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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Andrew S. Natsios, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
Roundtable Media Briefing: USAID Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance
to Iraq
Ronald Reagan Building
Washington, D.C.
March 20, 2003
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: [In progress] --in terms of contingency planning since last September. Even without even telling us, whenever we know something could happen, we always quietly work on contingency planning so we have an advance of what might happen. Of course, now it appears--not "appears," it is happening. The war has started.
We are now in the--literally there are eight requests for proposals out on the street, specifications inches thick, and they've been out for some time. Many of those contracts will be decided on today and tomorrow [inaudible] today and then we'll be signing others tomorrow.
I cannot give you the total amount for these contracts because they are subject to the supplemental budget going to the Congress, which is decided by the president, not me. Our budget is in that supplemental budget. And so you'll have to wait for an announcement from the White House, not me. There's other things in that beyond our stuff.
I can tell you that it is the largest that AID has ever undertaken in one year in its history. And I'm unaware of anything on this scale since the Marshall Plan. I'm not comparing this to the Marshall Plan, because it's only one country and it's not anything--but I'm just saying, from the historical perspective, this is unusual, very unusual.
The second thing that's unusual is that we're doing something we do not normally do. The literature for 14 years has been you do relief, then you do rehabilitation, and then you do reconstruction and long-term development. We are collapsing the process. We're going to start the relief effort simultaneous with the reconstruction process. Both are beginning simultaneously. Obviously, it's security permitting. We're not going to be doing it in the middle of a battle.
We have two teams out there. One is the AID mission-in-waiting. In fact, as of this week it's not waiting anymore, it's there and it's functioning. Lou Luck [ph] is a career foreign service officer, we brought him back from retirement. He was a mission director in Bolivia, Haiti, and then in Jordan. He speaks Arabic, he knows the Middle East, and most importantly, the Jordan AID program is the second largest in the world and it had large construction contracts in desalinization plants and water purification, sewage systems, and all that stuff. So he is familiar--he initiated those very large contracts. He did an excellent job at a very complex task in a difficult area of the world.
So he's done this massive undertaking in the mid-'90s. He is one of our most gifted senior officers. That's why we brought him back. He's out there now. He's been out there for awhile and the AID mission is 30 people [sound problem] security permits over time, but there's a full staff, it's functional now. And that mission reports to Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin sitting here. She's the assistant administrator of the Bureau of Asia Near East, which is one of our four regional bureaus, which does long-term development reconstruction. That is the function of the regional bureaus. All of the AID missions in the world report to these four regional bureaus.
The second aspect of this is the humanitarian relief part of it, which is the short-term humanitarian relief, which is much more restricted. It is restricted because it only focuses on those things which are a direct threat to people's survival. That's food, emergency medical assistance, water and sanitation, and shelter. That's it.
And there is a DART team, Disaster Assistance Response Team, which is our way of projecting humanitarian influence in programming and resources and staffing in the field. This DART is different than previous DARTs. Typically, the DART only comes out of the Humanitarian Office, which is the office I headed in the first Bush administration, called the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. We've done something unusual in this, and this is now a multi-bureau team and multi-department team. One of the two deputy heads of this is a State Department officer in the Refugee Office. There are people from the Centers for Disease Control and from the Public Health Service. Wendy has her technical staff for long-term reconstruction on the DART team to go in and do assessments immediately.
The way in which the forces are arrayed is the military goes in, the combat units are up front, of course, and then there are the rear area units, which are the Logistics Unit in the military and the Civil Affairs Unit. I am a retired Civil Affairs officers. I was in the Gulf War as a major. Of course, we worked on the reconstruction of Kuwait --as a military officer; I took a leave of absence from the first Bush administration as a Civil Affairs officer. Civil Affairs are out there, thousands of them. Over 90 percent of them are Reservists. We work with them very closely in terms of planning. We've been working with them Afghanistan very cooperatively for--since the terror war began.
Then the DART team is arrayed. Literally, they will go in with the combat units, but in the rear area, when it's secure. We operate under the security umbrella of the [inaudible] units. We don't have our own security. We have our own transportation, our own logistical systems, but we do not have security [inaudible].
