so much respect for both my and austin. i must add also that they are very good friends. it is a delight to be on the same program. maya said something before that i thought was important. it seems like what we need is a two-step process. first step is the short term. in the short term, our recovery

is very fragile. we still have an unemployment rate of 9%, and the worst thing we could do now is to jeopardize the fragile recovery, which is probably even more fragile with the spike in oil prices. that is why deep cuts now are really risking the recovery. that is not just my view for the view of many democrats, but it is the view of goldman sachs, which came out with a report yesterday, saying these cuts could lead to as much as a 2% drop in economic growth. the fiscal commissions, which austin and i worked, said that you do need a long-term plan, but it should not start in terms of spending cuts. tax increases should not start until at least 2012. so there has to be a short-term resolution and a long term, and i think it is very dangerous to blur the two.

>> the goldman sachs report is something that democrats jump on this week. this is their big political point. $60 billion in cuts. will dent the economy and hurt gdp. is that a legitimate political and policy point to be made? >> partially, sort of the answer to all of this. this has been a two-prong challenge, economic recovery and fiscal challenges. i'm not going to weigh in on what the right stimulus is because that really is an economic question, and because it has been politicized with each round of stimulus, and we had some stimulus under the previous president as well, but when they become more politicized, the loose -- they lose legitimacy. but there are different ways to craft stimulus. i do think there should have been more, but i think it should have been tied all along to a medium-term fiscal retirement

plan. congress keeps passing these bills, which i was not aware of for the december tax deal, where they cut taxes tremendously or increased spending, and they were like, "that was tough. we came to a bipartisan deal to cut taxes by $860 million. our work here is done." that is the easy part. for me, it has always been troubling that you do not link back with the budget deal. you need to pass a short-term, lose to the economy, i would say along with the medium-term fiscal plan or a least a way to get yourself on that trajectory. focusing on the part that congress does a lot easier, tax cuts and spending increases, mix the next part even more politically challenging. the reason you want to put them together, and the case for why the recovery is weak or strong, when your fiscal or economic situation is skating on thin ice

like we are right now, cracks can come easily. you look at what is going on around the world. look at the spike in oil prices. each of those things we take greater notice of in terms of how it will affect the fiscal policy than we would have before because we are more vulnerable. if you put it in place, you have something we have seen in other countries. just by committing incredibly to a plan that will get your fiscal half-to a sustainable course, you can reassure the economy in the immediate run, making sure that interest rates stay low or then they would. there are a couple of warnings i would put on it. i think there will start being a lot of focus on the unemployment rate being higher. we cannot start making the fiscal commit to deal with these changes. the bad news -- the unemployment rate is probably going to say hi for a reasonably long a matter of time because a lot of what we have gone through in the past

couple of years is a result of many years of over leverage, overspending at the household level as well as the government level. it is not going to disappear in a short amount of time, and i do think we need to look at the economy to figure out when to pivot and focus on fiscal issues, but you cannot just look at the and implement rate because it will not come down as quickly as we would like, and there is not that much we can do to control that. the other half of the story is the economic recovery will not take hold until a fiscal plan is in place. we know there's $2 trillion on the balance sheet. until we add the security of saying this is what the fiscal package is going to look like, the changes we will put in place, i do not think any economic recovery takes home. it has always been a two-part approach, i think. the political world, it is hard

for politicians to give you two sides. its focus on one or the other. it is a more nuanced story that the political story has been and we can hopefully find a way for the economic story to be. >> as we talk about negotiations, you can see where house republicans are, cutting $60 billion, and the democrats first push was a flat line. we see today in the news that they are starting to say, "we will cut a little bit, but there is a missing party in these negotiations, and that is the white house. the white house seems to be on the sidelines. they have not weighed in with specific numbers or specifics on where they think it should go. that is the thing with this white house. they waited till the last minute and kind of want to come in and be the closer. what do you guys think about where the white house is or is not on this? seems like they are not really weighing in with a lot of specifics. maybe behind the scenes, but certainly not publicly. what do you think? do you think they are waiting it

out on the sidelines until they are closer to a deal? >> far be it for me to speak for the white house, but i think they clearly have concerns about the cr and the spending cuts and some of the specifics, in particular. some of the cuts are somewhat mindless. for example, a program to help homeless veterans. cutting border security at a time when border security is so critically important. homeland security. cutting head start. those are not only really bad policy, but they are cuts that will hurt the economy. there's a revolving fund to a state water. that is deeply cut as well. at a time when the construction industry has a 20% unemployment rate. i think all of these cuts are very misguided and will hurt jobs and the economy. clearly, what the white house is committed to and democrats in congress, is to grow jobs and grow the economy. that has to be the number one priority right now. that is what the american people care about, and that is what we

need to focus on, and i think the white house very much understands that. >> what do you think? does the white house waited out until they are close to a deal? they are not getting their hands dirty? >> they are not leading. there is no where you can look at the budget they put out and said that they are leading us towards a deal. it was a disappointing budget, i will say, is a polite way to put it. it was a really disappointing budget. i think back to the point where the budget was not passed last year, and we have not seen budgets lots of the year, and we always tend to see appropriations, deadlines, and the president's budget is regularly declared dead on arrival. the way the budget process works here really needs a makeover. it is startling how many deadlines are missed. this is a bipartisan problem. how the scrutiny as on a smaller part of the budget rather than the larger part. we need to really overhaul the whole process. one of the problems is that the

president's budget does not carry much weight, and it is not taken very seriously, and i wonder if that makes the white house feel like -- they did not think this was a brilliant budget, they did not put out something that that that we should follow this, and it would lead the president. and there's something wrong with the president to be able to put out a budget that even they do not take seriously. also, a focus on fiscal policy. i think that is a good thing. i think they are helping to turn the conversation of fiscal policy, but they also are focused on this domestic discretionary peace. they did not do anything that would be considered real on entitlement reform, and all of this is particularly pointed to watch for me because they just had a fiscal commission. the commission just spend whatever it was -- nine months, tom and asta were helping the bosses to work on it. they came up with a remarkable plan. whether you love it or hate it or something in between, it accomplished $4 trillion in savings, which is so different than the kinds of solutions we have seen so far, and exceeded

all expectations, and guess anybody who wants to use it to cover that commissions can get, which is affordable coverage. president could have said, "here is a starting point. i do not like everything in the commission recommendation, but it needs a starting point. a troubling, also, in a budget. the -- there's a whole lot of magic asterisks. we return to a time with the president's budget is not specific. it has these fill in the blanks, after a couple of years in the white house of making speeches about how they were done with budget gimmicks, there are some doozies in there. it was not an effective budget. the narrative from the white house i think is both right and wrong. the narrative they have given is that they could not lead. there are some things they would say to someone like me, but the kind of narrative they're giving is they know you would like us to put in a retirement age, but

imagine if they did that. they would get so beaten up, it would not help the cause at all, so we have to step back. that is probably true. if the white house had put out a budget that said basic retirement age, create an energy tax, cut domestic discretionary and defense, reform the mortgage interest deduction, it might have been a political loser, but the only time that somebody has put out an entitlement reform plan recently was called in, and one of the things that happen in the past election is that got beaten up on. whether you like it or did not like it, it had serious reform proposals, and the white house was part of beating up on that, so i felt like they needed to take the past year to help change discussion. we might not like the proposal that someone puts forward, but we will put in a different proposal instead of beating it up. when someone goes down there and put something hard on the table,

tax increases or spending cuts, they get clobbered by the other party, and instead, the evening of the playing field has to be you then put forward an alternative, and we can start having the discussion we need to have. while i understand their reasons for having a timid budget, i feel like the white house needed to do more to change the framework of the discussion so we could switch it around from what you would not do it to what you would do, which is where we really need to be in the discussion now. >> do you want to sort of jumped into the larger topic we keep hinting at, and that is entitlement reform, which is something paul ryan has stepped out on and has been criticized on all fronts for. it does seem like we're starting to get into a discussion phase on entitlement reform. i do not know where it is going. i would like to hear everyone's opinion, but in the long run, entitlement reform is on the table for all the parties. everyone is sort of waiting for

the next guy to say this, the controversial statement. it is all toxic, and no one wants to hear about it, and they are always in more of an electoral posture. do you want to weigh in on this? >> yes. if government spending and borrowing created jobs, we should be at full employment. the government spent 25% of gdp this year, the highest level of spending since world war ii. the other issue is that $60 billion, if it causes a recession, that seems a remarkable statement to me in that if you look at $60 billion -- i cannot do the math in my head -- what percentage that is up a $3.70 trillion budget, $14 trillion economy, there is tremendous uncertainty in the financial markets among small businessmen, people among investors, and so forth. funding government project is not going to get the economy

going. what is going to get the economy going, what we need in this economy is sustainable economic growth, and the way to do that is to create more certainty in the tax code. we have tremendous uncertainty. it is a really complicated tax code. we have to tackle our fiscal problem. kevin has it has done some work looking at other countries. to the extent they deal with their fiscal situations, and particularly if they focus on the spending side, they get economic growth. the federal reserve chairman kamen testified before us and said that if you could start addressing this problem is, you would get economic growth. that is where we want to go. we're not interested in shutting down the government. we are interested in getting control of spending, putting it in a position for sustained long-term economic growth. >> but bernanke focus on a multi-year thing, right? >> that is right. on the long term, on the

entitlement issue, when you look at the numbers in the president's budget, there was a lot of -- on this looking at their numbers, their base line. baseline is a projection of current spending. when you look at those numbers, not only do they not do anything on entitlement spending. when you look at their budget, they increased entitlement spending. not big numbers. $300 million over 10 years, but that is what we have been doing for decades. not only are they not interested -- addressing entitlements, but they are headed in the wrong direction. it is something we want to focus on. my boss is very interested. he put out his plan about a year ago. he did an earlier one, the first version, in may 2008. he believes that we have to address entitlement programs, and we have to address them in a way where we get the structural problems of entitlement

programs, and that is something he is very interested in pursuing. >> let me first say something about the president's budget because i'm hearing less enthusiastic reaction. i do not honestly think that that is a fair analysis at all. the president's budget calls for a five-year freeze in non- security spending. it calls for the elimination of the reduction of 200 programs. , it reduces the deficit as well as the baseline by $1 trillion, and it reaches primary balance by 2017. at the same time, it calls for investments in some key priorities -- things like science, for example, and infrastructure. my boss refers to the president's budget as tough love. it is easy to dismiss the cuts in there, but let me tell you, many of them are very painful, and we are hearing from people complaining about them.

the cuts in cdbg, which is an important program, funding service for towns across the country, is cut significantly. there is a lot of opinion there. in terms of entitlement reform, it is interesting. we just went through a very critical process of entitlement reform. i think my at an austin would agree with this. what is driving the budget deficit, was driving the long- term threat in the entitlement growth, is health care. health care is absolutely the thing that is grabbing up all the money. last year, we passed the affordable care act, the health care reform bill, and according to the non-partisan objective congressional budget office, the health care reform bill reduces the deficit in the first 10 years by $230 billion and over 20 years by more than $1 trillion. there's a lot of pain in the health care reform bill. a lot of people think that the

cuts are too deep, but now that it has passed, now that it has been enacted, we need to give it a little bit of time to work. there are a lot of pilot projects in there, a lot of different ways to go after the growth, and it is irresponsible way to do it. it expands health care coverage. over the long term, it actually cuts government spending, so we should let it do its job. social security, which is the other entitlement that is growing that people like to talk about -- the fact of the matter is that social security is running a surplus. over the long term, yes, social security has challenges, and it needs to be address over the long term, but until 2037, it can continue to pay benefits. social security is not now contributing to the deficit. in truth, it is reducing it, and under no circumstances should we be doing anything to cut social security or balance the budget on the backs of social security

beneficiaries. one of the first things that the house majority did, the republicans, when they took control was the repeal the health care reform bill. that adds more than $1 trillion to the deficit over 20 years. there are a lot of things i could go on, but it is important to keep a little bit of perspective on it. one last thing -- a lot of reform proposals for entitlements -- and by the way, chairman bryan put forward a thoughtful, comprehensive plan. he sincerely deserves a lot of credit for encouraging analysis and thoughtfulness, and he is one of the few people out there who has been willing to put it on the line. after we passed the health care reform bill, and we cut $400 billion for medicare in the health care reform bill, democrats were savaged in the elections. having seen what happened just a few months ago in the lexus, it makes some democrats a little curious, a little hesitant to do

anything about health care reform in a positive, constructive way. >> 2037 happens to be the year i turn 65, so people my age and younger are totally out of love. but do you see the sides getting together in a series conversation? kent conrad is retiring. it is easy for him to say he is leader of the deficit commission, let's do this, that, and the other, and he does not have to run for reelection. but do you see a serious move to talk about deficit reduction and entitlements? we keep getting these tents in the media, and the stories i read over the last few weeks that these guys are getting together and are going to do something, but then, they did not get there. we are not sure where that goes. we have seen them get pretty close, and then, it becomes political. >> i will address the deficit commission briefly.

