BACKGROUND BRIEFING BY
A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL
ON THE PRESIDENT'S VISIT TO THE PHILIPPINES
Westin Philippine Plaza Manila
Manila, Philippines
October 18, 2003
MR. McCORMACK: Good evening, everybody. We have a senior administration
official here tonight to give you a background briefing on the President's
meetings today here in Manila, and a look ahead to his state visit to
Thailand and the other events that he'll have tomorrow. Let me turn
it over to the briefer.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Good evening. It's good to see all
you folks here. I hope you're -- hello? Okay. I assume you're all just
about over your jetlag and are going to ask a bunch of very penetrating
questions. So I'll keep my opening remarks fairly short.
As you saw from the President's speech, if any of you had a chance
to look at it on television, this stop here in Manila really is about
expressing support for the Philippines democracy, and appreciation for
the Philippines support in the war on terrorism, the active role that
the Philippines is playing.
In that connection, during their bilateral meetings today, the President
not only expressed support for President Arroyo's leadership in the
war on terrorism, he also got a fairly good briefing from her as to
how things are going in the regional
struggle.
It's important to note, though, that the Philippines, in our view,
has a broader vision. And President Arroyo made it clear that she has
supported the efforts in Iraq, and was, indeed, one of the first to
support the efforts in Iraq, because of her view that terrorism is a
global problem that has to be addressed to be addressed by a coalition
of the willing.
The meeting -- the bilateral meetings with President Arroyo and her
Cabinet… touched on security issues, economic issues. As I sort
of previewed a little bit yesterday, one of the central pieces was a
discussion of what we call the Joint Defense Assessment and the military
reforms that are going to flow from that.
President Arroyo and her government have endorsed a five- year plan
of military reform to get the -- to improve the efficiency and to modernize
the Philippine military. President Bush said that we will do what we
can to assist with that effort.
They also discussed some very specific issues -- as I was asked yesterday
-- did the question of helicopters come up? It did, indeed. As you will
recall the President had committed to providing some 20 helicopters.
He assured her that we are going to refurbish them and that we're going
to get them on the way.
On the economic side, there was a lot of discussion about where the
world goes post-Cancun. The Filipinos stressed that they wanted to see
ASEAN playing a vigorous role -- excuse me -- APEC playing a vigorous
role as we try to move forward in the post-Cancun world.
Finally, just a brief preview. Tomorrow we go to Bangkok. Tomorrow's
main event, of course, is the state visit to Thailand That will include
a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister talks in the morning, and then
in the evening a call on the King and Queen, followed by a state dinner.
There will also be a bilateral meeting with President Hu Jintao of China.
And finally, there will also be a review of Thai troops who are coming
back from Afghanistan.
So, with that, I will leave it open to questions.
Q: A couple questions. What is the U.S. prepared to do other than the
helicopters on the issue of military reform? I know that those are more
designated to the war on terror. And what did Thailand do specifically
or even generally to deserve the status as a major non-NATO ally?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay, let me write this down. I'm suffering
from jetlag. Thailand, MNNA, and the first part of your question again
was?
Q: What are we prepared to do to aid in the five-year military reform
--
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. This is -- the five-year military
package here in the Philippines is going to be primarily a Filipino
effort. President Arroyo has said that she will seek the necessary fundings
from her Congress to make sure that they do the hardware bit of it.
A lot of what we're going to be doing is going to be the software, in
terms of providing the technical assistance and the expertise to help
them implement the vigorous program of reform.
We have committed to come up with money. For example, to bring in these
experts, to provide the training. But in the joint effort part of it,
it's almost best to look at it as the Filipinos saying, hey, look, we
need to update our thinking in terms of what we need in terms of hardware,
and we, the United States, committing to providing the technical advice,
the assistance, to make that hardware work, and to advise how they need
to update their system such as pers9nnel acquisitions and stuff like
that.
And on Thailand -- okay, you had a two fer -- if you look at the Thai
record over the past six months -- excuse me -- since 9/11 the Thais
have been very good allies. They've been good allies all along -- this
is a long and deep alliance that we've had with Thailand. Some of us
remember the Vietnam era; more recently the Thais were instrumental
as we surged our people out to Afghanistan for OEF, and providing all
sorts of very quiet assistance that we don't talk about too publicly,
but was there.
They also -- like I said, we're going to be visiting forces who have
returned from Afghanistan, where they've done very good work building
airports and doing a lot of civilian construction. This is a construction
company that has just come back from there.
Yes, the Thais are a very good ally. And they have done good work within
their means. We work with them on a whole range of areas including counter-narcotics.
There are a very deserving ally.
Q: -- with MNNA -- there is an agreement between Burma and
Cambodia --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It helps -- it definitely helps having
a good ally in the region. MNNA is a very specific legal designation
that really has more to do with how we can treat them in terms of provision
of spare military equipment and stuff like that. It's a technical term.
What's important is that we have a strong and vital alliance with Thailand,
and we've had that for years.
Q: Just to follow up on the five-year plan. Can you give us any --
did Arroyo give you any specific numbers on how much the Filipinos are
going to put down in terms of money? And how much is the U.S. prepared
to provide in terms of money for that training, like you were describing?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We are -- the numbers are still in
flux. We have had preliminary discussions with the Filipino government.
They do have sources of funding available. They have been planning to
modernize their military for a number of years. They've put funds in
escrow that they haven't used. They're planning on using a good portion
of those funds for this effort-. So we've looked at costs, and it's
going to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and we do expect
the Filipinos to provide the bulk of those. And they -- this is their
effort, frankly, and we expect that.