And that team is of 62 people. It's the largest team we've ever fielded of this kind. Normally--that may not sound like a lot to you, but typically we will put five people on a disaster assistance response team. They're small teams. They do assessments, they do coordination with other humanitarian agencies, other donors, civil affairs units. They will do strategic planning. They have procurement officers on the team who can spend money in the field without coming back to Washington. It's very important, because they can act almost immediately to spend money to buy things in local markets, if they have to, to make sure that supplies are there.
We've also shipped in 42 containers of--shipping containers of relief supplies, enough for a million people. We have already shipped some time ago 110,000 tons of foodstuffs for refugees and permanently displaced people.
QUESTION: [Inaudible] relief supplies are--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Relief supplies are in those four areas: emergency medicine, water purification systems, shelter, and food systems.
We already have 110,000--I am embargoing this until later today, but the Department of Agriculture will announce with us jointly an additional 500,000 tons of food to be issued immediately, like rice and meat.
In addition to that, WFP has 100,000 tons in the region. It's already been contracted for in neighboring countries, and there's another 100,000 tons on ships that had already be contracted for under the Oil for Food Program. They are on the high seas moving toward Kuwait. So that's 110,000 500,000, is 610,000 from us and then 200,000 from WFP's resources [inaudible] Oil for Food, which brings a total of 810,000 tons.
So, I think we're ready. Now, we've been working on this a long time and pieces are in place for us to do our work.
I'll try to answer questions.
QUESTION: Just to follow up on the comparison with the Marshall Plan. You can't give us the dollar amount. Is there any other way you can describe it so that we can explain to our editors why you made the comparison?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, only because--it's because of the scale. And two, typically we do not do work in the development of society. I mean, it's a damaged society psychologically from 35 years of the Baathist Party and the atrocities that have been committed. Ken Pollack estimates that 2 million Iraqis have died unnatural deaths since Saddam took power. And it's a brutal regime. This is not a typical garden variety dictator. This is more like Stalinist Russia or North Korea. Their food system, for example, is comparable to North Korea's prior to the last few years. The North Koreans even changed their system.
It's a totalitarian society. And so the society is damaged but it's a prosperous society because it's got oil, and it's an educated society, and it's an urbanized society. Seventy percent of the people live in cities. See this map here. Ninety percent of the population--this is an outline of Iraq--ninety percent of the people live on this side of the line. This whole area here is desert and is relatively uninhabited, except for nomads.
So most of the people live here and they live in cities and they're educated people. And I don't mean primary school, I mean they have a lot of college degrees, they have universities, they have a developed infrastructure. People don't get their water from buckets and rivers or from wells. They get it from water that's piped in into their houses. This is not a developing country like Afghanistan is, one of the poorest countries in the world.
QUESTION: Why can't you give us any kind of a dollar estimate?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Because that is controlled by OMB until the president--the president has to sign the document that goes to the Congress. He has not signed it yet. It's there, our stuff's in that, and that's an OMB decision, not our decision.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, we can't go ahead and--we're hoping and praying for a short war duration.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.].
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We have some of the money taken from this year's appropriation, $304 million. We already have the budget for '03 and we took the money from that.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's correct.
QUESTION: Do you have any idea [inaudible]?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Oh, yes, but I can't tell you because it's in the budget. You'll see very shortly.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, I cannot.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I can't say.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I can't--I'll get killed. I like my life.
QUESTION: Unnatural death.
QUESTION: The contracts [inaudible] --
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Okay, I don't want to exaggerate. Theirs has to be disciplined, because I don't make the decision on what we submit to Congress, the president does. And I know, we have to respect the decision making process. So we've made our recommendations, they're in the proposals, and I have reasonable expectation that they will be approved. But they haven't been finally approved, and until they are and the president signs it, we're not making any comments on it.
Is that the only thing you came to the--
QUESTION: Well, it's a huge issue, Andrew. I mean, this has been, you know, stewing for months and months. And you're constantly resisting any effort, going back to last fall, to giving any kind of--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, but the reason, Michael, is this. If we put estimates out as to what it was, it would look like we'd already made a decision. I mean, what's the point of having a debate in the United Nations about this if it would look like--you know. And we do contingency planning all the time, even when wars, you know, haven't started yet. And we needed to do what we did and we did it. But it has political implications to make statements about what the budget is.