what they did was terrific. what they did was they -- i think in a very difficult environment because you have to remember, when the deficit commission was meeting, we were in a very heated partisan debate, in my opinion -- it is not even my opinion. it is the facts -- about expanding entitlements spending. the health care reform bill increased taxes and spending. that is the net effect in the end. that debate is going on. very partisan debate. no republican support. using reconciliation ultimately to get it done. that is all going on while the commission is meeting. somehow, terrific credits. they managed to hold this commission together to have a, i think, very constructive meeting in terms of looking at the problem and looking at various options and hearing people testify before the commission and so forth, and what the

commission delivered in the end was a couple of things that i think are very important. first was it got the country focused on the problem, on the debt problem. i think i forgot the exact words, but there's been very clear and blunt about the fact that we have to tackle this problem or it will tackle us. the next thing was put forth great reforms. 40% of the budget. the program solvent over the long run. it had a blind spot to me, which is completely understandable. it had a blind spot on health care reform. this is the president's commission on health care. while it is meeting, the president is doing everything he can to pass his health care bill. there is some stuff about congress ought to fix it in the long run, but there are no real reforms, significant structural

reforms being done. my boss put together a proposal that would address medicare goes a long term problems. one last thing they did which was terrific i think was tax reform. it got discussion going, which i think it's terrific, about if we could get rid of the distortions in tax codes and lower rates, it would help economic growth, and i think they move things forward on that. the commission did not get the necessary votes. my boss ended up voting against it for two reasons. he thinks if you fix long-term problems, you have to start with health care, not put it aside. the next thing is that the commission proposals have large revenue increases, which -- we think it gets to a situation where the revenue is just chasing higher health care spending. what they did was terrific. they have advanced this space. they have a lot of good ideas. i think for the people who have been in this town for a while,

it takes a while to develop solutions to issues. we have a cumbersome process in terms of our government that moves in a cumbersome way and so forth, but i think we have had a lot of terrific things happen in terms of moving the debate and focusing the debate on long-term problems. we have a great deal more debate to do to tackle it. >> do you want to talk about prospects for moving it forward? >> just like i'm feeling increasingly concerned about having some kind of a shutdown, a brief one, and actually feeling increasingly optimistic that we are moving in the right direction on fiscal policy, and we have not been doing that in so long. i remember when the fiscal commission came out with the proposal, i sat down with their proposal, i sat down and thought that i had not written a nice piece in so long. it has been a multi-step process. in many ways, i think it did start with paul ryan. when he put his road map out

there, he was the sole political leader who said that we could get specific. we had to get specific and focus on the important parts of the budget, and i think that he did not have as many followers as i wish he had. he did not have as many people put forth alternatives as a wish they had, but he showed that you can do it and return stronger. the attention he has received for it, the positive attention, has risen tremendously, and i hope that serves as a model to other policymakers that you can get specific and talk about what you believe. if you go to town hall meetings and tell people who do not agree with you why you're doing what your doing, they will be impressed by the candor and straightforwardness that that takes. we need other forces during the same thing, and i think the discussion has moved on. we had these since the commission, and the thing that exceeded expectations in a remarkable way and put a lot out there that were not out there before. showed that we could come up

with comprehensive solutions that met the challenges. who knows what it would take to reassure global credit markets? but my best guess is that a pass something of the magnitude of their recommendation, we would have made an immense -- we have not fixed health care. the weakest part of the report is the long-term health care savings. we do not know how to fix them yet. i think what we are probably starting to get a sense of is that health care will have to be on some sort of a budget. it cannot be open-ended indefinitely. and what paul ryan has done and others hopefully will follow, is put out a model for how you can help keep it in the budget through premium support. it is no magic solution. but it is an important structural change to keep health care in the budget. the other thing the fiscal commission showed us was that in order to meet the challenges, i think everything has to be on the table. and to give the credit to paul ryan, still, for putting specifics, it was remarkable he did that, but the plan also

shows you cannot get to a sustainable pace without revenue because the plan takes a long time to get to where the debt levels are what i would think are sustainable, and if you put revenues on the table to fill in the gap after structural entitlement reform, then you have a real kind of deal that people should be talking about. the sensing commission likewise had a very credible, detailed plan on social security reform. it does not structurally fix health care, but it does have, like, $400 billion in savings in health care. and we have to talk about reducing health-care costs, and you cannot beat up people when they say we are going to make changes to medicare. we have to make changes to medicare. what is amazing is that plan has now become a starting point. and then, it looks as though it will go the way of other commissions where the president did not acknowledge a in a strong and welcoming embrace. he did not take it and run with it, but your question about what is going on in the senate -- something really impressive did happen.

four senators in the senate had signed on to this, and it is an important bipartisan group because it has very conservative members, a real progress of at the table sitting on the table working on this, and kent conrad, who was obviously a leader on these issues, all signed on to it, and then you have these two senators who basically said we are going to take this commission report and keep it alive. we're going to offer it in legislative language. what happened in the senate, which has not been the perfect example of a functioning body in recent years, is that you have a real bipartisan effort, and i look at this as a step 3. paul ryan got specific, and the fiscal commission plan developed a real comprehensive plan. the third step we are seeing is a bipartisan effort because this cannot be done with one party alone. whoever going alone would obviously be killed. we can all imagine the attack ads. but they are sitting down and talking on a regular basis with more of their colleagues in

joining support, and the reason it takes so long is you have to put into legislative language, but my understanding is they still plan to put this out there and have to see the starting point of the discussion. of the ending point. there will still be changes and opportunities for people to come out and say we should have more structural reforms on health care or other entitlements. other people saying i want to fix social security and make it solvent for the long run, which, tom was saying, it is strong into the trust funds run out. ok, that is an accounting way of looking at it. ua the trusties tell us every year is the social security is going to need changes. we have to make those changes sooner rather than later. there is nobody who cares about the program could be arguing we should continue to delay in making the changes. making them as soon as possible only gives people more security. spread them over a longer time is what the trustees tell us we need to do every year, and i think there is no serious policy person who would say we need to start making the program solvent

as quickly as possible, but putting the commission out there, as the senators said they are working to do and will do i the future is the perfect start for this real discussion about all these pieces of budget and how you would change it. you could basically put out a notion of a pay-go for the commission. you do not like one piece of it, no problem. offer a different way you would achieve those savings. what you saw with the warner- chancellor group was a remarkable bipartisan effort. obviously, we have to bring everybody in from the house to bring this debate, but it is a dramatic event from where we were recently. >> all this optimism is great. what do you think, tom? even if all these guys get together, -- >> we actually have already begun to start humming "kumbaya."

austin and i will be holding hands with our bosses as we start walking down that path. i would like to share your optimism. i tend to be an optimist. i have the staff director of the budget committee for 14 years, and i've been on capitol hill a lot longer than that. i think the problem is that many americans like the idea of cutting spending in general. the concept that government spends too much is something many americans agree with, but when you get into the specifics, specific benefits, suddenly, people go south on you. many people believe, for example, that all we would need to do would be to cut foreign aid, and we could balance the budget. turns out in a budget of $3.70 trillion, foreign aid is about $50 billion. it is very small. and awareness, $50 billion is a lot, but relative to the budget. to really -- anywhere else, $50 billion is a lot. it is going to require people to make sacrifices, and it is not

clear to me yet that the american people are there, and i could be wrong. the commission, my former boss would have done it. he voted for the commission recommendations. it was a superb process, thoughtful, responsible, and i think what it shows is that what we need to make progress in the long term is to require everyone to sit down at the table in a bipartisan process, in good faith, putting everything on the table and giving up things they like. that means all spending, but it also means revenue. you cannot just do it with spending alone, and you cannot just do it with revenue alone. congressman ryan's road map, again, i think was a very responsible plan, but it actually would cut taxes significantly. would eliminate the corporate income tax, eliminate the estate tax, eliminate the capital gains tax, and it pays for it by making dramatic changes to entitlements come specifically medicare and medicaid. medicaid would become a block grant program.

that is tough medicine. i think it is critical. however we go forward, we need to protect particularly the most vulnerable americans, who depend on key services -- medicare, medicaid, social security. it has got to be done in a fair way. republicans, for example, have been calling for an extension of all the bush tax cuts, even for the upper 2%. that would cross between the income tax upper bracket, and the estate tax, that would cost about $1 trillion with debt service. do we need to do that? do we need to provide additional tax cuts for the people at the very top? and if we do so, at what price? who is going to pay for it? that is very troublesome. we do need to move forward on that, the idea of a long-term process. it is not going to be easy, though. >> can i jump in? >> go ahead. >> first of all, in the talk of real sacrifice, cuts in benefits, and that talk, i think we get lost, kind of, in

washington with something called the base line, that medicare can continue to grow, and the projections are that it grows. about 80 million baby boomers are headed to medicare. spending per capita now is going to% faster than the economy. it is called excess cost growth. when you look at the long-term projections, says falling for a bit, that is not sustainable over the long run. 2% cost growth. the actuaries say because it cannot grow at 2%, they at 2%, t down. this picture we see is worse than what we see over the long term. if the discussion is about cutting medicare or slashing social security, that discussion needs to be in the context of what happens if we do nothing. let me tell you what the cbo tells us. they say that source by 2037.

there models cannot conceive of an economy that can function at that level of debt. it is the same year that social security goes under. if the government does not have the capacity to borrow money, we are in worse shape. we do not have the capacity to operate to fund these programs. one thing that has to happen in this discussion is that there has to be a discussion. medicare needs to be reformed and slowed down in some fashion. the discussion is not about real sacrifice. the real sacrifice comes if we fail to act. if we fail to act, we are going to end up in a situation like grease or something like that. as troubling as the financial crisis was, we had a fine -- had a federal government that could step in and provide financial assistance. if the federal government goes under, there is no government that can bail us out.

we were borrowing money for nothing. if we were borrowing money -- if we cannot borrow money because our debt is so high, that is an extraordinarily difficult situation. we cannot understand what the consequences are. the 2037 number is what they say where there is a huge risk in the long run. there aren't -- having no risk to the economy is inaccurate and wrong in this debate. on health care costs, the present's budget touched on this. the actuary for medicare -- this is a career official at hhs. he said the health care bill would increase health care costs.

the director of cbo said it is going to have no discernible effect on health care costs growth. if our biggest problem was health care costs growth and the baby boomers, hopefully, we will not do anything to the baby boomers. i am one of them. what cbo and what the president of actuary is telling us is that it did nothing to cost growth. they opened a brand new entitlement for 30 million people. there is an issue there. last on taxes. cutting taxes. let's go back to the baseline. in the road map, he assumes that you extend -- the past is similar -- similar to the revenue path. if you extend those tax laws,

revenues naturally rise over the next 10 years to 18% of gdp. that has been the historical average for the past 10 years. the issue is, are we going to raise taxes above their historical average? when you look at the present's budget, over the past 40 years, spending has been 21% of gdp. revenue has been about 18% of gdp. we run deficits about 2% above the average. we are at 11% now according to the omb. if you look at the present's budget, he does not close the gap. revenues go up and spending goes up. the issue comes down to getting spending under control. revenues need to be part of the deal, according to some.

the issue is focused according to our debt and our problems are getting the spending under control. you cannot fix the problem unless you get the spending line under control. if you don't, what is going to happen is that those who are most affected by it are those who depend on the government. if the government loses its ability to fund food stamps, medicare, social security, that will occur if we do not tackle this problem. the challenge is to direct our fiscal situation for two reasons. take away certainty to show that we have our fiscal situation under control. it will increase economic growth and increased jobs. the other reason to do it is to make sure we can retain the capacity to help social security, medicare, retirement and take care of those in our vulnerable population and on food stamps. >> we are getting closer t the

question and answer space. i am is still concerned about 2037 as someone who retires then. we want to pull this back into the moment. 2037 is 26 years from now. we have five years -- five days to cut fiscal year 2011. >> over the long-term, we have serious problems. all but the short term, we have to be focused on the economy and jobs. with the president's budget does, by 2017, he reaches primary balance. that means when you look at the interest on the debt, the amount money -- amount of money coming in and going out is virtually the same. the idea is bad the% of gdp -- is that 3% of gdp is the

deficit. that is sustainable paris it is not outstanding. it is a marker that we should go to. i want to say something more about taxes. austin was discussing. the spending cuts will be painful. there is no way around it. these are services people depend on. there are two sides to a balance sheet. there is revenue coming in and spending going out. to a large degree, republicans focus on the spending going out and not the revenue coming in. it is hard to grapple with the notion that the deficit and debt have serious problems. the tax cuts or the people at the top are extended or expanded. i have no doubt republicans are sincere about grappling with the

deficit. i cannot figure out how a commitment to grappling with the deficit berries to an idea of tax cuts -- marries to an idea of tax cuts for people at the top. the historical average is not a helpful guide to the future. why do i say that? baby boomers are retiring. we want to make sure martin gets his social security and medicare. >> when i am 80. >> when you are 80. health care inflation is growing much faster than cpi. we have a number of new costs to the federal government. since 9/11, we have homeland security. we passed the medicare -- medicare prescription drug bill. we have debt service. it is that style to say that the

dp -- facile to say that the gdp was one way and we need to go that way in the future. >> we want to open this up to questions. >> may i make a quick response? on the president also budget, it stabilizes the debts at a level that everybody would agree is to buy high. backant to get the debt down. we are about 60% of gdp. it is not realistic. don't forget that in the one trillion dollars -- $1 trillion of savings, those are not specified. on the spending problem, i agree with tom's point. i am comfortable in the center. i agree with both. why can we agree with you.

we have a spending problem. what do we have in terms of a solution. it is going to have to be a solution that entails both. there are huge changes in our world and our economy. plan wouldyan's protect retirees. nobody who is a politician talks about current retirees as being part of the solution. i might see it differently. i think that should be on the table. but it really is not. we know that changes are going to come down the road. that means it is going to be hard to make these changes in a structural way. it would be more helpful to open up the discussion. anybody to said you could do it without raising taxes needs to show a policy where debt is stabilized at a legal -- at a believable level.

nobody has done that. finally, i think this is an important effort point on in the senate. it is a bunch of realistic and a bunch of folks who have different realities who are coming together. they are not focusing on the pain. they are focusing on the gang that you get from putting in a fix that -- gain that you get from putting in a fix. it is not because you want the numbers to add up. it is part of a strong economic policy. it is a realistic approach with a positive narrative that is going to need a bipartisan component to focus. >> question time. >> on the issue of the senate bipartisan talks, we have that a-half that ms. -- staff members from the budget committee.

what is your role? do you see it has been discussed in the next few weeks or months? which is one to happen with 2012? two short questions for austin. you say medicare is where you need to start. are you giving us a sign that paul ryan will try to tackle medicare? on the cr, you were deeply involved in this original cut up half as much as they have gone onto. is it not fair to say house leadership thinks the cut is too deep. why didn't you go for the 61 billion -- $61 billion to begin with? >> do you want me to start? in terms of the senate, we have a fair amount on our plate right now. we are not involved in those discussions with the senate group.