Q: Hundreds of millions of dollars is how much? It's the five years
for them, and then you're going to provide money. The hundreds of millions
is not U.S. contribution, right?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. The hundreds of millions is
what we hope to see from the Filipinos. And, of course, it's subject
to the approval of their Congress, just like it is on our side.
Q: What would be coming from the U.S. --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We don't have a final number yet. We're
still talking numbers with the Filipinos. And, frankly, part of it is
going to depend on both sides seeing good progress towards mutual goals.
Q: At one point in the speech, the President drew some explicit comparisons
between what he's attempting in Iraq and what happened in the Philippines,
starting a hundred years ago. Can you talk a little bit about his thinking
on this? Because we haven't heard him use that comparison before.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Could you spell that comparison out
a little further?
Q: The spot in the speech where he describes how the Philippines has
become a model for democracy in Asia and people did not believe that
Asia could have democracies. I've heard him talk before about some other
ones. But as you said in your own briefing yesterday, this is one that's
had its fair bit of troubles in recent times.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think the point the President --
as you said, a point the President makes regularly is that democracy
does work in different environments with different sorts of peoples,
with different sorts of historical backgrounds. The Philippines has
had a commitment to democracy for a long time. It has had a rocky history,
and the fascinating part is that it keeps on coming back to democracy;
that despite the sort of siren songs of strong men -- there's a lot
of S's there, in the siren songs of strong men -- the people of the
Philippines realize that democracy is the best way to guarantee their
rights and to develop their country.
You see that in other countries. Those of us who can remember 25, 30
years ago can remember a Latin America that was basically all dictatorships.
Now it's -- now that part of the world has gone towards democracy. Asia
is a good example. Again, mid-1980s, who would have said that you would
have had a belt of democracies that not only was Japan, but from South
Korea through the Philippine, through Taiwan, Thailand. He looks at
that and he's encouraged by that trend. And he also says that this sort
of refutes the naysayers who are saying that, well, there's an Asian
mentality that only wants a strong man. Or in this case, as he's mentioned
with respect to the Middle East, that for some reason, Arab cultures
and the Muslim mind are inimical to democracy. He's saying that's baloney,
and that the examples in Asia including the Philippines prove that that's
right.
Q: Yes, I want to just run by the contributions once more. Philippines,
over five years, expected to raise their defense spending by hundreds
of millions -- do I have that right?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, they're supposed to contribute.
Like I said, they actually have a lot of funds in escrow already.
Q: And the U.S. amount is undetermined?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Undetermined, but it will be -- we
will provide funds.
Q: And the choppers? We are giving them 20 choppers?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, that's already done, basically,
except that we do have to find the funding to refurbish -- finish refurbishing.
But that's a separate project that -- it sort of ties in, but it's a
separate project.
Q: You said the U.S. contribution largely would be the, what you called,
software.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right.
Q: Give us some examples of that. I know it's technical assistance,
but what does that mean?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay. For example, you
look at -- look at the Philippines military, and it's got questions
of, how do they organize their personnel system? Right now they don't
keep their commanders in place for very long. How do they recruit their
people? These are things where we can help and we can advise them, and
we can put people in to work with them and come up with some suggestions
as to how they implement that, which they want to do.
Acquisitions is another field. Again, I’m not an acquisition
expert, but people tell me that they could use a little bit of reform
and a little bit of modernizing the way they do things. Again, the problem
here is -- I'm not a military guy -- but it's basically how you actually
run the systems within the military and make that military as efficient
as possible.
Q: Could you set up the Hu meeting a little bit? And did President
Bush announce the five-year plan today, or did Arroyo announce it earlier
and the president reiterated it in the speech?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Basically we did it -- she did it first,
at the end of the first part of the bilateral meeting she spoke to the
media and announced that she was going ahead with it. And then the President
did mention it in the speech of course, too.
With respect to the meeting with President Hu, there's a lot to talk
about. There always is when we get together with the Chinese. But given
events in East Asia, there will be a big emphasis on North Korea, of
course. We have basically an hour set aside for the meeting. Both Presidents
look forward to it. This will be the second meeting between the two
of them with Hu Jintao as President. They, of course, met a third time
back in Washington when Hu Jintao was still Vice President. So they're
getting to know each other, and they're getting to work together. The
President attaches a tremendous amount of importance to the role that
China can play in seeking a peaceful resolution to the North Korean
nuclear issue. And he sees them as playing a constructive role so far,
and he wants to make sure that we consult with them closely and encourage
that.
Q: Anything specific on what the President would like to see on North
Korea coming in or coming out of this meeting?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, not specifically out of this
meeting, but, of course, the desire is that we do see another productive
round of six-party talks. We want to see six-party talks that really
do move towards a resolution of the issue.
Q: If you could -- if we haven't sorted out the funding yet on the
20 helicopters, what does it mean that Bush assured her that we are
going to refurbish them and that we're going to get them on their way?
How can you get it to them if you haven't sorted out the funding issue
yet?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You sound like you haven't worked in
the U.S. government. (Laughter.) Where there is a will, you can usually
find the way, and there will usually be little pockets of money that
you can find and have access to. And I've found, usually, believe it
or not, that when the President wants something done, it gets done,
after a while.
Q: But yet, in the briefing yesterday you were talking at the end of
the next fiscal year. So is that timetable moved forward or --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't have a specific timetable.
I said, I would hope that it would be done by the end of this next fiscal
year, and I mean basically the current fiscal year, because we just
started one, of course. But it is a question of finding the funds. And
we'll do our best and I'm sure we'll find them.
Q: -- you're supplying 20 helicopters?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, 20 out of inventory that we need
to refurbish.
Q: These are old helicopters that you're retiring anyway?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, these are UH-l, old Hueys, yes.
Q: Thank you
END