QUESTION: The contracts that will be announced today and tomorrow, can you go through what they are?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: They are for the management of the seaports, the management of the international airports, the theater logistical support systems, which means trucking and fuel and things like that. Bringing bottled water in from Jordan. Public health system, which means sanitation and water--which, by the way, is the reason the children have the--the child mortality rates in Iraq have been blamed on--high rates, have been blamed on the sanctions regime. They are not a function of the sanctions regime, they are a function of the lack of any kind of maintenance on the water and sanitation systems over a 15-year period. He has refused to put money into it, and that's what kept--it's not because of the lack of food. There are populations like the Marsh Arabs that he shut off from the distribution system when he drains the marshes. That's a different matter. Those kids are in bad shape because he's shut them out of Iraqi society and all of the systems because they just wanted to get rid of them.
But for the most part these rates are high because -- so it's very important that we invest in those systems immediately. There's a contract for primary and secondary education, local government, and a personnel support system to put more technical offices on Wendy's staff.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's for people to support the staff, too. This is sort of our--what's the term I need? Expand your staff as a term? It's temporary. Thank you.
QUESTION: So, then, the largest construction will not be [inaudible]?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, it's a matter of days.
QUESTION: What's the sum total of these contracts?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I can't tell you.
QUESTION: Are any non-American firms being asked to bid?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Okay, let me just clarify this. There's been a lot written on the contract and stuff. The prime contractors are American. And there's a reason for that. In order to work in Iraq, you have to have a security clearance. The only companies that have security clearances are a certain number of American companies that have done this work before in war settings. Okay? There are classified documents they have to see, and in order to do that we had to have companies that had pre-security clearance approval.
More than 50 percent of the money spent will be spent by subcontractors. And we signed a waiver provision in January that any company anywhere in the world can bid on the subcontracts, regardless of nationality.
QUESTION: Does that include countries that are [inaudible]?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No.
QUESTION: That would not include [inaudible]?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, Iraqi companies will not be on the terrorist list very shortly, because when we start doing this there will not be an Iraqi government --
QUESTION: Something the State Department has to do is to take them off their list.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: There is, but that's beyond my control. So. Colin Powell will tell me when he's done it and we will act accordingly. We will buy things in the local markets. Because, you know, we don't want to ship everything from the United States.
QUESTION: Would you just explain a little bit about the prime contract, the 900 million--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Six hundred million.
QUESTION: Is it 600 million? What the status of that is?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: It's being--it's in technical review right now.
QUESTION: And just--what does that entail?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's the large construction contract. There are various terms for it--
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, let me just mention what it's for and then Tim [ph] can talk about the process. It is for roads, it's for bridges, it's for schools, it's for hospitals, it's for the electrical generating plants, it's for the transmission lines for electric facilities, for port facilities, and for the airports. And it's construction. It's infrastructure.
MR. : [Inaudible.]
QUESTION: And now we're down from how many to how many?
MR. : [Inaudible.]
QUESTION: Can you name them?
MR. : No [inaudible].
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I don't know who they are. I don't know.
MR. : [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Let me just say, there's a procurement law that we operate under, and procurement regulations of OMB. We are operating exactly according to the federal regulations. I have no idea what the companies--the companies that were chosen, I had no idea what the company--neither did Wendy, as political appointees.
QUESTION: So you're following the FAR.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We are following them rigidly.
QUESTION: Is this a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract? [Inaudible.]
MR. : [Inaudible.] But what we're planning on doing is almost [inaudible] contract, because we cannot say what we're going to be doing [inaudible] no idea if the bridges or roads will be destroyed or not [inaudible]. So as things come up, we're going to have to turn them on [inaudible].
QUESTION: So as more is known, then it becomes--
MR. : [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I might add that Tim is a career foreign service officer. All of the people in his staff are civil servants and foreign service. There are no political appointees in his office.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We've been give a time frame to think about it in terms of the work we have to get done, which is a 12-month period of time. Some of these contracts, I mean, that's what they're for, but some of them will take longer than 12 months. But it's relatively--it's not weeks, it's not months, but it's not years, either.
Now, a lot of these contracts will continue regardless of the political governance structure of the country. The intention of the administration, the intention of the president--he said it very clearly in the Azores--is to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis as soon as practical. That is the view of the Spanish government and the British government and our allies in the coalition.
So there will be a move--rapidly to move to that. That is beyond my competence, however. That is something that Secretary Powell or Deputy Secretary Armitage can go into in more detail.