on the continuing resolution and the allocation that paul ryan filed, we had an issue in terms of -- our original proposal was to take non-security spending back to 2008 levels. that was put forth in september before the fiscal year began. if we got not -- that non- security levels back, we would get the debt down. that was a republican pledge. what do you do if you are five months into the fiscal year? we went around and around. paul ryan was pleasantly surprised that the house ended up voting for a lot of those amendments. he was pleased by it. the issue is that we tend to use these allocation as floors. in this case, we have a ceiling on spending.

i am trying to remember your third question. on medicare -- tom can speak to this because he is in the house. we are in a process. we have the present postal budget. it came two weeks late. usually -- the president's budget. it came two weeks late. it usually comes at the beginning of february. we need to wait for the congressional budget office to evaluate the president's budgets. they make some adjustments to their base line. we use cba numbers for the purpose of building our budgets and enforcing -- cbo numbers for the purposes of building our budgets and enforcing of our budgets. paul ryan has been clear that he wants to address the structural problems. speakers and leaders have talked about structural programs.

we have started about looking at that. paul ryan talks about the road map as a consensus of one. he has built a consensus of 218 on the republican budget. i cannot comment on the specifics because we have not gotten there. we are too early in the process to answer that question. >> the irony of the debate on the continuing resolution and the number that was come up with into up with more spending. the freshmen were willing to agree to it. it had the ironic effect of making paul ryan a flaming liberal because the numbers were so high. he became a big spender. the number he picked, $61 billion, was helpful for the economy. that is not my opinion. that is goldman sachs' opinion. hopefully, cooler heads will

prevail. we will realize that cuts of that sort when the economy is as fragile as it is will hurt jobs and hurt the economy and a lot of people who depend on those critical services. we reported on the budget resolution. austin, any advice you need, we will give to you for free. paul ryan and chris van hollen get along well. they will keep talking. >> he wanted to ask a question here? >> for tom, what was the main reason your committee was not able to put out a budget resolution? do you think 1 will be put out this year? what do you think is the biggest

obstacle for getting a budget resolution? >> we did not put a budget resolution on the floor last year. we put out a budget enforcement resolution, which did pass. we preferred -- we would prefer a budget resolution. the budget resolutions that the discretionary spending level. that level was significantly below the level that the president requested. with the budget enforcement resolution and statutory paygo and the bowles-simpson committee, all of those would have a good effect. you need to get 218 votes to pass something. austin is worried about passing something in the how. it is really a challenge. to get 218 members to vote or something is the equivalent of trying to herd cats. it is like trying to herd

squirrels. it is difficult and i wish you luck with it. >> at the beginning of my remarks, i always say i will not -- i do not know what the biggest obstacle will be. but we will fight it. there are enormous challenges. we are trying to work through the continuing resolution. that affects what your discretionary spending is 40 -- if that what your discretionary spending will be for the year. we got the president's but it's late. that is a huge challenge. we have to find historical highs on deficit and debt as a share of the gdp. that it is were hired during world war ii. that was an extraordinary -- higher during world war ii, but

that was an extraordinary situation. as we are talking about out of, i will look at my boss, the chairman. he views this -- as we are talking about obstacles, i will turn to my boss, the chairman. he saw these stormy seas coming. he views it as an opportunity to move forward and advance this debate further and put forth proposals and solutions to address it. >> another question from the audience. >> would you comment on the strategy of thechambliss -- of the chambliss proposal? i heard that it would increase revenue. woulde same time it

reduce costs. >> they are putting forward what the fiscal commission recommended. let me talk about how their tax proposal works. a really impress the framework for talking about tax reform. it is a look at tax expenditures, which are the targeted tax deductions and exclusions that make the tax code so complex. they lead to a loss of over $1 trillion in revenue every year. it is basically a shadow budget that is run through the tax code. it looks like swiss cheese and is why none of us can pay our taxes. it allows you to have the benefit of starting from a bad tax code that does not make a lot of sense. many of these tax breaks are aggressive and would never pass muster when you put them as spending policies.

they do not have the oversight that a normal spending program would. what the fiscal commission came up with is that it you wipe out these tax expenditures and start with none of them, you can bring rates down so dramatically, i believe down to the 20's, to where no one thought you could get them. a lot of people around the table said, that sounds like a pretty impressive tax plan. realistically, you will probably not wipe out all the tax expenditures. but you would layer each of them back. if you wanted to subsidize more medium priced houses, your rates would go up a little bit to accommodate that. if he wanted to donate sharable giving, you could do that. this would bring in more

revenues for the closing of the fiscal gap. it is the plan is more spending reductions. the smart thing is that they are part of a fundamental tax overhaul that we desperately need. i give them a lot of credit for that. the senators worked to put forth the thick skull commission plan. that would give us -- put forth the fiscal commission plan. this would be good for the economy. >> a couple of things. much of what the commission recommended was one area where they fell short. it is the ratio between revenue increases and spending cuts. >> but i like that ratio. >> the ratio of tax increases versus spending cuts was 3 to 1.

most people believe that if we are going to come together and find a middle ground, everything is on the table and it has to be equitable. a disproportionate amount of spending cuts is an imbalance. in terms of tax reform, it reminds me a little bit of the discussion of spending cuts. and everybody agrees that the tax code is too complicated. everybody agrees that it would be great if we had a simple tax code. it is interesting. when you look at tax expenditures, these are things that are popular, things like the interest deduction, employer sponsored health care, charitable deductions. people are going to have to think about what they are getting up to get a more simple code. >> a simpler code and lower rates. >> and lower rates.

the effective tax burden may not change too much. it is going to be an ongoing process to see how this all plays out. in general, simplification is a good thing. he dabbled -- the devil is in the details. >> it is important what these reductions are measured from. the fiscal commission measured from the president's budget. the president's but to has a -- but it has a -- budget has a 2 to 1 ratio. we came up with a ratio of 2 to 1, but the other way around. it is important that you look at

that. i say that, i do not want to align -- it is going to diminish the economic tax benefits we have. it will make us more competitive in a global economy. >> i am curious. we are talking about short-term continuing resolution. everyone is talking about the numbers. we have $61 billion in -- $61 billion on one side. defu not -- it does not defund obamacare. >> it is probably going to focus

on what the overall funding level is. there are other issues that came up in the debate. the debate largely focused on what level of reductions we are going to have. that is where the primary focus will be. where i began, we have 85 new members in our caucus. there are some interesting dynamic here. the last time we had a republican house, a democratic senate and a democratic president, i cannot come up with it on the top of my head. it is interesting how this is going to operate. all of this discussion of how we are cutting spending -- the continuing resolution is $3 billion below 2010 levels. the president raises funding for 2010 levels.

now they give this non-security level or spending. he is $3 billion above. when there is his discussion of raising non-security spending, he has zero savings. his budget has a cost. in terms of how this ends up, there will be an interplay between the senate, the president, and republicans in the house. >> i cannot think there is any way to escape the reality that many of the spending cuts in the continuing resolution have the focus of bringing down the total number. when you see things like de funding public broadcasting, that has an ideological been -it bend it is-- i

regrettable. >> we just started talking about government agencies. before that, it was mostly an economic discussion. i would like to hear more about how the continuing resolution would expect daily government functioning at different agencies. i know it has been talked about a lot. >> the short answer is, we do not know entirely. a lot of this will depend on what is essential services and who is an essential employee. we know certain things are going to happen. the national parks are going to close. passports are going to be difficult if not impossible to get. social security checks -- many government services are yet to

be resolved. that is not good. it is not good for the american people. a government shutdown is a bad outcome. we hope we can resolve this in a way that does not lead to a government shutdown. >> next, we will have the latest on the political violence in libya, including remarks by muammar gaddafi, u.n. officials, and the state department. and a look at the dayton peace accords and a discussion on internet privacy. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we begin with remarks by muammar gaddafi. he told supporters to defend the nation. he spoke to 1000 of his supporters who gathered to hear his remarks. anti-gaddafi protests were held

during the day. here are his remarks courtesy of the al jazeera network. >> to be liars. reply to the mass media, the media of lies. the mass media. the mass lies. these are the great people of libya. you are the fruits of the revolution. you are the enthusiastic future of the revolution. you see pride and dignity in revolution. you see history and glory in revolution. it is the resolution -- the revolution that gave birth to -- it is the revelation that set up memorials. i am among the population.

we will continue to fight. we will defeat them. we will die here on the deer soil of libya. -- dear soil of libya. we will defeat any former -- in our attempt as we defeated the italians. this is the formidable force, invisible force -- the invincible force. life without dignity is worthless. life without green banners hoisted is useless. it is the life of pride, dignity, and victory. the flag flying and wasted.

ahe youth, comfortable at any place in the square. that, st., stay up all night. live a life of dignity to -- dance, sing, stay up all night. live a life of dignity. dance and sing. joy and rejoice. >> at a u.n. meeting in geneva, diplomats unanimously condemned libya and recommended the country's suspension from the u.n.'s top human-rights body. the action was taken during a

daylong session. during that session, all of the libyan diplomats publicly expected to the opposition. here is a 50 minute portion. >> president and distinguished members of the human rights council, ladies and gentlemen, i commend the initiative of this council to hold a special session on the situation of human rights in libya. the gravity of the situation and the violence, repression of the uprising in that country demands urgent attention. as the secretary general of the united nations noted, the nature and scale up attacks on civilians are egregious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. he condemned them without qualification and stated that those responsible for brutally shedding the blood of innocents

should be punished. let me remind this council that after the 2005 summit, world leaders unanimously agreed that each individual state as the response ability to protect its population from crimes against humanity and other international crimes. this responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes including the incitement to appropriate and that should -- are appropriate and necessary means. it protects its population from serious international crime. the international community has the responsibility to step in by taking protected action in a collective, timely, and decisive manner. in an emergency session this week, the security council highlighted the need to hold the responsibility to protect, to provide humanitarian assistance,

to allow human rights monitoring and to assure accountability. my office is prepared to respond to these needs as a matter of highest urgency. as we meet today, the protesters who are exercising their rights to freedom of assembly, have denounced the bill to ways of their government. they continue to challenge its rule at great peril to themselves and their families. they have appealed to the united nations and the international community for protection. we owe them our solidarity and protection from violence. we must heed their aspirations for freedom, dignity, and irresponsible government. far from being manipulated by external forces, their protest is a display of people power and an exercise of democracy that

commands international respect and support. the international community has repeatedly urged, cannot be too -- repeatedly urged muammar gaddafi to resist violence. he called on his supporters to get out of their homes, filled the streets against the protesters, and attacked them -- and attack them. the reports are hard to verify. but one thing is painfully clear. in present and continuing reaches in international law and the crackdown of peaceful demonstrations is escalating alarmingly with reported mass killings, arbitrary arrests, detention, and torture. tanks, helicopters, and military aircraft have reportedly been used indiscriminately to attack the protesters.

according to some sources, thousands may have been killed or injured. let me reiterate that the state has an obligation to protect the rights to life, liberty, and security of people under their jurisdiction. a protection of civilian should always be the paramount consideration in maintaining order and the rule of law. the libyan leader must stop the violence now. libya is a member of the human rights council and pledged to respect human rights. libya is also a participant in human rights covenant on civil and political rights. it has the obligation to protect and implement rights and freedoms as enshrine it in human rights policy. under international law, any official at any level ordering

or carrying out atrocities and a tax can be held criminally accountable. widespread and systematic attacks against a civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity. witnesses in and out of libya consistently described horrifying scenes. libyan forces are firing at protesters and bystanders, sealing off neighborhoods, and shifting from rooftops. they also blocked ambulances so that the injured and dead are left on the street. reports from hospitals indicate that most of the victims have been shot in the head, chest, or neck, suggesting arbitrary and summary execution. doctors relate that they are struggling to cope and are running out of blood supplies and medicine to treat the wounded. images of unfair by a -- un

verifiable origen indicate the taking of mass graves. killings have also been carried out by foreign spiders who were and continue to -- fighters who were and continue to be brought into the country and our equipped with guns provided by the government. my office has received reports that some libyans are turning on immigrants suspecting them of fighting for the libyan government. at the same time, there are reports that the authorities have suggested that certain foreign nationals have been primarily is possible for initiating the unrest, thereby encouraging the attacks on foreigners.

the freedom of movement of those wishing to leave the country should be fully respected and protected. libyan up artists -- libyan authorities must allow the humanitarian workers and medical supplies into the country. they must insure that the legitimate demands of the protesters are addressed and that the fundamental human rights of the population not fully respected and promoted. excellencies, libya's neighbors have a particular responsibility to exert utmost vigilance to protect the vulnerable. i am concern for the safety and well-being of refugees crossing into neighboring countries, particularly tunisia, egypt, italy, and malta. i urge libya's neighbors to open their borders and ensure that

refugees are treated humanely. nydia's political partners and allies are uniquely -- libya's political partners are uniquely positioned to offer assistance. more needs to be done. i am encourage all international actors to take necessary measures to stop the bloodshed. i have also called for an independent and impartial investigation to investigate the violent suppression of protests in the country. but let us be clear. today's shopping and with the situation is the director -- ou shocking situation is the direct outcome of the use of power by the current ruler.

order must be attained in order to be meaningful. there can be no doubt about the need for action by this council now. the human rights council and its mechanisms should step in a vigorously to help end violence in libya and hold those perpetrating the atrocities accountable. also should use all means available to compel the libyan government to respect the human rights and he did -- and heed the will of its people. violations of international humanitarian law deserve no less. thank you, mr. president. >> the commissioner has a statement. i now have the pleasure to give the floor to the chair.

on behalf of all special procedures. you have the floor. >> mr. president, that done high commissioner for human rights, -- madame high commissioner for human rights, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, the committee on special procedures has requested me to deliver the following statement on behalf of the special procedures holders on the human rights council. we, the 41 holders of special procedures of the council

mechanism to protect human rights, and damp ,-- incondemn, -- condemn, in the strongest cards, the suppression of the people of libya and -- who are in the strongest -- we have received numerous reports of excessive and disproportionate use of force against protesters, including the use of live ammunition and military planes. we have elected -- we have heard serious allegations of torture, ill treatment, and the attention of individuals, including human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists. several hundred people have died. many others have been arrested.

