Transcript of Ambassador Francis Ricciardone’s Remarks
Asia Society of the Philippines
Tower Club, Makati
August 26, 2004

Magandang hapon sa inyong lahat. That’s my Tagalog, all of it. (Laughter)

Thank you very much Executive Director Ray Dempsey. Asia Society Trustees, esteemed colleagues in the diplomatic corps, ladies and gentlemen, friends:

It is certainly an honor to address the distinguished members of the Asia Society and our guests. It is a moment of both challenge and opportunity in world history and in Asian-American relations. It is just the right moment, I think, and the Asia Society is just the right setting for a conversation today on international cooperation in a cause that I believe will define our time: global support for the transition of democracy in Iraq.

Thank you for affording me this opportunity, my first discussion of this subject with such a group since I recently returned to the Philippines, as Ray has mentioned, from six months’ service in Washington and Iraq. In fact, during that period I temporarily re-assumed the former title that Ray had mentioned, as Special Coordinator for the Transition of Iraq. Secretary Powell charged me to organize a new United States Embassy to represent my country to the new Interim Government of Iraq.

Our Embassy in Baghdad, I’m sorry to say, has replaced our Embassy in Manila as third-ranking U.S. Embassy in the world, in terms of the number of people. I was torn, because I’d like to think of us in Manila as being the best embassy among all our American embassies in the world. Perhaps we can still aspire for that honor, but we have to concede, hands down, the honor to our colleagues in Baghdad of serving under the most challenging conditions and probably the most important work that the United States is doing overseas today. With our colleagues in the Kabul Embassy as well, I must say. Certainly, we have a much more pleasant time of it here in Manila as well. We fight to be assigned to Manila now.

My own experience with Iraqi patriots over a couple of decades has always sustained my optimism for the future of that ancient land. It also sustains my faith in the larger cause of defeating global terrorism by spreading freedom and democracy. Iraqis have a glorious past, and they have commensurate ambitions for their future. They are proud and they have guts. They now have strong friends around the world, and they are unstoppable. Iraqi is a pivotal front in that cause, which we pursue with great cost to American, Iraqi and allied, lives and treasure. So, of course, it does impact our relations with other countries including the Philippines.

Before examining Iraq in greater details, I do want to dispose at the outset of the question that I know people will pose of U.S.-Philippines cooperation regarding Iraq.

The decision to withdraw the spirit of and effective Philippines contingent from Iraq -- at the demand of a small gang of terrorists was a setback for a cause, which, I believe nonetheless, the Philippines and we do continue to share. It did deeply disappoint us, the Iraqis, and the coalition of countries supporting Iraqis in realizing their aspirations for freedom, for democracy, for security, for prosperity. Nevertheless, as Secretary Powell has said, we know that our hundred-year-old relationship as friends and allies will continue. We certainly are not looking for ways to retaliate or punish friends of long-standing. Such an approach would be beneath the maturity to which both our Presidents have brought our relationship. Our important common interests and values certainly endure.

In particular, we continue to work together against international terrorists active in the Philippines. Far more needs to be done, but we have seen meaningful progress. In fact the United States government has publicly commended the Philippines’ recent success in convicting seventeen Abu Sayyaf terrorists. And the Philippines police and Armed Forces have cracked the leadership itself of another kidnap-for-ransom gang on the United States Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the Pentagon Gang, who have blasphemously masqueraded as proponents of a religious cause.

And we dare hope for fresh impetus in a political process in Mindanao that will let peace and development replace decades of insurgency and misery upon which terrorists and other gangsters still feed like vultures. We will continue to support the government of the Republic of the Philippines in a most vigorous pursuit and the legal prosecution of many others guilty of terrorism against Filipinos and foreigners alike.

We wish success to the new Congress and the new Administration in their long campaign to pass strong and effective anti-terrorism legislation. We will continue to offer whatever support we can to Philippine legislators, law enforcers, soldiers, intelligence agencies, diplomats and prosecutors to make this country safer against international terrorists and other criminals, including drug pushers and traffickers in people.