QUESTION: Vice President Cheney on Sunday--and I wrote it down. It's hard to remember exactly how he said it. But he said one of our major objectives is to [inaudible] put to use by the Iraqi people for the Iraqi people. Will that oil resource help to fund some of this?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No. I think it would be helpful to reconstruct the country, but not--
QUESTION: But not for any [inaudible]?
QUESTION: On that subject, there is a debate going on over the future of the Oil for Food Program at the U.N. Can you talk about what will happen to that, and also more generally about what role the U.N. and U.N. agencies are going to --
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, let me answer your second question first. We expect the U.N. agencies that we have been working on contingency planning with--which, as we do in every emergency--that they will be involved in a major way. These are the operating agencies. The major humanitarian agencies are United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNICEF, the World Food Program, United Nations Development-- those are the big four U.N. agencies. We work with them in every emergency, Afghanistan--
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We've started giving some money.
QUESTION: Right, but-- UNDP? Did you say UNDP?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: UNDP is typically involved--I don't know how involved in terms of funding, because they don't do the emergency stuff, they do the long-term stuff, and that is a little bit in the future. The World Health Organization I think has been talked about.
And it's not just us. I have to tell you. There's a separate set of stuff that goes on below the radar screen among the development ministers, my counterparts in all of the developed countries that have aid programs. And we've been talking about this, what are we going to do if this happens, for three or four months now. Some of them have fairly advanced programs, others only recently have begun thinking about it. I've had a couple of ambassadors here in the last week saying we want to help you suggest to us which U.N. agency needs help.
There's a coordinating system we have, a matrix that's controlled by the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA it's called, [inaudible] Under Secretary General Mr. Oshima [ph] who's a friend of mine. We are big supporters of that. We gave them an early grant to set up their system. They have a matrix that will tell you--three isn't a lot on it now because some countries, until this started, were reluctant to put stuff out publicly as to what they were going to do because it looked like they were taking one side or the other on the resolution about the war. And my counterparts are reluctant to get into that, and that's not our job.
QUESTION: The reason I wanted to know about UNDP is--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I know, Mark has been critical.
QUESTION: No, no. No, it's because there's a legal issue that people are debating, whether or not the United Nations [inaudible] Geneva Convention allow the U.N. to go in and work under a military occupation [inaudible].
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Did they have a Security Council resolution on Kosovo? They did not.
QUESTION: They went in under the U.N.--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: There was no U.N. resolution.
QUESTION: Yeah, there was a U.N. resolution that authorized the new government.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Oh, the new government as opposed to [inaudible].
QUESTION: After the war was over.
QUESTION: Right. So now, that's exactly it. That's what they're debating--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I have heard this discussed. But I am not an expert in this area. You'd have to ask international lawyers about it. Humanitarian agencies do not require that.
QUESTION: Right. Right, but in terms of your--seeing as this is sort of a reconstruction thing, this seems to be sort of--would underpin the kind of relationship you all would have on reconstruction--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: The agencies we've dealt with can deal with us now. The larger question of reconstruction, you'd have to talk with [inaudible] about it.
QUESTION: What about [inaudible]?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: There's going to be a debate over it. That's all I can tell you.
QUESTION: Could you describe the debate?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: The resolution, I have not got involved in the details of the debate. Obviously it's out there.
QUESTION: Doesn't it expire June 3, I believe, or in early June?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Kofi Annan suspended the program on Monday.
QUESTION: But it would either have to be reauthorized as a U.N. program or then something else would happen.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's correct. But he suspended it anyway, on Monday.
QUESTION: Well, we know that's for the war. We're talking about--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes.
QUESTION: I mean, are you--can you give us any idea of what the nature of the discussion is? Does there seem to be less inclination to reactivate it, or--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, I think there's general agreement the U.N. will pass some sort of resolution on this. I am not going to go into the details, Michael, because at this point I'm not sure what the state of affairs is. Again, if you asked the international organizations bureau at the State Department, Ken Holmes [ph], perhaps he can tell you. He tracks that more from day to day than I do.
QUESTION: A little more specifically [inaudible].
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's Jay Garner, that's not us. That's Civil Administration. That's a Pentagon function.