the human suffering continues to rise. there have been disturbing account of women and children among the victims. there have been reports that authorities have been listed mercenaries from other countries to support the crackdown on demonstrators in the cities. the government has been targeting the people he has been mandated to serve and protect. special procedures have stated that actions taken by the libyan authorities are legitimate and unlawful under international law. the use of force is never an option and cannot be justified in dealing with peaceful demonstrations. the actw -three. -- the acts being reported

include torture and forced disappearances. they violate nydia's obligations byder the him and rights- -- late libya -- violate libya's obligations under the human rights treaties. we urge the authorities to ensure access to immediate medical care to avoid further deaths. we also urge the authorities to release all of these arbitrarily detained people. we call upon the authority to

insure that the people are able to express their legitimate grievances through public and peaceful demonstrations without fear of being killed, injured, arrested, or subjected to other human rights violations. the government must respect its human-rights obligations. mr. president, if proved that the alleged attacks or restricted by the authorities were committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against the people of libya, these could amount to crimes against humanity. those responsible must be held accountable. we have also noted with concern the use of provocative language in a recent statement made by the libyan president. inciting violence will only lead to an escalation of the situation and to further violations.

it is important that the authorities realized that they may be prosecuted by international criminal justice mechanisms or through universal jurisdictions. we endorse the call made by the united nations high commissioner for human rights for an international inquiry into the violence. the international community should act without delay to make its responsibility to protect civilians from serious human rights violations and reality for the people in libya. we, the mandate-holders, are willing to contribute to such an inquiry. it appears the government is also attempting to restrict the dissemination of information on the atrocities being committed by cutting off telephone communications, internet, access, and restricting media

coverage. we called on authorities to ensure that journalists can work securely and really to inform the public locally and globally about what is happening in libya. all communications, including the internet, remain open and accessible to the public. these special procedures want to emphasize the wide failures to protect human rights throughout the country. for years, those defending human rights, including journalists, doctors, and lawyers, have not had the space they need to do their important work without fear of reprisals. him ride the vendors and others have been tortured, -- human rights defenders and others have been tortured.

underlying human rights issues will need be quickly addressed, in particular the widespread denial of economic and social rights that have been -- that has been witness over the years. libyans are entitled to take part in policy and decision making, to claim their right to work without discrimination, and to an adequate standard of living. it is --it not a teammate -- not made law, the situation will not be improved. there are structures that need to go on unabated. reforms must be based on respect for the rule of law and the principles of non- discrimination and the qualities enshrine it in the the declaration of human rights and other human rights instruments.

mr. president, as we have stated on previous occasions with regard to other situations, as mandates holders, we stand ready to provide the necessary help to the council. we want to insist on insuring that all human rights in libya are protected. ofhave not had the benefit seeing firsthand the situation in the country. we call on the authorities to extend invitations for those who wish to conduct visits, including technical assessment missions. special procedures welcomes the opportunity of this special session to address important immediate issues in relation to the human rights situation in the country.

this will lead to immediate out -- it action to bring about an end to human-rights violations and the protection of all rights of men, women, and children. >> thank you. i would like to thank mr. del prado for his statement. as you know, at this time, the practice is to give the floor to the country of concern. i should now like to give it floor to hungary on behalf of the european union. >> thank you, mr. president. i have the honor to speak on behalf of the european union. we have a former republic of

yugoslavia and potential candidates albania, armenia, and others aligned themselves with this declaration. the whole world has been following the events unfolding in libya. the use of live ammunition and heavy weaponry against peaceful demonstrators exercising the right of freedom of assembly. the right -- the violent suppression of civilians is -- the blocking of the internet and telecommunication networks undermines the freedom of expression and freedom of the press. access is not guaranteed for human rights monitors and

humanitarian agencies. silent to has been the human rights emergency in libya. the situation has been underlined by the eu, the africa union, the arab league, and a wide range of international actors, as well as the high commissioner of human rights. we are pleased to see that many regional organizations condemn in small terms -- in strong terms, the crimes committed against the demonstrators. it was made clear that the state has an obligation to protect the rights to life, liberty, and security of the people. we support this position and to

underline that each individual state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. a group of special procedure mandate holders from the human rights council issued a joint statement on the 22nd of february calling for a stop to the massacre and warning that gross violations in the past few days could amount to crimes against humanity. it also welcomed the call made by the high commissioner of human rights for an international inquiry into the island's -- into the violence. the secretary-general expressed the concern over the latest developments. arab states condemned in strong terms the crimes committed against the peaceful demonstrators.

the president of the european council made it clear that the horrible crimes unacceptable and must not remain without consequences. on behalf of the european union, we contend the aggression against peaceful demonstrationo. she also emphasized the demands of people for reform must be addressed in a meaningful dialogue. the foreign ministers also called for an immediate end to the use of force against protesters. the eu urges libya to fulfil its obligations to international law. the european union is also deeply concerned about the fate of citizens up the united states stuck in libya. we urge libya to cooperate in

protecting the citizens of other countries including assisting their evacuation, if necessary. the human rights council cannot remain silent in the face o shocking events such as those taking place now in libya. we have the responsibility to act in order to stop human rights violations and take steps to remedy the plight of victims. mentorship in the council carries duties and obligations. under the resolution upper 251, members elected to the council should uphold the high standards in the promotion and protection of human rights in this context

, the european union would like to record a resolution. 2/3 of the members present and voting may extend the resolution. we have to act now. the number of victim is growing -- the victim's is growing day by day. we challenge the international community to act on behalf of victims. we welcome the u.n. security council libya must protect its obligation and to hold those responsible for attacks. the european union also believes that independent, impartial, and credit all -- and credible

investigations are necessary. we stress that those responsible for the aggression and violence against civilians will be held accountable. it is also our obligation on the ground. they should know that the international community is ready to act decisively toward them. mr. president, in view of the above, member states of the european union have called for a special session of the human rights council in libya. 56 countries in all regions of the world called for that special session. they have also played a role in encouraging the council to take immediate action. we welcome their reports and their delegations. this sends a strong message about the need to take meaningful action in response to

the urgent human rights situation. the council must act and must act urgently. we have decided to adopt a solution on the situation of human rights in libya. it is our hope that it will enjoy universal supporthot with. >> i of the floor to iraq of the arab group. >> [speaking foreign language] >> i am making this statement on behalf of the arab community. on the twenty second of

february, the arab group has been keeping a careful eye on the recent the elements -- developments in the libyan cities. especially reports of heavy fighting in the city's and the serious humanitarian situation affecting the libyan people. as well as the pressure on demonstrators. the crimes committed against the demonstrators and protesters who are operating peacefully, these actions are taking place in a large number of libyan cities. we denounce attacks of violence directed against civilians. unacceptable acts of violence that can never be justified. the use of foreign mercenaries, live munitions, and artillery

are also being directed against the demonstrators. all of this constitutes a serious violations of human rights. the arab group called upon the libyan authorities to immediately stop the acts of violence in all forms and to take up a national dialogue. that they respond to the legitimate demands to respect the rights of freedom of demonstration, freedom of expression, and to stop the bloodshed and protect the territorial integrity of libyan citizens. and the group calls upon the libyan authorities to lift all prohibitions and restrictions of the media and to guarantee access from means of

communication to telephone networks and ensure that emergency medical assistance is provided to victims. the serious allegations of participation of foreign nationals taking part in the violence against libyans, these allegations must be verified. but we call upon the authorities to ensure a level of protection to all nationals of arab countries and other foreigners living in libya. and to ensure that those that wish to leave the country can do so safely. the arab group emphasized the need to make aspirations of people to reform, democratic

change, and justice. this is a legitimate demand that must be respected. mr. president, the arab group if you invite me the member states, her family countries -- and friendly countries, international organizations to provide humanitarian assistance in an arrogant way to the libyan people, at this crucial stage of their history, finally, we about our heads in memory of the murderers -- martyrs, the innocent victims', the wounded. not to mention the enormous physical damage to public and private property. >> thank you, i'd give the floor

to pakistan. >> thank you, mr. president. i have the honor to make this statement on behalf of the member states. consistent with the statement made by the general, the members a stake in the human rights council that we strongly condemn the use of force against civilians resulting in the death or injury of a large number of people. we also express and offered condolences to the family of the victims. the member states: the authorities to immediately cease violence against innocent people and underscore the need to address the man's peacefully and through dialogue and concordance with the true spirit. the program of action calls upon

all members to enlarge the scope of political participation for liberties and social the access -- social justice. it is therefore incumbent on the libyan authorities to respect and a pulled these obligations. mr. president -- and uphold these obligations. it is a time of awakening. the time for reckoning. muslims will no longer be denied their rights. justice and the rule of law must prevail. not just in western societies, but across the world. recent developments have alleged that islam is incompatible with democracy. our books states, the muslims

conduct of affairs by mutual confrontation and keeping open for the welfare of others. and those who stand up for their rights and defend themselves are without blame. the blame is on those that depressed people. -- oppress people. similarly, islam places great emphasis on the rights of human beings. opened the door to social reforms and create an environment of security and safety so that people are able to enjoy their basic rights and freedoms. the muslim awakening has emphatically stated that the world will no longer acceptable standards and hypocrisy in

international orders. democracy, freedom, and justice are rights that cannot be promoted to serve the interests of some and not all. the international community will have to pay attention to the voices of the muslim world and. they will no longer tolerate the inequalities and justice. most importantly, muslims will no longer tolerate denial of their rights in any part of the world. in conclusion, mr. president, it is expected that the libyans will heed the voice of the national community and resort to a peaceful means to resort to the ongoing crisis. the interleaf must come to the libyan people.

-- a and relief must come to the libyan people. the rules of the game have changed. i think you, mr. president. >> i give the floor to nigeria on behalf of the african group. >> mr. president, i have the ho nor to make the statement on behalf of the african group. the african group is convinced of the responsibility for protection of human rights. to serve on the situation in libya, see the opportunity. but to address the issue of the mandates.

at this juncture, we submit that the african group is no less concerned about the situation in libya that in any other country in the region. in fact, a number of african leaders were the first and initiative -- to take initiatives. also, the african security council came out with a communique that clearly condemned the situation. it is obvious, mr. president, [unintelligible] action was taken by the security

council to dispatch a mission to libya to assess the situation on the ground. mr. president, consistent with the agreement, the african group sees the need for libyan authorities and the good people of libya not to relent and their efforts. on this occasion, we wish well to all those that have sustained injury. we want the authorities to guarantee not only the protection and security of the civilians, but to ensure assistance is provided to the population in the. it is important to state clearly by the african group that we totally condemn the amount and

created -- the amalgam created. it puts africans living in the country in an insecure and difficult situation. the group is convinced that an open dialogue will remain and they can find a solution. we ultimately strive for the aspirations of the encroachment for enduring democracy. in conclusion, mr. president, we anticipate that the authorities will be called by the international community. we would like to add that we

remain united. [unintelligible] on that, that is our decision in this regard. i thank you. >> thank you. >> [speaking foreign language] >> thank you, mr. president. we like to speak the -- think the council for calling this meeting. -- or we would like to thank the council for calling this

meeting. my country is watching with concern the tragic events unfolding in libya. particularly the use of aerial bombardment, the heavy weaponry and mercenaries leading to victims being created. we condemn the use of the disproportionate violence against the people, this constitutes a violation of human rights. we support the libyan brothers calling an end to the repression and human rights violations and killings.

it protect civilians, guaranteeing their right to peaceful demonstration and expressed their views. we recall that the prime responsibility of any state is to guarantee the freedom of citizens and the rights to life and security. concerns were voiced at the international level. there are legitimate aspirations to peace, freedom, and dignity we must call on the libyan authorities to ensure stability for the country, putting an end to the use of any form of weaponry.

secondly, we must insurer of the necessary level of protection in. that leads to conflict among nationals of the country. third, we must protect civilians in respect for international human rights. we call upon the libyan government to abide by its commitment to protect the population into easy access for international organizations to ensure the necessary aid. the reports that described a lack of various forms of humanitarian aid to the wounded. the right to peaceful assembly, the freedom of the press must be

respected. and all constraints on the media and telecommunications must be lifted. those responsible for attacks on civilians must be brought to justice. my country calls upon all member states, all observer states, international organizations and agencies, as well as the community at large to protect the libyan people. there is also a national independent inquiry to investigate possible crimes against humanity. the country expresses its solidarity. and we hope that they would be able to merge from this crisis with minimal loss of life.

