*EPF504 10/17/2003
White House Report: Internationalization Strategy on Track for Iraq, U.S. Says
(Iraq, Gaza attack) (870)

A senior administration official, briefing reporters October 16 on Air Force One as they accompanied President Bush at the start of a six-country trip to Asia and Australia, welcomed the unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council to approve a new U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq.

The unanimous approval by the council earlier in the day was "an important statement by the international community that it recognizes ... how critical ... bringing a stable and secure and prosperous and democratizing Iraq can be to the entire international community. And so it's much appreciated," the official said.

The international community "seems united on the essential element here, which is that the Iraqi people need to be supported as they move forward. I don't doubt that there are still some disagreements about exactly how this ought to move forward. But the world -- the Security Council found itself capable of coming together, and I think sending an important message to the Iraqi people that everybody wants this to succeed, and everybody is going to play a part in that success," the official said.

"It's also been a good day" in that late October 15 "we learned that the Japanese have made a large $1.5 billion donation to Iraq for immediate needs in the reconstruction, and has said that it will look at what more needs to be done. We also had announcements that the international financial institutions are going to be very involved.

"So all in all, I think the internationalization strategy is on track. And we're looking forward to continuing it," the official said, pointing out that the Madrid conference on reconstruction in Iraq is coming up October 23-24.

The official commented on the issue of whether financial aid to Iraq should be in the form of loans or grants. "Bilateral aid, we believe, should be as much as possible in grants," the official said. "And one reason that the president has held fast in the Congress on this is that the more that we do grants, the better position we are in to argue for grants."

The Senate voted late October 16 to provide half of the administration's requested $20 billion for Iraq reconstruction in the form of loans rather than grants. The loans would be forgiven if other nations write off Iraqi debt incurred by the Saddam Hussein regime. The House of Representatives earlier rejected a similar loan provision in its version of the Iraq spending bill. The different bills must be reconciled before being submitted to the president.

The senior official said conditions are improving in Iraq and said reporters should not lose sight of "the longer perspective" when reporting about the country. Focus on U.S. casualties and other problems by the media "gives an impression that there is no progress when there is progress," the official said. "Most of the country is stable and returning to normal life and businesses are opening and people are going to school and the soccer team is starting to play."

TERRORISTS NOT FRIENDS OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, OFFICIAL SAYS

Those responsible for the October 15 attack in Gaza that killed three American security guards "are not the friends of the Palestinian people," a senior administration official said.

The people killed and wounded in the attack "were security forces for diplomats who are there to interview Palestinian kids for Fulbrights (scholarships)," the official said. "How more helpful could you be to the Palestinian people than to try to give their youth opportunities to study on Fulbrights?"

The people responsible for the attack, the official said, "are not people who associate themselves with the dreams and the aspirations of a peaceful Palestinian state, living side-by-side with Israel and allowing the Palestinian people to get on to their lives.

"These are people who are insisting on violence, who are insisting on taking the youth of the Palestinian people and turning them into suicide bombers. They should not masquerade or be allowed to masquerade behind any sense that they are doing good on behalf of the Palestinian people or that they are expressing the anger of the Palestinian people or any such thing -- they're killers, pure and simple."

"And what the president said yesterday," the official continued, "is that the Palestinian leadership needs to recognize that it's time to do something about this problem, it's long since been time, and to break up these terrorist groups so that we can get on with the building of a Palestinian state."

"We're still in the process with authorities of trying to figure out" who was responsible for the Gaza attack, the official said. "There were some arrests made. I think that's a good thing for the Palestinian Authority to have done. And that is a good first step. But eventually, the Palestinian Authority has got to create an empowered Palestinian prime minister who can have security forces that are unified and then these security forces can begin to break up these terrorist groups, and we can get back on track on the road map," the official said.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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