QUESTION: The Pentagon's doing that. What exactly will your people do?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We will do assessments of immediate humanitarian need. We will go to a village where there was collateral damage, let's say, to a water purification plant, and we will go in immediately and replace the system so at least they have water in the village. There's a displaced population from one of the villages that was displaced because there was an effect on--people left the village and they're out on the desert and they don't have any support. So we will go in, either using an international organization or an NGO and do a grant, and it will provide for basic human needs. And we will use the relief commodities I just mentioned--shelter material, emergency medical care, water and sanitation--we have enough purification systems to provide a million people with water on a daily basis. And food rations and then -- food rations, shelter, water and sanitation, emergency medical.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: They work on the emergency side and the water sanitation side.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.].
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: The contracts are for reconstruction. They're not for relief.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: They function on grants.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, the mission overseas, the contracts, the DART overseas grants, which are immediate. Give us a grant, literally in two days they've got the money for the grant. And there's no competitive bidding because it's an emergency situation. And it's not to private nonprofit businesses. It's to NGOs and international organizations. It will be based on on-the-ground, immediate assessments. We have a rapid assessment mechanism that we use. There's a book--some of you may have seen this before--called [inaudible]. I actually published the first one when I was director 12 years ago. It's called "The Field Operations Guide" and it has all the procedures that DART uses. And everybody knows about the [inaudible].
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No. They will be stationed in Kuwait.
QUESTION: Kuwait or Jordan?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, no, Kuwait.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, until the end of the war, and then I would presume we move, depending on what the military tells us, to Baghdad or--I don't know. I don't know what the planning is on that.
QUESTION: Is there going to be an immediate role for NGOs [inaudible] same time or later on?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: There are six NGOs that are pre-positioned in Jordan and many others that are now in Kuwait. They have their staff pre-positioned to--we gave them an early grant, they [inaudible] only $900,000, but we've never done that before, or we seldom have done that before. Normally, the NGOs get the grants once they go out and start working. We gave them preparatory money, a small amount, early on to just pre-position [inaudible].
QUESTION: When did you give them that?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: December, January, when was it? Does anybody know? When did we give the pre-positioning grants to the six NGOs? December? Several months ago.
But there are other NGOs that are now entering discussion--
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes, that's correct.
QUESTION: There are complaints on the Hill that [inaudible] notified--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, I think that may be well the case outside of AID, but our staff has been briefed in full for several months now. Staff were briefed on the Senate and House side on August [inaudible]. They do know what's going on. I think some senators and congressmen, because they're under severe stress, have not maybe gotten into the details, but the staffs have been briefed.
QUESTION: Just curious about how the relationship is between these private contractors that have been going in [inaudible] rebuilding and, you know, how that will work with the interim administration, particularly in terms of selecting personnel. Who's going to--you know, are you guys going to be selecting the Iraqi schools chancellor?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, we will not do that.
QUESTION: In other words, the company that's--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: You need to talk to Jay Garner and his people about that.
QUESTION: He's not talking to anybody.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.
QUESTION: But, I mean, is there any procedure by which some of these personnel--if a certain U.S. company is given the contract to refurbish the schools and do whatever is needed in education, will that company then be given the responsibility of choosing staff?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We expect as the ministries of the Iraqi government become constructive forces in the administration of the country's affairs, that we will work with them. There are many competent civil servants and career staff who are good doctors and engineers and educators we will rely on over time. But the Baathist party management of the senior leadership have got to be changed. We're not working with Baathist party people.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Is that typical, Tim?
MR. BEANS : Yes. Generally there's a preference [inaudible]. Generally we even prefer to have the subcontractors be U.S. firms. [Inaudible.] In this case, Andrew [inaudible] to open it up to countries. So he signed a waiver, which allowed for what we call 935 countries, which [inaudible] countries that are not on the restricted list of countries --
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No Libyan country will be bidding.
QUESTION: Is there any thought--
MR. BEANS : I might just give you an example of that. The road we're building in Afghanistan, the famous Kabal to Kandahar Road--
QUESTION: How's it going?
MR. BEANS : Oh, it's going, actually, 42 miles are ready to be paved. Paving can start in two weeks. It's been engineered, de-mined, graded, and it's about to be tarred and cleaned up [inaudible]. And then there's another bid that will be out for the next 50 and then another bid out for 192 kilometers.
But in that case, the construction company is not an American construction company. The prime contractor is an American. Is it Bouie Bergier [ph]?
MS. CHAMBERLIN: Bouie Bergier.