>> i would like to inform you that the list of speakers is now closed and i will give the floor to france. >> thank you, sir. we echo the statements made by hungry. we are delighted that you have decided to take up the situation in libya. the extremely serious situation and the scale of human rights violations requires this. information that was echoed said the civilian population [unintelligible] the libyan authorities are systematically repressing their own population. and almost all states have

rejected these unbearable signs of violence. dealing with these atrocious acts, the council will, to expectations of a mandate. it unambiguously condemns the violations currently being perpetrated in libya which could be similar to crimes against humanity. there can be no impunity for those committed and responsible for violations of human rights. all possible options need to be looked at. we should remind the authorities that is their responsibility to protect all citizens on the territory. that news must be able to be held without obstacle. -- victims must be able to be helped without obstacle.

with unconditional respect for fundamental freedoms, people are arbitrarily taken into detention. the independent inquiry as soon as possible in order to establish the facts and see who is responsible. we asked the general assembly to meet as soon as possible to take a position on the suspension of the human rights council. the very words of the libyan leadership leaves us in no doubt that in havana -- libya is manifestly no longer going to be a member of the council. mr. president, council today has historic responsibility facing it. france called upon the member

states to give support to the ambitious and bold resolutions submitted to them. it is a message that we must send to the libyan leadership, the same time, a message of support to the libyan people. and thank you. >> the secretary general is urging the security council to take concrete action to protect civilians in libya. warning that any delay will mean a loss of life. the secretary general plans to discuss the libyan crisis with president obama. he spoke briefly with reporters today. >> and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. as you know, i am part of the security council on peace and security issues in africa.

we have an extraordinary thing in the u.n. security council. a truly historic moment. the ambassador delivered an impassioned plea for our help. the message was simple and direct. now it's time for decisive action. this is a historic turning point. and the nature of community must rise to the occasion. ladies gentlemen, and the situation -- we have received the reports of violent clashes with high casualties. we have also heard reports of systematic violations of human rights. these include indiscriminate killings, shootings of peaceful demonstrators.

the detention and torture of the opposition and the use of mercenaries, a dangerous impediment of humanitarian workers. let me also note that we are experiencing a crisis of refugees displaced. the report that 22,000 people have fled tunisia and another 15,000 have gone to egypt. -- the from egypt. they are unable to leave for safety. many of those crossing the border have said that the journey was terrifying. it is crucial that humanitarian agencies have access to the border regions.

the neighboring states including your eye will work with people freeing libya. we expect the situation to worsen. for the surprise running dangerously low, in my conversations with the leaders and the world, in my public and private statement, i have spoken out. the virus must stop. those responsible for shedding the blood of a person must be punished. human rights must be respected. the challenge for us now is to protect and do all we can to halt the ongoing violence. that is why i urged the security council to consider the wide range of options for action.

those include proposals for trade and financial sanctions against the leadership such as a ban on travel and the freezing of financial assets. some member states called for an arms embargo. others drew attention to the clear and egregious foundations of human rights taking place in libya and the urging of the security council to take action to ensure real accountability. i urge the council to consider concrete action. in this context, i welcome the resolution by the human rights council to establish an independent commission of inquiry. i also recommended that libya be suspended from the human rights

council. as you know, that would require a 2/3 majority vote of the national assembly. they have informed me that this matter will be taken up early next week. ladies and gentlemen, i will continue to engage leaders on this issue. on monday, i traveled to washington to discuss these and other matters with the u.s. president obama. let me conclude by saying that whatever the security council and general assembly does the side, we must be mindful of the urgency of the moment. in these circumstances, the loss of time that means the loss of

lives. this is the time to act. thank you very much. >> mr. secretary general, it did not have any particular effect when you try to talk to him. how are you going to try to talk to him again? >> after having spoken extensively with the colonel on whether he would oppose the international community, he will do anything to protect the civilian population and stop the violence. but he has been trying to justify in defending his position. i have been trying to talk to all of the leaders in the region. >> he said that this is an

urgent time. the draft resolution details embargoes, freezing accounts. is that enough to stop the violence? should there be military intervention? >> i have urged the security council to take a look at a wide range of options. they are considering all possible options. and that is up to the member states of the security council. what course of action should be taken at this time? >> general, you expressed the importance of accountability. there is one member that is against it. another member did not receive instructions. how important is a cure for this to the icc and told people --

hold people responsible. >> crimes of such a slae -- scale must be held accountable. i think they will consider all possible means. i have urged the members of the council to consider a wide range of options. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] the white house today announced plans to pressure the libyan government to stop using violence against protesters. this is about 55 minutes.

if we delay this further, it could be happier hour. in malta, it is definitely happy hour. good afternoon, and welcome to the department of state. given current security conditions in libya, coupled with our inability to guarantee fully the safety and security of our personnel within the country, the department of state has temporarily withdrawn embassy personnel from libya and suspended all embassy operations, effective today. the safety of the american community remains paramount. we will continue to provide assistance to the greatest

extent possible to the other missions. today, we are gratified that the erry was able to disepart libya and has arrived in malta, as well as the departure of one last charter that carried our remaining diplomatic personnel from the mission as well as other american citizens and third country nationals. two of the hardest working people through the last several days, actually, probably the last several weeks, are the undersecretary for management patrick kennedy and janet from dna bureau. we thought we would bring them down -- from the na bureau. we thought we would bring them down now to discuss what it means to have diplomatic

relations and suspended. we will discuss ongoing events with the libyan leadership, but to go through a few of the mechanics of how we got to this point. patrick has been essential in the logistics of moving american citizens out of harm's way. janet has been involved in all of the interagency meetings and conversing every day with our counterpart in libya. cress is for coming down. -- thank you for coming down. >> thank you. we have issued dover 10 warning notices to american citizens starting -- we have issued over

10 warning notices to american citizens, starting february 5th. will authorize the departure of family members. on the 21st, we ordered the departure of all family members and non-emergency personnel. a number of american citizens have departed via commercial means or via charters are arranged by their companies, or via mutual assistance provided by other governments. even though flights were operating, the airports were somewhat chaotic with the large numbers of people there, and therefore, the u.s. chartered a ferry boat to with a 600 person capacity into the port on wednesday morning. during the course of the day on wednesday, we loaded about two hundred 50-to under 70 people, about half american -- 250-270

people, about half american. we had planned to sail that evening. there were 15-18 foot waves that made sailing and save. we held the ferry into yesterday. the waves did not abate. we loaded another dozen or so individuals onto the ferry yesterday and planned to sail last night. again, we could not. finally, after long consultations with the u.s. armed forces and whether experts, we knew that the weather would break this morning, so we loaded a few more people onto the ferry this morning and the ferry departed people at the same time, leon also announced yesterday to the american community that we would be making a chartered aircraft available today. we brought the chartered aircraft in, loaded the

remaining official american employees on it, and another dozen or so american citizens and members of third country nationals as well. that aircraft has now departed. we are now suspended operations at the embassy. that does not mean that diplomatic relations are broken. we will continue to carry-on our work with the government of libya and janet can address that in more detail. essentially, we moved to get out as many americans as we could. we will continue to work to assist american citizens. the bureau of consular affairs has 24/7 capability. if any american citizens are in need of assistance, they can contact the state department and we will see what we can do. but we have put in, as i said, the last charter flight that we

intend to at this time. we do know that the airport, in spite of it being overcrowded still, is moving some commercial planes in and out. >> thank you. in addition to the responsibilities we have to the american community and to our mission on the ground, one of the things this department has been doing is a full-court press in terms of trying to develop a set of options for the president and his decision makers in regards to the continuing and indeed, intensifying islands on the ground, violence against -- violence on the ground, violence against the libyan people and increasing problems with the regime and the way it is handling the governments of its country. you have seen, of course, the secretary of state has made a number of calls to her counterparts around the world in the last couple of days. those calls are continuing. she has consulted with african foreign ministers, european

foreign ministers and others who are interested in the state of libya. the secretary has echoed what the president has said. we are shocked and appalled by what we have seen on the ground in libya. we told the libyan government accountable for its actions and the -- hold to the libyan government accountable for its actions and the actions of its military. we're deeply concerned about the fate of the libyan people, and we're looking at a variety of options in addition to sanctions, unilateral, the ones announced this morning by the white house. in conjunction with our friends and like-minded allies in the area, we're looking at other options, and of course there is a multilateral track. i do not have a lot of details for you right now. we are having those conversations. there are ongoing. but i think the important thing to take away is that the international community is speaking with one voice about what is happening in libya. we are all concerned and shot,

and we're looking at ways not only to change the behavior of the government, but also to hold it accountable for what is happening on the ground. the secretary will go to the human rights council meeting in geneva on sunday. the meeting is on monday. bill burns has been dispatched to europe. he is now their consultation with some of our closest european allies about what is -- he is now there for consultation with some of our closest european allies about what is next. our embassy is not closed. we have suspended operations. we still continue to reach out to the libyans where appropriate, both directly and through third parties. the libyan embassy here is up and running. we have not been informed of any change of the status of the ambassador. i will be meeting with representatives of the libyan embassy shortly after this meeting.

i will convey our decision about the suspension of diplomatic activity on the ground in libya. but the relationship remains, and we do have channels of communication that speak directly to the libyan government about our concern about what is happening on the ground. >> a couple of things logistically. one come in terms of the embassy being temporarily closed -- one, in terms of the embassy being temporarily closed, [unintelligible] out? >> the flag is still flying. the embassy is not closed. operations are suspended. >> how many people were on the last plane out? >> 19 americans. >> a dozen private citizens? >> a dozen private citizens and nine foreign nationals. craigslist be protecting power?

-- >> who is be protecting power? >> that is yet to be worked out. >> to have you approached? >> that is a matter for diplomatic discussion. we will get back to you on that one. >> what country are you aware of that intent -- which countries are you aware of that intend to keep their embassies open? >> it is a fluid situation. we will give you an answer when we have one. they can contact the state e-mail ort' via telephone. the bureau of consular affairs will do what it can to assist them. >> why are you not suspending relations, diplomatic relations, with libya? would that not be a far stronger sign? >> as the secretary and president have said, we are looking at a range of options.

obviously, everything is on the table, as the president said. i do not want to prejudge what is going to happen then the road. at this point, we thought what was most appropriate was to suspend operations. >> what was the main concern that pushed the state department to evacuate all of officers? >> the chaos in the streets, the gunfire at night, beginning in the last couple of days there was gunfire during the day. we will always executed due prudence when we engage in diplomatic activity. we are there to represent the united states. we are there to advance our economic interests. we are there to assist and protect american citizens, but when the situation becomes significantly and secure, it is at that point prudent to

continue our diplomatic activities with the country via other means. >> is there anyone left at the embassy, any sort of security personnel? was there notification provided to the libyans prior to leaving the country? >> yes come up capone -- yes, our locally engaged staff is still on duty at our compound. >> what does that mean? >> our libyan employees are still -- we did not break diplomatic relations. our libyan employees are still on the payroll and working at the chancellor. >> are there any american security personnel? >> know, all american employees were withdrawn today. >> what about the notification? >> the undersecretaries spoke to

the libyan foreign minister this morning. as i said, i will meet with the representative of the libyan embassy this afternoon to formally give them a diplomatic notice. >> are any of the libyan employees working at the embassy security? >> yes, we have local and national security guards and employees, libby and employees who work in other sections of the embassy -- libyan employees who work in other sections of the embassy. >> at this point, are you saying that you have gotten out all of the americans who needed help getting out? >> we can never say that. as you know, or maybe you do not, there is no requirement that an american citizen register at an embassy when he or she travels. we certainly encourage american citizens to register at the embassy, and that 10 warning

notices we put out since the 15th of february have encouraged individuals to register. many of those individuals may have left on commercial flights. they may have left on flights -- we know of at least one that left on a dutch flight. and number of others left on a british warship out of the city. we do not have that kind of trouble control on american citizens. i cannot say we started with x and these many left and these many, therefore, remain behind. but as i said earlier, it american citizens are in need of assistance, there are ways for them to reach us, both via telephone and on the website. >> given how difficult it was -- i know it was largely whether, but given how difficult it was to get americans out of libya, in retrospect, would you have ordered the departure earlier? >> they do not believe so. we've -- i do not believe so.

we measured the situation on the ground very carefully. we considered our ability to continue to operate fully, and then as the situation deteriorated, it is a multistage process. the first potentially go to an authorized departure for family members. then you authorize the departure of non-emergency personnel. we jump to that step and went to the ordered the departure of all family members and non-emergency personnel. each situation is calibrated against the political environment, the security environment, and u.s. national interests. >> there has been some criticism, because here we have a ferry that was stuck there for three days because of weather problems, and yet the british and some other countries were able to evacuate their citizens

while our american citizens were trapped aboard that ferry. is this a case where we did not have the access in place that we needed? were we caught short? what were the issues? >> i do not think so. canadian aircraft went in today and left empty because of the chaos at the airport. we sent the ferry in deliberately because we cage, starting on tuesday, that the situation at the airport was becoming sufficiently chaotic that we were worried about moving people through the airport. therefore, we decided to use another means of transportation, having excluded overland transportation to the west. we thought, because the ferry terminal is a different location, it was a little bit easier to obtain space there, we had cooperation from the government of libya in doing that. we put the ferry in with every intention of taking it out. the weather turned bad. i would not describe the people

less trapped on the ferry boat. this is not a ferry boat -- people as trapped on the ferry boat. this is not the staten island ferry. it is a mediterranean ferry with gavin's, food and restroom facilities. food and restroom facilities. would i have like to be able to leave the first day? of course. but the determination was made that be -- that reveal whether was unsafe, we decided to wait. >> having grown up with the s.i. ferry, i will ignore that slander. [laughter]

>> the r i f got out. the canadians lynn but were not able to get anyone loaded. -- flew in but were not able to get anyone loaded. >> without stepping on the pentagon's two, we also has a military assets over the horizon, that if the situation was concerning in any way, we had some options available. we did get cooperation from every element of this cooperation except for the weather. we did not feel at any time that the people on the ferry were in any other danger than anyone who was currently in libya. >> can i ask when your coordination with the military assets began? >> from the moment we have high level meetings on the situation

in libya. the military has been fully involved in this process. trueoordination has bennien of egypt, of bahrain, of tunisia. this is how we function as a government. >> when the decision -- when was the decision to suspend operations made? was it after gaddafi posole grant? rant?dafi's >> this had been the recommendation of the experts. the real question was, today was the day that all the pieces fell into place. we were able to move the ferry out. we were not going to take this action while the ferry was there. >> the triggers for the ferry and the plane leaving. when was the decision made that

once those triggers were polled, that those would be the triggers for the closure of the embassy. >> that decision was made today based on the fact that we could actually -- >> you had to know what some point ahead of time that you were going to tell the remaining diplomats in libya, get to this plame. >> this has been a daily conversation throughout this -- >> when was the decision made for all of those diplomats to show up at the airfield to get on this airplane. >> today. >> the decision was made today? >> the plans were in place before today, but the decision to execute was made today. >> in your standpat budget [laughter] -- i understand that but [laughter] are you telling me the decision was made just today? >> the decision was made once we

understood that we could get as many american citizens as we were able to assemble and transport out. >> obviously, the decision was made perhaps before the plane even landed or the ferry even left. when was the decision made? was it yesterday? last night? overnight? >> i do not want to par's things. i think we can say that the decision was made yesterday's that should all of the pieces fall into place, we would move today. if all of the pieces had not fallen into place today, we might have moved to umaru. or, if the situation had all of the sudden reversed itself, it never would have been made. >> yesterday, when you decided that if all of the pieces fell into place -- was that after gaddafi's speech?