And, in accordance with the U.N.’s Millennium Development goals, and President Bush’s Millennium Challenge precepts, we will continue to support the efforts of the Philippines Government, private sector and especially NGOs, like this one, to alleviate the endemic poverty that can breed terrorism, insurgencies, crime, corruption, hate, disease, lawlessness hopelessness -- all these human ills that stem from poverty.

But in the Philippines, as in Iraq, success will only come from strong, national and local leadership, initiative and sacrifice. The strongest foreign allies, even in the United States, can only support our allies in their national aspirations.

I have spoken of continued United States support for our common interest in the strength and prosperity of the Philippines. Let me also note that we do value the Philippines continued contributions to the interests we share with Iraqis in rebuilding their country in freedom. As President Arroyo rightly has pointed out, some four thousand Filipino workers still provide vital services there to Iraqis and to Coalition support efforts. Yet, for the time being, more such foreign workers, including truck drivers, are urgently needed in Iraq. At the same time, many Filipinos are demanding restoration of their right to compete for such employment. We hope that the Government will soon permit more Filipinos to act in accordance with their own judgment -- after becoming fully informed of the risks and benefits of joining in the reconstruction of Iraq in specific circumstances. We do all we can to hold accountable to local labor laws those American employers who operate in Iraq under contracts with the United States government, and we cooperate with the Governments of the Philippines and other concerned countries as we do so.

Only Filipinos can authoritatively judge the national interest of their country, of course. To opinion leaders such as those in this room who consider those interests, I submit two propositions. First, that Iraq and its future as a free and democratic country really do matter to all of us. And second, that Iraq’s future is bright, precisely because of allied intervention to free the Iraqi people from four and a half decades of dictatorship and strife, of which the last three and a half are under a single, and singularly brutal, regime.

I had the privilege in June, of hearing an old friend, Iraq’s interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, address the United Nations Security Council. He asked the international community to support the stability and security of Iraq. The very distinguished Filipino Security Council President, Ambassador Larry Baja, thereupon guided the Council to a unanimous and historic vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546. This is international law and it is enforceable under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. It requests foreign governments to support the Interim Iraqi Government and its course toward a permanent government through a defined process of elections. It asks all member states also to support the reconstruction of Iraq, the multinational forces in Iraq, and U.N. operations in Iraq.

Iraq and its Interim Government, then, are no creations or clients of the United States. Rather, the Iraqi Interim Government is solidly established and recognized under international law passed by the 15 United Nations Security Council states. Unanimously. These 15 states that held widely divergent views on the course of events leading up to Iraq’s liberation. No serious person questions the independence of the foreign policies of those 15 sovereign states. The voters for UNSCR 1546 included not only contributors to the Multinational Force in Iraq, but also France, Russia, China, and Algeria, among the many who often differ with the United States on issues before the council and on much else. Secretary General Annan’s special representative, the eminent Jehangir Qazi, is even now directing United Nations operations inside Iraq.

And, even more important than such unanimous international support, polls and events inside Iraq show solid, popular support for the Interim Government, and for the process devised by Iraqis, with U.N. support, leading to elections by January of 2005 and a permanent Government, under a new constitution, by 2006. So this hour of Iraq’s need would hardly seem a good time to disregard requests not only from the United Nations but also from that country’s people and Prime Minister, for our support. The United States and our Coalition partners will not shirk from that international, legal obligation and moral imperative.

As President Bush has put it, our goal in Iraq is not only to defeat an enemy, it is also to give strength to a friend, a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf. Last year, when the United States and other members of the Coalition set out to liberate Iraq, we promised to end a dangerous and evil regime and to restore self-rule to the Iraqi people. We did so.