MR. BEANS : Bouie Bergier is the prime contractor. They are supervising it all. They know what our requirements are. We've worked with them before, but a Turkish-Afghan construction company is actually moving the dirt on the ground, which is what we want. We want to create jobs within the Afghan economy.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : I'm not commenting on that.
QUESTION: What about the one country that keeps coming up and should be included is Great Britain?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : Oh, I thought you were going to say the French.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : They're next.
[Laughter.]
QUESTION: Is there any special rule for the British in contracting?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : Well, let me just say we can't instruct--I can't call Tim up and say give a whole bunch of British firms or American firms subcontracts. I cannot do that under the terms of law.
I have to tell you that, generally speaking, if you look at the history of AID contracting, when we allowed general contracting, the British firms are among the best in the world. They do excellent work.
QUESTION: I'm a little puzzled, though, by this question--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : Crown agents we're using to do some procurement now in the Gulf for the relief side.
QUESTION: Particularly given the unprecedented nature of this [inaudible] rebuilding, as you've described it, I'm a little puzzled of the role, the fact that because of so much of this information is classified, it can be U.S.-only firms. I mean, when it comes to schools, for example, or certain bridges, what is it about--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS : The security situation.
QUESTION: Right. I mean, is it because--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Because there are chemical and biological weapons in the country, and when you move into an area that, at least at this point, requires intelligence to say [inaudible].
QUESTION: Right. But I mean, say, in the case of Britain, at least, and here is a country whose military obviously has been privy to a lot of information because they're taking part in the combat plan, and yet they can't be part of the contracting--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: The normal process, Michael, for contracting is that if we went through the normal, it would take six months from beginning to end to do this. We collapse the process, there's a provision, when the national security interests of the United States are at risk, there's a provision for us to collapse the procurement process to a more truncated process. That's what we did. It's in the statutes. It's in the rules. We do it when there is a war setting like this. It is not uncommon.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's part of the FAR.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: What are you talking about, the transition authority in Afghanistan?
QUESTION: No, no, the [inaudible], as an example.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I don't know anything about them.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Tim, do you want to talk about that?
MR. BEANS: [Inaudible.] For example, construction contracts, we're trying to expedite that and determine--we got a list of I think three or four companies, but when it came to procurement, I looked at the dollar value and said [inaudible] of seven major companies [inaudible].
So the natural thing is we went over to them and said, Who has recently won competitive contracts?
We took a look at those lists, and we said, you know, they've won under competition, they've won under cost considerations, so they were thrown into the mix to try to expand the base upon which we build.
So we did everything we could to try to make it as large as possible to include as many firms and still try to get this done. Remember, we were trying to get this done originally by the 1st of March. That's when we said let's get ready, the original date.
Now, it slipped some because of the discussions in the U.N., and thank God, procurement wise, because we are under a lot of pressure to do everything correctly. You all are going to come in and second guess us after the fact, so we better have GAO, IG, everybody, so we better have all of our ducks in line, and that's exactly what we're trying to do.
And at the end, I would like to be as transparent, open, and show you everything we've done, and let the press take a look, let everybody take a look at what we've done.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
MR. BEANS: As a matter of fact, I have asked that the RFPs be released without the money because of the situation Andrew explained so that you can see everything that we're doing. We're not trying to hide anything. The money is the driver right now because we haven't gotten the supplemental request.
If that hadn't been the case, I would have released all this to you all a long time ago.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
MR. BEANS: I've asked it to be done. It's going to be published on the web page without the dollar values, like Andrew said, but we'll show you everything that's out there for every single procurement.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
MR. BEANS: We've got two that we think we'll probably do today or tomorrow. That's the port administration and the airport administration, and then we have a number of them that are very close, but I don't want to give you an exact date because we have to make sure that all of the--
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
MR. BEANS: Yeah, it's a matter of a couple days, the help of the local government, the education and then the big construction contract.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
MR. BEANS : Correct. That's correct.
million dollars is that one contract. It's not the whole reconstruction--
QUESTION: This is you go in, you see what it is, and then--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: But it is the largest, I mean, because of the nature of the reconstruction, the most expensive kind of development.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: It will move very quickly, which we all hope it will, very little infrastructure damage, and then everyone is happy. You have to try to guess what's going to happen, and that's a very difficult thing. So will it grow? The possibility is, yes, that it will grow, but we'd ask Congress to appropriate more money to cover that expense. But right now it's anybody's guess as to what the actual cost would be.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We said it was all being shipped. Two hundred thousand will be shipped now. The other 350,000[?] have been approved, but they will not be shipped unless we absolutely need them.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's correct.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Right.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes, but we've got an additional 200--we announced 200,000 times in this reserve yesterday from Ethiopia and Eritrea, and then we got another $250 million that's separate from those reserves from the Congress in the budget that was not in the proposal.