>> i do not know that that was a factor. we looked at the totality of the situation and made a decision. >> who made that decision? >> decisions like that are made by the secretary of state. >> when you expect to resume operations in the embassy? >> we would resume american operations at the embassy when the security situation permits it. >> can i ask about remaining pockets of americans who may be outside of tripoli who may want to leave? can you give us a sense of the size of those pockets and how they plan on leaving? >> we have been in contact -- our task force, which has a heavy component from the bureau

of consular affairs -- we've been in contact with the oil companies, the other businesses, the bureau of diplomatic security, the security advisor recounts all. we are inking -- advisory council. we are in contact with companies that did not know to be in contact with us. many of them are making arrangements to reach those individuals, some of the nomura brought into tripoli and subsequently have left -- some of who were brought into tripoli and subsequently have left. others of who left on a british naval vessel late yesterday. >> of the ones that are left, how many are you talking about? a dozen? >> perhaps if i could elaborate on that answer. we have similar task forces in capitals around the world. between us and our friends,

particularly in europe, we have been able to trade off, for want of a better term. the number of people in the oilfields that we have identified over the last 96 hours have either moved and gotten on the charter today, or more likely were evacuated out by their companies, or by friendly nations who have offered us seats. according to the last thing the task force told me, they believe that there are no significant pockets of americans in the oilfields that we have not identified. let me be honest. there may be ones out there that we have not decided to contact -- been able to contact or they have decided to take shelter for the time being. we are in the process of confirming that. >> how many are those? can you give us a sense? >> dara 6 here, for year, five

here. we know that at least -- there were six here, four here, five here. we will have to get back to you on that. >> do you have a sense of how many americans have been evacuated? >> i think we can say that there were about 200 private american means,s taken out by our but many other american citizens left commercially, on company charters, or via dutch or british means, just as we -- it has been a mutual assistance pact, brought out nationals of other nations as well both on the ferry and the chartered aircraft as well. >> what measures are being

taken to secure communications, documents, etc. inside the embassy? >> i am not going to go into our processes on security, but i can assure you that there is nothing left behind that could be compromising. >> they're still working. the guards are still there. but they are not authorized to do any business between the u.s. government and the libyan government, correct? >> unless instructed by as. >> they are not issuing visas. it essentially, the embassy is closed for business. >> operations are suspended, and those activities that could only be carried out by american personnel are suspended. >> the white house used the

word shuttered. would you agree? >> of course. [laughter] >> did the secretary of state have to sign a document or was this a verbal order? >> she does not have to sign a document. >> have you been given any assurances that the embassy will remain intact, untouched? >> we had a brief conversation with the foreign minister this morning and we did not go into detail on that. i will take the opportunity this afternoon in my meeting with the libyan embassy to put down some markers in regards to the maintenance and protection of our facility. >> you said that you had not been notified of any change in the ambassador's status, but he seems to be doing his own and notifying. is it your understanding that he represents the government of libya? >> we have nothing to the

contrary at this point. >> if it is true that he has resigned, as he says he has, you can tell them all you want that you want your embassy to be protected but he cannot do anything. >> that is true, but he has not informed us that he has resigned. until we have been told by him or the libyan government otherwise -- >> thank you. >> thank you. >> just to touch on a couple of things regarding libya, and then we can move on to any other subject you have, let's go through some specific numbers. on the airplane today, there were 41 passengers, 19 officials, 13 american citizens, and nine citizens of

other countries, and on the ferry, there were three under 38 passengers, including 183 -- 338 passengers, including 183 american citizens, including 40 official americans -- that might be technically incorrect. it might be 39. we took one passenger -- 39 official party. we took one passenger off the ferry this morning and she has been transported to italy via an italian evacuation. she is eight and a half months pregnant, and 155 citizens of other countries. >> the 183 includes the 39? >> yes. >> what was the total

international? >> if my math is correct, it would be 155. there were more international -- >> so there were more international citizens and private americans? >> know, 183 americans. >> did you take any other officials from other embassies? >> yes. i do not have a breakdown of that, but there were members of official parties and other embassies. >> where did the plane take off from? >> the military airfield. >> there had been reports, unconfirmed, that that had fallen to the opposition. >> as far as i know, those reports were not correct. it was a commercial charter.

>> it went where? >> is stempel. it is perhaps in the air or hat -- istanbul. it is perhaps in the air war has landed a i don't know. -- or has landed, i do not know. we have established an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate human rights violations and look at accountability measures for those responsible. we've asked the un security council to suspend libyan council membership. that will be considered by the general assembly next week, probably on tuesday. we are already working with a partner regarding this issue. just to clarify, i know we have

a question of whether expulsion vs suspension was the correct term. it is in fact suspension. this would be the first time a council member has been suspended since the council was founded in 2006. >> that is not that long. could you go back to when it was the commission? that might be more revealing. >> there were meetings today in toronto with several senior officials. in sarajevo, he met with members of the tri-presidency and other political leaders to discuss the formation of a government. during his previous two days, he

had visits to armenia, georgia and azerbaijan. he had meetings with the several leaders. next week, under secretary will be in nigeria to discuss the promotion of democratic institutions and processes as nigeria continues to work toward an important election. >> it seems a bit unusual that you would shut down -- suspend the operations of an embassy without having a protecting power line up. -- lined upp. i know that in the two other cases where you had protecting powers, things were different. it took awhile and iran because things happen so quickly. can you discuss why if you went

ahead and decided to suspend operations if you did not have someone lined up? >> the situation on the ground was the reason for that. i think that hinted at it. we are still sorting out with other countries what their plans are as well. we will be working to establish a protective power, but given the uncertainty of the situation, of bell was the direction we wanted to go in. >> -- that was the direction we wanted to go in. >> is the united states government in contacted all with any part of the opposition in libya? >> i cannot say that we, the united states, have had any contact with the opposition at this point. we have had discussions with other leaders who have been in touch with opposition figures to

try to understand what is happening on the ground. >> what other leaders are those? >> i am not going to catalog. i can go back over the discussions the secretary has had today. she talked to the foreign minister of canada. she also talked to tony blair. yesterday she talked to president ping-pon. >> she spoke to tony blair about libya? >> yes. she spoke with the president of chad. these are collectively figures who have far closer contacts and broader ties -- let me reverse that. closer ties and broader

contacts then we do. we are talking to a wide range of people, trying to do our best to understand fully what is actually happening on the ground. >> should it be a source of concern the we have no direct contact with the opposition in libya? >> this is done unfolding situation. i am not going to -- this is still an unfolding situation. i am not going to rule out bed at some point we will have contact with the opposition -- rule out that at some point we will have contact with the opposition. >> presumably, the u.s. is already using its fall intelligence capabilities to monitor gaddafi.

>> in terms of our pledge to hold mr. gaddafi, his family, his regime, fully accountable for what is happening on the ground, we will have to build a case. there has been a meeting in the u.n. today to assess what is actually known. we will be watching very closely, intensively, to see what is happening on the ground, as part of our efforts not only to understand, and to the extent that we can, to shape future decisions, but also to hold the libyan government responsible for the actions it has taken and will take. >> i was looking at this speech by joe biden at the holocaust museum in which he said,, "when a state engages in an atrocity,

it forfeits its sovereignty." is the u.s. preparing to make the case that the libyan government has forfeited its sovereignty, therefore action can be taken internationally ? >> is certainly think that the legitimacy of the libyan government is basically gone, based on its turning its weapons against its own people. going forward, obviously we will look for ways to support the libyan people. we're looking at and studying the humanitarian situation on the ground. that is something we will be focused on in the coming days. but our broad message to libya today, just as it has been throughout this time, is to stop the violence, stop the

bloodshed, and we will continue to find ways to communicate that to the libyan officials. >> when you say build a case, it sounds like a warning to libyan officials that they might find themselves before the icc or something of that nature? >> part of what the human rights council did today was to the established public -- to establish an international commission of inquiry. we will contribute to gathering the facts and evidence of what has happened in libya. those facts will determine what the appropriate steps are. ahead.ot jump as you yourself have -- >> but the icc, which you're not a member of, and have taken great pains to make clear that

you're not a member of, are you looking at an ad hoc criminal counsel? >> as i am trying to say, you are leaping ahead of the process. we will be gathering facts as an international community about what has happened in libya and the responsibility of the government for the violence and violations of human rights that have occurred. once we have a consensus on what has occurred and who is responsible, then the international community, working through the un, will determine the next steps. >> to really push this beyond where you want to go, is it conceivable, looking again at what is being hinted year, that the international community, that the u.s. could be looking at the possibility of working with the international community

to launch some kind of concerted military action to go into libya and protect those people in spite of gaddafi, because he has given up his sovereignty? as -- >> as i said, at the senior leaders of this government have developed a range of options. we are concerned about the situation on the ground. that would be one of the number of areas the we focus on in the coming days. as we have said, the military is a full participant in the policy development that is going on. may have not ruled out any options at this point. >> your comments reflect the fact that the united states has made a determination that the libyan government has lost

legitimacy. have you also made a determination about the actual degree of control that gaddafi maintains over his territory? >> well, that is something -- one of the reasons why we are increasing intelligence assets -- without getting into intelligence matters, to fully understand what is going on, it is clear that gaddafi in the libyan government do not control major swaths of the country at this point. >> what about tripoli? what is your assessment about the control of the city? >> at this point, i believe that the situation in tripoli differs somewhat from the situation in other parts of the country, but it is obviously a very fluid situation. i do not know that i can do a play by play. >> i'm not asking you to

redistrict tripoli, but does he appear to be in control of the majority? >> that is a hard judgment to make from here. country.different c >> the situation today in tripoli was described as relatively stable in itself. obviously, we were able to get some citizens to the airfield to depart. we are able to get some citizens to the dock to join others who were on ferries. there is the ability to function within tripoli itself. i cannot speak for how far outside of tripoli does that situation changed dramatically, but it is clear that the government no longer has control of major population centers in the country besides tripoli. >> in regards to the security

concerns for american personnel, did you also have a rationale for your decision to evacuate, ed was it some sort of nod to the protesters to say -- was it some sort of nod to the protesters to say, we cannot tolerate this treatment of your citizens? >> cigna not see those as mutually exclusive. -- i do not see those as mutually exclusive. the decision to suspend operations was one, about our security and the safety of american citizens there. as far as we can tell, we have successfully evaluated as many american citizens as have identified themselves to us. -- evacuate as many american citizens as have identified themselves to us. what else could be accomplished on the ground? we do maintain diplomatic relations so that we can continue to try to understand

what is going on, and to the extent the we can, working with others in the international community, try to influence future decisions by the libyan government. that is something we can do, obviously, from outside the country. >> the ones in that no one has said, now that all the americans are at -- the one thing that no one has said, now that all of the americans are out, no one is calling for gaddafi to step down. why is that? >> this is a situation that continues to unfold. ultimately, as we have said, who leads libya in the future is not for the united states to determine. >> i am not asking you to determine it. >> i am understand that. we are consulting broadly it with others in the international

community about how we assess the situation on the ground. but that is an issue that we continue to handle. >> just to be clear -- >> his legitimacy. that would suggest that the united states -- >> ultimately -- >> cannot stay on -- >> that ultimately will be determined inside libya, not outside libya. >> the your determination -- >> do you feel you can still lead knowledge him as the leader of libya? >> i believe from -- still acknowledge him as the leader of libya? >> i believe from a legal standpoint he is still the leader. he has obviously lost legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and that will affect our standpoint

as well. >> he has some bizarre title. what exactly did the secretary of state call tony blair about libya? >> he has very important to valuable contacts inside of libya. >> and he can use those contacts to assist the united states? >> i am not tony blair's a spokesperson. he actually has an able spokesperson. >> do we know anything about the american who was detained today? aaron mark dehaven? >> i am staring at a statement

that came out of pakistan today. we have seen reports that he has been detained by police. we are arranging consular access to the government of pakistan. >> you do not know anything more about him? >> that is all we know. >> what about the other american? >> i do not know the we have had consular access yet. i do not think the requesting the report that appearthere is n american in detention, but beyond that, there is no reason -- >> is a connected to the other case? >> i would not suggest that it is connected to the other case. >> what happened today in court?