It has been barely eight weeks since the occupation administration of Iraq ended -- what we called the Coalition Provisional Authority. On June 28, ahead of schedule, the Iraqi Interim Government took office under two leaders of extraordinary courage, patriotism and vision, President Ghazi al-Yawar and Prime Minister Ali al-Allawi, and their equally heroic and capable deputies and cabinet members. I am honored to count several of these selfless leaders among my personal friends.

Last week, despite the festering insurgency in Najaf, and terrorist mortar attacks in Baghdad itself, over 1100 Iraqis came together to accomplish the second major milestone on their road to the January elections. They have formed political parties, and lists, large ones and small ones, in an exercise of democracy that eclipses, in sheer passion, even the Filipino and American election campaigns of this historic year.

As we meet, the Iraqis are swelling with patriotic pride, as their Olympic soccer team has defied the odds and inspired the world. Iraqi athletes will return home confident of their welcome as heroes -- and not, as under Saddam Hussein, to certain torture - for “losing” athletes administered by the dictator’s own son.

It is clear that the Iraqi people want their new Government to succeed. Throughout Iraq, courageous citizens are taking risks at all levels and taking positions at all levels to serve their country in every imaginable capacity. They are being attacked and many are being killed. Even as terrorists bomb recruitment stations for police and the new Army, more recruits are lining up to take their place.

Such a people -- such a spirit -- will not long be denied. Iraqi army and civilian security forces will defeat the terrorists. Those forces are rapidly growing in numbers and improving in training, equipment, leadership and accomplishment, every day. And the proud men and women in the United States Armed Forces and those of our allies will stand with them until they determine that they strong enough to protect the people of Iraq on their own.

Iraqi democracy will only thrive with the international support that they have requested and that the United Nations has urged. Just as the Philippines needed help to recover from the ravages of war and still bleeds, from decades of communist and pseudo–religious terrorist insurgency, Iraq needs assistance to recover from the destruction wrought by decades of war and dictatorship.

When we arrived in Baghdad, we found that its infrastructure had decayed under Saddam Hussein even more than we had expected. We have pledged to help rebuild this infrastructure -- to help Iraqis restore their electricity systems, their sanitation systems, and their energy sector -- so they again can thrive on their own. Iraq needs teachers, medical personnel, engineers and good, skilled and semi-skilled labor, including truck drivers, during this transition period.

Despite the bad news that we hear so often from Iraq, success stories are taking place all over Iraq everyday. Our press kit offers just a sampling of the key data on the remarkable achievements of Iraqis -- now as integral members of the coalition including the U.N. mandated Multinational Force -- in public health, education, national finance, including a new currency that has appreciated in the year since liberation against the dollar by 25 percent! The market is telling us something.

Iraqis have established a vibrant, free media for the first time in the lives of most Iraqi adults. Iraqis, with coalition support, are making giant strides in rebuilding their infrastructure of transport, oil, power, irrigation, water, sanitation, telecommunications and the internet; and public administration, including the courts and the prisons.

They are devising scrupulous, legal procedures to try former regime criminals in the full light of international and domestic scrutiny and while also advancing national reconciliation.

Iraqi Interim Government has stopped Saddam’s filling of some 300,000 mass graves, and has began to exhume them to properly honor the victims.

Perhaps the liberated Iraqis’ most cherished and important accomplishment is their protection of human rights under the exemplary Transitional Administrative Law. Iraqis did consult with a range of foreign legal experts under the Coalition Provisional Authority, but it was the Iraqis themselves who debated, wrote, approved and now uphold the Transitional Administrative Law. They are drawing on that experience as they now gear up to write and to adopt a new constitution in the coming year. Under the transitional administrative law, Iraq has newly liberated and empowered all of its people, including women. Just as Iraq women defied Saddam Hussein despite his methodical use of rape against them, Iraqi women today defy terrorist mortar fire, kidnapping and assassination threats, to serve their newly freed country. You know how powerfully they do so if you met Minster of Public Works Nasreen Berwari who was here in Manila during my brief absence, an amazing woman.