So our budget for food just in AID went from $900 million to almost $1.2 million proposed by the administration up to $1.45 billion, with the additional $250 million the Congress added to it. And then the food I just mentioned is separate from that, but it is an addition to that.
Yes?
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Everybody who wants money in the U.N. system, and the private contracting companies, all the consulting firms are going to tell us it's going to take $50 trillion to rebuild Iraq. We'll make Iraq look like Park Avenue, based on this amount of money. These are absurd estimates, and no one has any idea. The people who are making these estimates have not done assessments, they're not, in fact, some of them have never been involved in reconstruction. They are saying these things because many of them would like to avail themselves of this money.
So I think we should be very careful about people making sort of exaggerated estimates as to what it's going to cost.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We're not the only actors here, you should understand. The other donor governments are going to be involved in this. I've been talking, as I said before to my other colleagues, there's money in reserve, and many, many donor governments for the humanitarian side and the reconstruction side.
QUESTION: Korea and Japan announced today that they were going to [inaudible] with reconstruction.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes, they did.
QUESTION: Do you have a list--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: And I had discussions with them a month ago, at least the Japanese.
QUESTION: Do you have a list or an idea of how many--the problem I have is, okay, they're going to donate money. This is going to be a U.S. operation with people helping. So do they donate to the United States government [inaudible] or are they subcontractors?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: No, no, no. They're going to do either through their own--they have two choices. They can either go--they have many choices. They can either it do themselves through contractors. The Japanese do this frequently. That's how they're building, they're building part of the road to Kandahar. We have half of it, they have half of it. This is in Afghanistan. The Saudis have the rest of it.
And so do we work together? Yes. We're actually, the specifications we're using on the road, just to give you a concrete example in Afghanistan, the Japanese are using exactly the same engineering contracts, and they asked us for the specs, so their engineers can work up the specifications for their project so it's exactly the same as our project. That's called donor coordination. We do this all the time. It's sort of the established system of how we work together.
QUESTION: I guess my question is taking a few steps backwards--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: And the other mechanism, other than bilaterally, is we can go through a U.N. trust fund. If you're a smaller country and you don't have an aid capacity, you don't have people to go out and do this, the smaller countries don't have these people, so they put the money in a trust fund, which is very appropriate or at the World Bank, the World Bank, undoubtedly, or the Islamic Develop Bank.
QUESTION: My question is, going back a few more [inaudible], and this peacekeeping operation, which is what it is, normally, this is a U.N. kind of operation--this is not. And under America, it will be a U.S.-controlled U.S. operation, each country, they don't go to the special representative or secretary general, they go to Jim Garner? Who do they go to, to do all of this coordination?
QUESTION: [Inaudible] in the oil fields or whatever?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I don't know what [inaudible] is doing in the area. We don't have any authority over the reformed Iraqi army, the security sector, the police. We are prohibited by law from doing police work and getting near the police, except for a couple of countries in which there is an exception to it.
We are not dealing with the oil fires. If there are oil fires, we are not dealing with the, you know--the equipment used to pump oil is quite old, and even if there are no oil fires, there is going to have to be a requirement to upgrade the technology, but that has nothing to do with us. That is a Pentagon function.
You will see very clearly in the scopes of work what we are responsible for.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, I've mentioned to you the sectors.
QUESTION: Right.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Generally, and then you can see the RFPs will be on the, you will see in some detail--
QUESTION: [Inaudible] presumably, the Pentagon is [inaudible] what you're doing.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I can't tell you. I don't know. I'm just telling you what we're doing.
QUESTION: And there is no coordination between--
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Oh, absolutely. Our people--
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: It's just not my responsibility. So Lou Lutz [ph] could tell you that, even though he is not doing it.
QUESTION: But it is coordinated with the Pentagon.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Oh, our staff works with them every day, and Lou Lutz is out there with Jay Garner right now.
QUESTION: [Inaudible.]
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Thank you very much.
[End of recorded segment.]
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