>> maya understanding is in court today he presented the court with a copy of the diplomatic note that affirms his bow immunity from criminal prosecution -- his faull immunity from criminal prosecution. the court indicated that it would take the matter under consideration. i believe there is another hearing scheduled for march 3rd. he presented a copy of a diplomatic note to the government of pakistan. >> is that like presenting a note from your mother? >> well -- >> i mean, presenting a diplomatic note. that note has been presented to the pakistani government already. and he declined the offer of an

attorney, is that correct? or has refused to hire an attorney? >> i cannot comment. he does have legal representation by a pakistani lawyer. i cannot speak to their particular status. we had consulate officials present at today's hearing. it is mine understanding that it was an note we provided to the government earlier this month. i ask that question. it was not the original note from last year. >> it was not a new note. >> it was a copy of the note we had already presented the government of pakistan, but we presented it to the court. have a nice weekend.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> next, a look at the balkans since the dayton peace accord signing. after that, and discussions and internet privacy. then, a tribute to the late senator kennedy. >> tomorrow, a contributor to "the fiscal times," discusses how consumer confidence could be affected by international events. the director of the george w. bush institute talks about the role of diplomacy and the use of social media in political uprisings. the governor of montana previews this year's national governors' association meeting and occiput jobs and the economy -- and talks about jobs and the economy in his state. >> i think our system of government is breaking down.

i think the system of checks and balances is not operating properly. >> our guest has written two just published essays on the pentagon a labyrinth. >> congress has three essential key powers, the power to go to war, the power of the purse, and the power to investigate. the first two powers are meaningless if congress does not exercise the power to investigate, and it is not doing that. >> see the rest of the interview sunday night. >> sunday, former arkansas gov. mike cuppa be promoting his current book -- mike honda uckabee promoting his current

book. you are watching c-span, bringing new politics and public affairs. every morning, our live call-in program about the news of the day, connecting you with elected officials, policymakers and journalists. weeknight, congressional hearings and policy forums. also, supreme court forums. on saturdays, the communicators. on sundays, news makers, q&a, and prime minister's questions. you can also watch our program any time at c-span.org c-span, washington your way, a public service created by america's cable companies. >> former president bill clinton

recently spoke at a forum marking the 15th anniversary of the signing of the dayton peace accords that ended the war in bosnia. current leaders in the region participated in a discussion of the nation's progress since then and the region's political and economic future. this 90 minute discussion was hosted by the clinton foundation. >> i am pleased to introduce president bill clinton, a founder of the william j. clinton foundation, and the 42nd president of the united states. [applause]

>> thank you very much. we are going to talk now about the dayton peace accord, what has happened 15 years later, and where bosnia and the region go now. something richard holbrooke used to say all the time was that dayton was far from a perfect peace, but the choice in november of 1995 was between an imperfect peace and continued slaughter. we did everything we could to convince the parties to choose peace. we knew at the time that was just the beginning. and, i want to say a few words about what we did, but i would like to begin by placing -- the

last question ron brownstein asked was relevant to what this panel is going to discuss. the last question was, was the model used to bring about the peace agreement, the work that the united states did, is it a good model for the challenges we face today since, relatively speaking, it is a more multi- polar world. again, to go back to what i said in the beginning a little bit, i was quite well aware that from the moment the berlin wall fell and the soviet union began to break up, and russia was been quite weak economically -- as i said, my very first

international effort was to organize a multi-billion dollar aid package for russia. china was rising, but nowhere near the economics military capacity and has today. same with india. it had begun its economic reform only very recently, 1991. ron brown had identified, as commerce secretary, other rising countries that he believed would shape the 21st century, would create this multi-polar world in a way that we had not imagined. and we decided we had to focus on them, both to try to build good relationships with them, to keep bad things from happening, and to help good things happen. he identified mexico and brazil. we have a major economic crisis in mexico and twice i moved to

put together economic packages for brazil. inconceivable now because their economy is so strong. the identified nigeria in africa. south africa seems to be on a better path now, but a lot of their political and economic resurgence was derailed by the aids crisis. nigeria has a special set of challenges, as we all know. both of them occupied a lot of my time when i was president. yet identified poland and the ukraine in europe. poland has done pretty well, but we all know that ukrainians claimed their democracy and then had a terrible economic time and are now in the process of real identifying themselves. -- redefining themselves.

we had a big change in indonesia. they ended their ethnic and religious conflict. bridging it all, turkey. so, i guess i would say is, i thought this was a good model because i was perfectly well aware it that it was a fleeting moment in history when america would be the only military, political and economic superpower. i used to say to our security team all the time, you know, china and india have more people than we do, so it is just a matter of time before they generate more wealth. if the europeans keep coming together politically and economically, they will have more people than we do, and many

of them already have a higher average income than in the united states. once somebody has as much money as you do, then you are -- and whether you are a political and economic superpower is more up to them then you. when the chinese decided to build a new submarine fleet, they build diesel powered submarines that are faster and quieter than our submarine fleet. to me, this was about trying to find a way to put a decision making process in place that would create a more unified world. overcome the forces of disintegration in a world where the united states was no longer the biggest dog on the block were the only big dog on the block.

i wanted to create a world i wanted my generation's children and grandchildren to live in when we could no longer dominate, but had to leave. what has really changed is two tanks -- one is, there is more competition for influence and power and wealth and capacity or more widely dispersed. also, frankly, our economic weakness has made it more difficult for us to be taken as seriously as we would be over the long term. one of the things that distressed me most about the last election was the framework in which it unfolded. that is, we once again got stuck in a time warp of saying this election is about he wants more government and you want less. it was more government spending and he wants more tax cuts. that is a silly thing. that is not a single successful

country on the planet earth that does not have both a successful private sector and then effective government. what we have to do to create the future and make the changes that will create a future that give us the economic strength as well as the military strength as the sole product of what we have now, whether it is somebody at my income group that was to hold onto my tax cut, where somebody in the public or private sector that was to hold onto some other benefits, the cost of which is outweighed by the future diminishment for our children and grandchildren. so, i set that up to say, "what we tried to do after dayton was to recognize its limitations." the most important thing with the most tragic results was the

transmission that ron brown -- we knew we had to create a new economy for the balkans. that is the background. what is the balkan equivalent of what we did to the asia-pacific economic group, which has been expended? what is the equivalent of the expansion of nato? what is the equivalent of the summit of americas which we rekindled for the first time in a quarter-century? it is a unifying, systematic contribution the united states can make. what do they have to do on their own to make all the sacrifices of the people who actually gave their lives to this endeavor and the efforts of the united states and the europeans have made it worth it? this is going to be a very good

panel. i want to bring them out. the first is, we are deeply honored to have baroness catherine ashton. she is the secretary of the state of europe. [laughter] a very impressive one at that. i thank her for coming. jim steinberg, the deputy secretary of state. given all the challenges they are facing at the state department today, the would probably have an excused absence, but i have already personally thank the secretary of state for letting them come. [laughter] i want to a knowledge -- christiane amanpour.

i admire her very much. the uncharted hell she gave me in the first few years i was president of bell not watching the entire -- about not marching the entire american army into sarajevo. i am only slightly overstated. -- overstating it. it was a gift. there are some jobs are relatively few when you can't say a single journalist at a decisive and that on the lives of people -- impact on the lives of people and the political impact that followed. yourself where the popular opinion was. the europeans were reluctant to get into this bosnian embroglio because they were not sure they could fix it.

believe it or not, there were all sorts of excuses including the fact that the advent french president really have a soft spot for the serbians going back to world war ii. he just could not believe that they were as bad as we were saying. until they were. until the french were double crossed. i thank going back to what the previous panel said, i do not think there is any question that the slaughter in one town and the changing security situation on the ground brought the europeans to the position that we had been advocating and that richard holbrooke had been trying to implement. i do think that in creating that climate, christiane amanpour had

something to do with it. i thank her for that. most important of all, we are joined today by the president of the republic of croatia, ivo josipovic, who is a lawyer. this is very important to me -- he is a composer. the help compose the future for his country and for the region. finally, the president of the nation at the center of all this, president bakir izetbegovic. he is an architect. he has to build his way out of where we are. he was preceded by the -- in the leadership by his father who was

a person which i had the honor to work and who i had the honor to visit before he passed away. he was a magnificent person. this family has played a great price -- paid a great price to serve for the integrity of it his country and his future. i thank president izetbegovic, and president josipovic. of like them to come out now for the second panel. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. mr. president, thank you for the wonderful introductions for the

distinguished panel and the generous words you just vote. it was, as you all smoke, an era defining more and then air defining these. it was a professional and personal defining moment. i am divided -- delighted to be invited back here after witnessing the present at that time. can i start, actually -- i just want to start with jim steinberg who is the deputy national security adviser at the time. i would like to pay a tribute to richard holbrooke. his name is emblazoned on the station. just to go back briefly, the negotiations that president clinton brought everybody to having led the defining of the targets and brought it to a point where he could actually have a negotiated peace -- it was not inevitable when the three leaders went to dayton and

holed themselves up for that many days. it was not bound to happen, was it? >> i think that is right. it was, for anybody who had the privilege of actually being there and hold up in dayton for those weeks, quite an extraordinary moment. on the one hand you had this horrible, terrible human tragedy. in the room, people were responsible for that. trying to find a way to not lose sight of the enormity of the crimes, and yet to deal with these individuals in try to find a way to reach an agreement. i think perhaps the most important was richard holbrooke understood the history of the region. he did not see it just does something that happened today or yesterday or even with the fall of communism.

he understood the individuals. he knew them and he knew that they knew each other. that was one of the extraordinary things. even at three men who had been part of the political establishment. he used that and played up that dynamic to make a difference. what was so extraordinary was that when richard came back in, he could not let go of the balkans. the salt on my schedule one day that i was going to speak to someone. he called me up and said, "i am coming to the meeting. i want to make sure he is good enough to make sure the work going to continue." it was as passionate -- his

passion and achievement. >> that is a wonderful and it debt. none of us could let go of the balkans and what happened there. jim steinberg just talked about what was going on. you have made reconciliation a hallmark of your time in office -- more than one year now. why is that? do you think that is a precondition for solidifying the peace? >> it is confidence and trust versus fear. it is solidarity vs selfishness. it is also important to build common ground and confidence. the basis for all of this is reconciliation.

from the very beginning of my mandate, i started to contact our neighbors -- with serbia, with slovenia, and the others. it was not always an easy task because there were opposites. they had to pay tribute to president clinton. it was the most important thing at the time. president clinton clearly showed the difference between office holder and a leader. he was really a leader. the region now needs leaders, not officeholders. we need to have the capacity to see the future. our future is the european future.

the four countries would like to be members of the european union. one very important strategic think we are considering is out to help our neighbors join the eu as well. this guarantees for all of the region security for the economy as well. >> let me ask you, president izetbegovic, talking about reconciliation 15 years later may seem strange. did you think reconciliation has happened in bosnia? is a solid? >> [unintelligible] almost nobody was live in these 15 years. it takes time for proper

reconciliation. bosnia -- half of the population extends from their homes. hundreds of thousands of disabled persons. it is not easy to solve all these problems in 15 years. some people, especially bosnia, expected to much from dayton. you cannot make a perfect state, it cannot make perfect deals on the situation. not from the material you had at that moment in bosnia. groups were fighting each other and then expect a perfect state. the main, fundamental piece is not about dayton. it is about the future. the main thing is, of course, reconciliation. the fear of the other -- the

ball and fear from different groups. it is absolutely much better in bosnia. bosnia is much better. i am an optimist. it is clear the glass is more than full. we have gone through more than half of our journey. >> that is really encouraging to hear. you have heard the president talking about you -- about the eu. what are the difficulties of getting into the european union? what happens to bosnia and serbia? >> the first thing i want to say is that i agree that the future

for the countries of this part of our world belong to the european union. we are caught -- currently 27 countries. we know about conflict. we know about dispute. we know there is a better opportunity in having people collaborate and working together politically and economically. whether you're is successful or not, it depends on how effective we are in the neighborhood around us. that is a big challenge for all of the 27 countries. it is important that countries come in able to really take their part and take their place in europe. a whole load up things has to happen. getting the constitution in the right shape -- sorting out the legal situation -- some of these things are quite painful for

countries to go through to be ready. it takes time. the journey croatia has been on as been a long journey. it has been very long. but your towards the end of that journey. the effectiveness of europe is hell well we are able to support those countries to be ready. when they do join, they can be fully participating. 28, 29, 30 country sitting around a table, acting as equals. >> jim, do you think the bar is too high? does a country like croatia, bosnia, and serbia has its issues -- how long is a reasonable amount of time? >> i think we have learned that we are not going to judge the european union and what the standards ought to be. we have a more direct role which respect to nato.

let me say a word about that. we all share the view that the application in the future for the balkans -- we will keep that door open for the countries to participate. it is something president obama has stressed. this is not a club. this is an alliance that is fighting a war in afghanistan. we have serious challenges. we expect they have to be in a position to contribute. as they come into these institutions, they need to contribute. it is not just being done to help them along their course. it is a fundamental challenge we face. the international community as a great deal of responsibility. the united states took on the responsibility to help end the conflict.

we share the sole commitment to that future and helping support that future. at the end of the day, it is the people of bosnia and the other balkan states that have to make the decision that they are ready to do it. what we have seen is a been relatively simple decisions have proven a bridge too far. the door is open. we made the decision to open the door to bosnia's action plans. we will keep that door open for bosnia to what true, but it does require the leadership to make that happen. >> what can you do to make that happen faster? >> nato? >> yes. >> we have to solve problems of military camps. i think we will make it before

september. they expect us to solve the problem before september. i am sure we will make it. >> what does the bosnia- herzegovina leadership be to do to get into the you? >> a number of very practical things we are working with them on. for example, what i was saying earlier about the need to be sure you are able to participate, it is also your citizens being treated equally across the european union. he knew the court system works, the way you are treated is the same. for example, there are some practical things that need to be done in terms of the constitutional court. the court of human rights says anybody should be able to stand for elections. that is significant. there are lots of issues around building the economies.

these are all things europe can help with, but it has to come from the people themselves. we do not impose the european union. they have to what it. it is a long journey and it is tough. so, president josipovic, 51 it enough, you can work with the european union to get there. -- if you want it enough, you can work with the european union to get there. >> what is outstanding to you? >> it is very important to resolve additional problems we have, especially in the judiciary and the economy. we are doing our best to resolve those problems. we are bleeding very important

plants against corruption. all results have been pretty good. we have continued in our policy and our practice. it is important not only to have good legislation. we are trying to do our best. just a few chapters are now left open. we have to close them very soon. we are very near to this. >> you may know a lot more about the details than i do. use a judiciary problems. what you have to do to make her judicial system acceptable? >> we have to work on procedur ial rules. we had about 2 million unresolved cases last year. now we have the capacity to deal

with all cases because we have about 700 cases before the court. we have to improve our legislation on election of judges to have impartial and educated judges. of course, we have to exclude any possibility of political influence in our judiciary. i think this part of our task is more or less done. >> jim, the noticeable body of taxes -- absent is the leader of the balkan republic. what do they need to do? what do they need to do to make this process -- reconciliation and better integration? >> i think there is a deeper underlying challenge here. as president izetbegovic said,

the challenge is to turn the focus away from worrying about what you might lose to what you can gain by moving forward. because of the history and the difficulties we have talked about, many of the leaders are unfortunately focused on protecting what they have. they fail to focus on the benefits that will come, not just to them, but to the people they represent. the focus of our efforts is to try to turn their attention. instead of looking backwards to what they might lose. especially for some of the serb leaders, there is the sense that we have to hold onto all of this stuff. this is ours. there's a chance we might lose something. we'll try to emphasize that you

will not be at risk. there is a bigger pie. there are big dividends to be had from moving forward. nobody is trying to fundamentally undo the dayton compromise, but there are things that can be done to make sure all the people of bosnia herzegovina -- if we can motivate the leaders and the people to see that future and to take the chance to move forward. >> let me press you a little bit on that. i was there three years ago. we were in the heartland. richard was trying to get the leader to do what they did was asking him to do. how much difficulty is there in that relationship from your perspective as an american and from your perspective as the eu commissioner? >> when there is a concrete

benefit to be had, it is surprising how questionable people become. there was a huge public demand for reconciliation. they passed the necessary reforms to prevent bosnia- herzegovina to meet the standards. they knew it was something they had to do, but there is a concrete barrier at the other end. that is the challenge, to make sure the concrete benefits are there. there should be enough pressure from the ground up on the leaders, even if they are elected to do it, to realize they cannot turn around enforce their voters. dialogue is not a very positive one in parts of kosovo. the press is an important factor here. it is very fractionalized. it tends to focus on the rest going for. the challenge is to keep the spotlight on bosnia-herzegovina.

while both of us ought to do -- i have been five times over the past two years -- is to talk to the people and keep it from concentered said the leaders understand there are people watching. >> what pressure can you bring? what can the high represented bring? the respect issue is what we saw as well 15 years ago. the local press was very antagonistic. [unintelligible] [laughter] one of the challenges to europe which we have not got right yet is the visibility in bosnia. we are selling to ordinary people what the benefits of the result are.

