UNAMA Press Conference United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Spokesperson’s Office Kabul - Afghanistan tel: 0039 0831 24 6121 – 0093 (0) 20 297 6121 email: [email protected] website: www.unama-afg.org Press Conference (near verbatim transcript) Kai Eide, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan Aleem Siddique, Acting Spokesman, UNAMA Kabul – 9 April 2008 www.unama-afg.org UNAMA Press Conference – 9 April 2008 UNAMA: Good afternoon everybody. As most of you know, my name is Aleem Siddique from UNAMA Spokesperson’s office and welcome to our press conference this afternoon. Before we begin, I’d like to make a short statement on a security incident yesterday. UNAMA is appalled and concerned to learn of the attack against a group of Afghan road construction workers in Zabul province yesterday, that resulted in 17 people being killed and injuries to at least 12 others. The contrast between those who are working to bring development and progress to the people of Afghanistan as opposed to those responsible for death and destruction could not be more stark. There can be no justification for such a cowardly attack. We condemn this attack and offer our sincere condolences to the families and friends of all those who have suffered. We are very pleased today to be joined by our new Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan Kai Eide. Kai will make a few brief remarks after which we will of course be happy to take your questions. With that, I would like to hand over the floor to Kai and give Kai a very warm welcome. SRSG Kai Eide Thank you very much. I am pleased to be here on a more permanent basis, I have been in Afghanistan a number of times in previous capacities for shorter visits, but this is different. It is a privilege to be able to be here and to serve the Afghan people, which is my purpose and I look forward to working with you all over the years to come. Let me say something that I also said at the airport, which is that the basis for my work is profound respect for the Afghan people. I am here to serve the Afghan people and I respect their religion, their culture and their history and it is on that basis that I will proceed. Could I also say that I am very encouraged by the reception I received here in Kabul. Over the nine working days I have had so far, I have met the President altogether four times -- once in Bucharest. I have met the Vice Presidents, many of the Ministers, the Speakers of Parliament and a number of other Afghan officials, and I feel there is a warm welcome. I feel that we are developing together a partnership of trust and confidence, which is critical to success. Let me also underline that what I will do will be based on Afghan leadership. I will listen carefully to the concerns and the priorities of the Afghan Government and reflect that also in my conversations with the international community. We just have the Bucharest summit behind us with an important meeting on Afghanistan that took place. For me personally and for UNAMA it was a very encouraging summit; it reaffirmed to us that the international community wants UNAMA and wants me to play a more prominent role, a stronger UN role. But there was one element of the Bucharest summit that was much more important than the support to us and that was the strong commitment given to the Afghan Government, to ensure that the effort of the international community leads to success. www.unama-afg.org 1 UNAMA Press Conference – 9 April 2008 And let me add to this: it was a commitment to increase troop levels, yes. But it went much beyond that: it was a clear commitment to strengthen the international community’s efforts in the field of reconstruction and development and it was a clear commitment to strengthen our efforts within the area of governance. I must say, in my experience I have never before seen such a strong international commitment to a broadly based international effort to support Afghanistan. You may ask what I have done during the first nine days. I don’t think I can report results to you after nine days, and I don’t think you should expect that, but we have initiated important work in a number of sectors. The first and most important priority is, as I mentioned to you before, the question of coordination of the international efforts. I think we have seen that it is still too fragmented to have the effect that we want it to have on the ground. So we are looking at the structures of cooperation and coordination that we have in place, including the JCMB. I think we are entering a new phase from now on, particularly with the Paris conference coming up. We will then have to address how we respond to the ANDS and its implementation; that will be a critical task head of us. And that certainly will need a fresh look. Certainly, coordination does not mean exchange of information: that is important, but it is only the first stage. Our cooperation and coordination must be problem solving, it must be delivery-oriented and oriented towards capacity building inside Afghanistan. What I want to do is to create a new sense of momentum and a new sense of urgency in the way we coordinate ourselves. We have to get away from a situation where an Afghan administration which is still in need of capacity building is faced with a too fragmented international community. That simply is not going to work. And we have to make sure that the agenda that we pursue is the Afghan agenda and not a number of national agendas. I am working with Professor Naderi, who is my co-chair in the JCMB [Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board], in order to present concrete proposals on how we will move forward shortly and certainly, to be delivered to the Paris Conference. Related to this we are of course looking at the question of aid efficiency. We have to ask ourselves, do we have adequate resources, do we spend them well enough, do we spend them sufficiently through Afghan channels and budgets, and can we eliminate duplication. And the third issue that we have been addressing is the question of governance. I have known Mr. Popal for quite some time and it is a pleasure working with him. We want to support him politically, we want to support him by mobilizing financial support and also by seeing to it that that financial support is coordinated so that he is not facing additional problems in bringing resources together around the plans that he has established. But the governance issue is of course an area much wider than the IDLG [Independent Directorate for Local Governance]. We have to have a short-term perspective and a long-term perspective. The long-term perspective is of course that there is recruitment to the government sector, to various parts of the government at various levels, to ensure that progress can be sustainable and here we are working also with several Ministers, including Minister Atmar. www.unama-afg.org 2 UNAMA Press Conference – 9 April 2008 The next area is the area of elections. In light of the decisions being made, we are looking at how we can best support the holding of these elections, and we will devote a lot of energy and resources in the period ahead of us, in order to go more deeply into that matter. The last area I would like to mention is the humanitarian area. We have to be able to meet humanitarian crises and problems better than we do today. We have to be able to assess problems that are coming and we have to be able to deliver assistance more efficiently than we are. One of the meetings with the President today, which was in a wider circle, had to do with the food situation. Work has been done already with regard to analyzing the situation that may be ahead of us, but more work needs to be done and we will certainly assist in that respect. This also has a longer-term perspective, of course, and the question of prominence given to the agricultural sector as such. It is a critical sector and we have to look at whether or not we are giving the agricultural sector sufficient prominence in the overall efforts that we are undertaking – the Afghan Government and the international community. I have mentioned the Paris conference already. I am sure it will be a successful conference. It will require careful planning and must provide a firm commitment to working together in implementing the ANDS in particular and ensuring that we have the right resources and implementation mechanisms in order to make it a success. And of course at that conference there will also have to be a political dimension and let me mention only three important issues in that respect: elections, governance and the regional dimension. I wanted to meet you today after nine days of work simply because I wanted to report to you that we are undertaking important work and also because I am leaving tomorrow for Europe on a first visits to European capitals. I will be going to London, to Paris, to Brussels for the EU and NATO and then to Berlin. The themes to discuss will be those that I have outlined already.