So the new Iraq portends a much brighter future than the one all too often portrayed, I am sad to say, by some pundits here, in my country, and around the world, most of whom, likely, have never even met a free Iraqi, much less visited the country (except perhaps some of them as pampered guests under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.) Iraqi friends phone me and email me, even this morning, with their hopes and their faith in the future of their country. They tell me of their plans, and even their investments, their children returning to Iraq. Iraqis are eager to travel abroad but they no longer emigrate in desperation to seek freedom and opportunity. Rather, good friends of mine who have lived lives of freedom and privilege, and even wealth, in London, in California, in Boston, and in Europe – they have returned to Iraq to take up positions of responsibility and to pledge their lives in reconstruction of their country and building democracy there.

How could a people like this possibly fail?

So naturally, I share the optimism of Iraqis. From the beginning, my nation made a pledge to Iraq: we will stay as long as needed and not one day more. As President Bush has said, “Our goal is to see the Iraqi people in charge for the first time in generations. The sooner this goal is achieved the sooner our job will be done.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the opportunity today to offer a firsthand view of events in Iraq and perhaps an optimistic perspective on a country that you don’t often hear, here in the Philippines and in the United States. I look forward to hearing your views as well, in the open forum. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

# # #

Open Forum Question & Answer Session

Moderator: The Ambassador will take some questions or comments now, so please come to a mike, introduce yourself and pose your question.

Q: Ambassador Ricciardone, what is the relation of Afghanistan’s progress with Iraq’s progress? It is said that Afghanistan was abandoned in the rush to help Iraq and Afghanistan is in a lot of trouble. I’d be interested to see how these two countries tie up.

A: I think it would be very unfair to say that Afghanistan has been abandoned. No question, these are two countries that need a lot of help. They are facing insurgencies. There are American and allied forces deployed to both. We would rather be deployed to neither, actually, or to only one if we could, but we have two countries very much in need of international support, both backed by United Nations resolutions and large coalitions.

In the case of Afghanistan, there are problems, of course; there are insurgencies. They are coming not only from decades of war, of Soviet occupation, you know, a long time ago, and then the Taliban, but also a much more backward history, recent history, undeveloped recent history much more poverty than oil-rich Iraq with its ancient centers of learning and culture had. So, it’s hard to compare the two. They’ve got more mileage to make up than the Iraqis already had. But there are some really heartening news coming out from Afghanistan too. I’m no expert, but just from what I’ve read, and from listening to the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General who was just here the other day, there is a voter registration drive on. Something like nine million voters have been registered. Afghans are crying out to be able with the passion to do something we take for granted in the Philippines and in the United States. Many Americans won’t bother to vote if history is any guide. Afghans are lining up, despite the problems, to register to vote. Nine million already in a country of 35 million overall, and I don’t know how many there are in the eligible electorate. Twelve million Afghans have returned home from exile in Pakistan and elsewhere, three million since the liberation of that country from the Taliban. Forty percent of those nine million who have signed up to vote are women. In a county that wouldn’t let their girls to go to school under the Taliban, women are voting in numerous ways, and are, at least, signing up for the official vote. So, even there, the good news and the positive things that are really going on get obscured with the daily drumbeat of violence that comes out. That election in Afghanistan is scheduled for October now. It slipped from September, but from what I hear people are confident that it will come off. We’ll have to see.

Q: Two questions, Ambassador. First question, do you think these Iraqi insurgents are supported by foreign powers, and to what extent? And second, how will the U.S. policy toward Iraq change if Democrats win the next election?