27 countries are in the european union. i say this from the country in their best. it is not necessarily the flavor of the month, the year, or the decade. yet there are countries desperate to get in. they see from the outside with the benefit can be. many ordinary people do not know what this would mean for them. yes, ok, we can talk about the end to conflict and the potential for reconciliation. what jim said is right. the ability to travel and trade or have a huge market of half a billion people to sell your prop -- products in without any barriers. ordinary people on an everyday basis can make a difference. one of the things i want to do

is work out to be more effective on the ground and let the people know that europe needs a better future, better jobs, and better opportunities. >> cut -- there have been rumblings for years the that the constitution of dayton should be changed or amended? the bosnians feel there should be some tweaks given the realities of how it was done. is that still something you're trying to push forward? >> we would like to see the changes of competition. dayton created too many possibilities of blockades. all of those ethnic groups are afraid of the others. they need some blockade in order not to be ruled by the others. it is time to remove those blockades.

[unintelligible] we need domestic mechanisms. >> it is time, but if you remove it, and will do the job? as i said, i am an optimist. if you compare the situation from 15 years ago, then you will see [unintelligible] we can see armies. we have helped unify the armies.

the growth in economy in bosnia -- it started from below the toll. growth as dawn to 8% annually. it is higher than all eastern neighboring countries. bosnia can. >> had the account for that? what is spurring economic growth in bosnia? >> we are working in the situation. we have roads, we have water, we have no work -- mill work, we have a better education. >> if the people of the former yugoslavia are very educated and very smart.

christ they should be engaged in business and sports. >> other elements of dayton you think should be renegotiated? the constitution? >> the time is waning. there are new circumstances. what president izetbegovic just salt needs to be changed. there are two steps. firstly, the people must be able to duplicate -- participate equally. [unintelligible] croats, bosnians, and serbs are

not wired alike. they are three nations with a very important cultural and very important people. [unintelligible] our collective memory is much more oriented to war. this is the basis for the optimism. the goodwill and capability of the founders of dayton -- the capability of people to live together may take in successful. this is a very important message. >> jim, you did to jump in there. >> we were talking about

constitutional reform. we have tried to look at some of the ideas to push constitutional reform for. there are some things without finally structuring -- changing the structure of dayton would allow functionality. the big difficulty i see is that right now people look to the constitution and its structures to protect their interests rather than dilute -- building a political structure of trust. the whole sense of we can only move forward building these very elaborate institutions is the -- it will be very difficult to get that functionality. they need to build political trust among the political

leaders said that they can't reach political understandings rather than constitutional and legal understandings. they must recognize that people will not exploit it. but they will develop a political structure that will allow them to move forward. conversely, without some political agreements, they will keep referring to these rigid solutions that make it difficult to move forward. quite the president was talking about the multiple layers of authority -- several armies, several organizations. they are now streamlined. there are a lot of different layers. the only person u.s. time to figure out who is in charge and what line is what -- does that need to be simplified? >> partially, it is where the responsibility lies.

it is dealing with the problems of checks and balances. we understand the fundamental constitutional values of state -- of checks and balances between the legislative objectives and the judicial branches. the combination of the two make it very difficult to make practical decisions beckon benefit everybody. i do not want to overstressed the problems. we have made some progress in some of these areas. but there needs to be an approach to confidence building that does not depend solely on formal institutions. >> confidence-building has been going on for 15 years since dayton. what will it take to get at the heart of what seems to be a paralyzing situation? >> i would love to hear my colleagues talk about that. >> what will it take? it is a little bit too much, is

it not? >> it is complicated. it works somehow, but some things must be removed. >> give me an example. >> bosnia needs to have its own constitution. there are hundreds of ministers. there are so many things to consider. big confusion. we are moving forward. [unintelligible] we must reduce the possibilities to stop the loss. serbs should be ready to accept. they still have an ambiguous

attitude. they have to understand that finally there is bosnia. we have to improve it. we have to accelerate towards the european union and towards nato. 25% of youngsters have no jobs. >> that is what i wanted to get to next. how big a challenge is the economy and the joblessness in croatia right now? what do you think can be done to improve that? >> we both have economic problems, maybe not as deep as bosnia-herzegovina. we have to develop our cooperation between neighboring countries. it is very important. all of yugoslavia has differed markets.

they have had good results, not only in europe, but africa, asia, and the united states. the people of the markets. every single country is not always capable to go back to those markets. our complementary economy can do this. it is time to think globally. it is time to think about, and markets in europe -- it is time to think about common markets in europe. this economic cooperation is a challenge and an opportunity for all countries. every day i get phone calls or fromages or e-mail's different people from different

economies asking me to make relations with bosnia and serbia better. it is very important for us. >> says the two presidents are sitting here, how good are your relations in terms of the economy and can you make them better now? [laughter] [applause] >> yes, we can. i would say in front of us, i am and engineer. there are three ways of building trust. my gratitude to dr. josipovic. everybody is guilty by your side. he is the one who opens up in

that sense. it will produce a better atmosphere. corporations within the region, building institutions in accordance with an open border. this is the second thing that should be done. finally, building infrastructure. we cannot be a member of the european union without building an infrastructure. the construction industry -- to engage all of those enterprises which can build it. without such infrastructure, you cannot develop an economy. that is my opinion.

>> very soon, we are going to have an economic conference. it is organized by the united states of america. we will invite the presidents and ministers of all countries in the region. our markets are too small. the answers for this conference is very high. i hope president clinton will join us because the inspired us. also, the infrastructure is very important. highways from bosnia connected to croatia, serbia, bosnia herzegovina are also very important.

all the leaders can be motivated economically by building infrastructure, not only highways, but other source of communication. >> what is that then -- croatia as fantastic tourism. so does not tanagra. -- so does montenegro. what is holding back investment in this part of the world? >> you have a number of investors -- [laughter] i think the biggest thing you have to have, which we have seen in croatia and other countries and i think we will see more of in bosnia-herzegovina, is

political will. for business to invest, you need political will combined with a role old law. you need the sense that there is certainty for investment. that is true anywhere from the united states to anywhere. business will go where they see real opportunity. it is not going to put down roots if it does not have the certainty of the markets, the certainty of a good investment opportunity, and knowing that the rule of law will be there if things get difficult. that is what we focus on. it is why we think this is so important. you have to have the political will to make the changes that will take you to where you can get the investments. >> in addition to the national efforts, which are extremely important to strengthening prosecutor's courts, is the

cooperation within the region. one thing that is very aborted is happening. the interior ministers are meeting among all the countries in the western balkans. police authorities are making. this corruption is too big for most of the small countries. here is a case where cooperation will make a huge difference. operations have shown real leadership in getting together the others and convening working level people to try to get a hold of this. the weaker states are particularly at risk. bosnians can use the support of the countries. >> if i may, very recently we had the opinion that criminals were cooperating better than the states. now it is completely different.

we have special agreements with the countries in the region to prosecute organized crime. there are significant a cooperations prosecuting war crimes. i think the role all -- rule of law is being on the same level. >> how successful are these countries doing in terms of not being organized crime economies? >> i think they are doing extremely well. it is not just a problem they have, it is a problem countries face across the european union and across the world. the critical thing i think we look to is the collaboration

that is now enabling some of the best police at best knowledge and efforts in help to tackle organized crime is being used across the region. it is absolutely critical to know where the gangs are and how they operate. they are very successful. you need to have the sharing of information and that cooperation. it is a chevy to the work that is going on in the region. -- it is a tribute to the work that is going on in the region. >> use the unemployment in the united states and even greater in other parts of the world. how bad is the situation in europe? how does the former yugoslav republic contribute to unemployment? >> i hate to say a country contributes to unemployment. what we have across the european union is some very challenging times.

i do not have to tell you about them, but you know the economic situation in the past year has been very tough. the stress on the result is beginning to show. the capacity of your to fight its way to these problems by sticking together and being very firm about what that collaboration is beginning to show plants a real sense of movement that is beginning to be part of the european union's program. it is not easy. i think for the countries that do not have the stability of the economy and do not have the sense of the capacity to use the resources they have already laid out is much tougher. ome you're a member states -- when tiny example is the economy of romania. it is at - 7% in 50 months.

real problems for them to grapple with. they did not have the long-term underpinnings' the some of the other states did. we are very conscious of the difference in different parts of europe. one of the reasons why it is so essential to try to transplant the european future is that we have more tools and instruments available to help countries to survive and move forward to develop their economies. >> jim, which used a the speed in which croatia and bosnia- herzegovina is going is what we should expect? is a slower? is it faster? is it about normal? >> i think we would like to say, especially in bosnia, for the effort to give faster. the direction is the right one. it is not going at the speed that will allow and ensure the people of bosnia that they will be able to be in the same ranks

as croatia. what we have seen -- a bit as you look at the abolition of montenegro -- granted the situation is not as complex. it is not to point fingers. europeans wish so much the people of bosnia should be able to enjoy the same type of benefits the other countries are getting. sylvania and croatia are getting this benefits. that is why we are there so often. that is why we are so in case. we want more for the people there. >> if you do not want to point fingers and i do not want to put you on the spot, but i might. [laughter] what would you tell the president to do as a first thing to try to move this process forward? >> what we would ask is what we

ask of all the leaders of which is try to find a way to move forward together. try to understand each other's concerns. try to find a way to keep the people of bosnia herzegovina in the forefront. think about the future. think about the fact that compromises are always hard. you're always criticized for those compromises. it is not about holding office, it is about leading. the reason you are in office is not for yourself, but is for the people you're trying to serve. you had to keep that perspective in mind. we do not have a specific set of answers. it is more to encourage the sense of a common shared destiny, to be in a room together, and to try to find ways to walk out of the room where some kind of agreements within being entrenched in what

you came in with. >> you talked about having to move on forward. if you had to choose one thing you think would be critical to move forward right now, what would it be? >> we need is a better atmosphere. >> how can that happen? >> i told you -- i expect serb politicians to fight except a unified bosnia-herzegovina. this is something that is out to buy control. i am do my best to send messages to them. it is up to them. my chief of cabinet is in belgrade on business. [unintelligible]

i would like to make a regional one, to proceed from serbia, from russia. we are going to the netherlands in march. ruby in sarajevo on the sixth of april. we have to protect investors from slow administration. we have to protect them from organized crime. they are not big shots in bosnia. [laughter] we succeed in putting them in their place. we have to make the atmosphere.

we have minerals, we of water, we can make things, we can make electricity. >> you mentioned at the whole idea of nato and european military commitment. the secretary-general of nato just spoke very strongly about your's commitment and said europe needs to stop being naive about how it needs to keep contributing militarily to areas of conflict and not just think it can do humanitarian work. how big an issue out of that -- is that to you right now? >> following a summit last december -- i give a lot of credit to our european partners. they were skeptical about this.

there is a strong commitment -- a way forward together in terms of the political and military strategy. the balkans have played a role. this is the kind of thing we look for in a partner. we have seen the country's showing they have the ability and the determination of understanding that being part of nato is to share the burden of responsibility. >> mr. rasmussen thought there was a problem otherwise he would not have made this harsh speech. what can you do to contribute more to the military situation whenever there is one rather than just thinking you can lead the all hard -- the war fighting to the united states? >> i do not think europe thinks that.

every month we talk about nato collaborations. i think he has the job of worrying about defense commitments. it is what he has to do. looking at the issues of finance across the european union, i understand why he wants to raise the concern. having said that, i do not think you're sees itself as being the soft end of the spectrum. far from it. what was really interesting that came at the nato summit was the concept where a core part is collaboration with the year. our commitment is to be working side-by-side with these two. there are problems and issues that need a full spectrum. if you take afghanistan where individual member states have their own troops, with the european zone s -- were the

result is supporting the training of police on the ground. i have indicated the european union will be working on that. long after the military campaigns, there will be continuous work. secretary clinton and i met in afghanistan to talk about their future. it is a collaboration. it is a collaboration across the full spectrum. were the result can benefit is in having a beneficial support. there are other things you need to supply real security on the ground. >> given the fact that the united states has obviously done a lot in terms of development, but is quite shy about doing that compared to the war fighting -- what would be wrong with the u.s. during the war fighting and a leading -- leaving the job of development

and nation building to europe? >> first, if you look at the financial commitments we have made, i think you see a real revolution in the united states. i think we have come to recognize that crisis prevention is at the core of what we do. if you read the quadrennial policy and development procedures, a sparse a very dramatic commitment over the long term for increasing our capacity. the parameters that are attached -- i did we unashamedly embrace that.

we see ourselves as supporting the atmosphere. if we allow our fate -- when the american men and women are dying, the li