*EPF208 10/26/2004
New State Dept. Office Will Coordinate Crisis Planning, Response
(Effort involves U.S. and international, government and private groups) (640)

Washington -- The world has changed since the end of the Cold War, and the U.S. government must change how it deals with conflict and post-conflict societies, says the State Department's coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.

To that end, a decision was made earlier in 2004 by the National Security Council to create the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization within the State Department whose mission is to provide new tools to prevent conflict, or to ensure a meaningful and sustainable peace after conflict, in countries around the world.

Ambassador Carlos Pascual, head of the new office, says it is "interagency in character and in function." Staffed by employees from several U.S. government agencies, its role is to coordinate reconstruction and stabilization activities among civilian agencies and between civilian agencies and the military, he explained at an October 20 conference of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

That coordination responsibility extends to U.S. nonfederal agencies and to international partners as well, he said. It does not extend, however, to Iraq or Afghanistan, because other parts of the U.S. government are dealing with arrangements there.

Pascual said his office has a mandate to develop a nonmilitary capacity within the U.S. government "to prevent and prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict and civil strife, so that they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy."

He said that in the past 15 years, the United States has been involved in 17 different stabilization and reconstruction operations, each of which has been handled on an ad hoc basis. The new office will institutionalize what has been learned and apply it to new situations.

Pascual said there are five core functions for the office:

-- To monitor building crises and plan how to address them;

-- To mobilize and deploy resources where and when they are needed;

-- To prepare resources and skills so that they are available when needed quickly;

-- To learn from experience and to apply it; and

-- To coordinate with international partners.

The National Intelligence Council will biannually identify a group of countries considered to be at greatest risk of instability. From that group, Pascual said, a few countries will be focused on to plan crisis prevention or mitigation.

To exercise its core function for leadership and coordination, Pascual proposes to create a rapid response unit within the State Department. Members of the rapid response unit would participate in training and exercises sponsored by his office, even though the members are assigned to other parts of the department. They could be activated on an emergency basis and put into a country quickly.

Pascual also proposes developing a technical core of personnel from within the agencies and organizations that would be responsible for long-term programs in a particular country.

As for creating partnerships, Pascual said his office has begun building a network of contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements with firms, individuals, public research centers, universities, international organizations and private organizations.

Being able to identify people immediately with skills required for a particular situation and having pre-prepared contracts and access to funding, could reduce response time by three to six months, he said.

Planning will be double-tracked, involving both military-led and civilian-led processes, Pascual said, adding that he hopes that joint civilian-military planning would result in civilian advance teams going into a country along with military forces to begin stabilization activities immediately.

Getting this right, Pascual said, would result in a huge payoff in relieving human suffering, ending civil strife and putting areas in crisis back on the road to peace and democracy.

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

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