A: On the first one, yes, I believe there is a foreign role in the insurgency. Clearly, foreigners are being turned up all the time among those captured or killed in Iraq. Not great numbers, but some, and we know one of the ringleaders is a Jordanian named al-Zarqawi. So, certainly foreigners are there. When you say foreign powers, I assume you mean states. That role is a little harder to define. Iraq’s borders have always been difficult, even for the dictatorship, to control fully. We certainly believe that a couple of the neighboring states, in particular Syria and Iran, could do a lot more to help. We have our questions about the pursuit of Iranian interests there. Clearly, both Syria and Iran have important national interests in the stability and well being of that country. We think those interests should prosper, but we want to much prefer that people were openly and above board to support the Iraqi Interim Government as the United Nations has asked. We would like to be more certain that those two neighboring countries are doing all they can to make sure that they are complying with the United Nations edict to help out the new Iraq.

On U.S. foreign policy, I’d like to plead the Fifth on speculative questions like that. You know, I’ve been in the Foreign Service for 26 years, and I have seen a number of changes of administrations of both Democrats and Republicans and back and forth. I think anyone who has experienced that from the inside knows that the foreign policy doesn’t usually change radically, if it changes at all. It changes in emphasis; it changes in style; each and every administration brings a new and fresh energy into it. I have no doubt that if, assuming President Bush wins reelection, there would be new energy even though it’s the same administration. It is a time to look back, take stock on the first four years and look ahead to the challenges and opportunities of the coming year. So, I wouldn’t anticipate a radical shift. Certainly in the campaign debates, I don’t hear Senator Kerry holding up wildly different foreign policy initiatives. At least I haven’t so far.

Q: Mr. Ambassador, first, I was quite impressed with your report. And certainly now, and I didn’t realize it but January 2005 and January 2006 are really (inaudible) milestone dates. So having said that, and it’s just not speculation, but would you eventually guess whether the neighboring countries in Iraq will come together? And second, something that we perceived, me and many of us that, somehow or another, what is binding them together, in a way, is the Palestinian and Israel issue, will that be resolved? Thank you.

A: Many doctoral dissertations have not been done on the latter question alone. I am optimistic about the future course of Iraq, as I said, not merely in the internal reasons that I emphasized more, but also because the neighboring states and the world community are, number one, as I mentioned, are obliged under international law to support the Iraqis in creating a new country in freedom and democracy. But also, even if we were not obliged, it is in all our interests that that country gets on in its feet again. That certainly includes in the first circle of countries that would benefit from a stable, prosperous, open Iraq, the countries on Iraq’s border. So, I have to believe and hope that under any kind of enlightened calculations, those countries will much prefer, at a minimum, not to get in the way, not to make it hard and perhaps, even better than that, actively seek to support the Iraqis as they go through the very difficult task to organize elections sometime in January coming, and then establish a government in the Spring following that, and then draft a Constitution throughout 2005 and finally, put in place a permanent government by early 2006. That’s a huge task. The Iraqis are up to it, and I think their neighbors will want them to do it.

As to Palestinian-Israeli conflict, President Bush, in June 2002 gave a historic speech and moved the United States policy very far forward to advocate a two state solution, living in peace. That was quite an historic move, I thought, by President Bush. I know Secretary Powell has given the whole issue a lot of attention, but as I mentioned in the case of Iraq or, for that matter, the Philippines and anywhere else, the United States cannot lead, cannot establish peace there. The people who are involved, the parties of the conflict, must lead. They need visionary, insightful, and bold leaders who will take appropriate risks for peace. Our role all along the way is to use our good offices, to encourage them, to support people who are taking prudent, intelligent and noble risks for peace. We will keep doing that. We did that. Will such leaders emerge? For me, that is the question in response to your question. Will such leaders emerge among the parties to the conflict? I think they must, in time, and we will be there to support them.

Moderator: I think that’s it, so we will just let the Ambassador enjoy lunch now. Thank you very much.

 

 

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Related links:

-- Transcript of “ambush” interview with Ambassador Ricciardone, August 16

-- Fact Sheet: Iraq success stories

-- U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 1546

-- Photo gallery on USAID-assisted projects in Iraq