Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs Frazer Holds State Department News Briefing on
Secretary Rice's Upcoming Travel to Ethiopia
FRAZER:
The secretary will
travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
arriving Wednesday, December 5th.
She is going to hold a
Great Lakes summit, essentially a meeting of the Tripartite Plus heads of state
and ministers -- foreign ministers and defense ministers -- from Uganda,
Rwanda, Burundi and Congo.
The Tripartite Plus
group was established by the United States to facilitate dialogue and build
confidence among the four countries in the Great Lakes region.
This meeting is expected to further develop strategies and common security
mechanisms to address what are known as the negative forces in the Congo,
groups like the FDLR, the former Rwandan genociders, the Lords Resistance Army
and other groups in the Congo.
The meeting will also
foster dialogue between the governments and seek common efforts to eliminate
gender-based violence.
We expect it to be
attended at the head of state level, from the officials of the four countries
as well as observers being invited from the United Nations, A.U.
Chairman Konare and the Great Lakes envoy for the E.U.
She will also hold a
Somali ministerial with the regional countries, and again attended by the A.U.
chairman, Konare, the U.N. special rep for the secretary general,
Ould-Abdallah.
The Somalian
ministerial will also have present President Yusuf and the new prime minister
of Somalia,
Nur Adde, attending the meeting.
The goal is to consult
and further coordinate a regional response to the crisis in Somalia.
We're hoping that the consultation will focus on how to achieve a more
inclusive political dialogue and reconciliation to move the country toward 2009
elections, how to mitigate the impact of the current violence, especially in
Mogadishu on the civilian population, and address the humanitarian emergency,
working together to further isolate extremists and spoilers who continue to use
violence and then to push for quicker deployment of the African Union
force into Somalia, the AMIS U.N. force.
The countries
attending the meeting -- the ministerial -- will be the Somali president, prime
minister of Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia,
we hope Kenya
will be there. Kenya's in the midst of an election campaign, a very close
election campaign. But also the A.U. chairman, Konare, will attend and the U.N.
special rep to the secretary general, Ould-Abdallah.
The secretary will
also hold a ministerial meeting on Sudan to continue the U.S. focus on the
comprehensive peace agreement implementation. It'll be held with the regional
countries, particularly those who are members of the Intergovernmental
Authority on Development, IGAD.
These are the
countries that were, in a sense, semiguarantors of the CPA, having helped to negotiate
it under Kenya's leadership. And so, we want to consult on how to move the
process forward or to get the CPA back on track.
The expected
participants from these IGAD countries, ministers, will be from Djibouti,
Ethiopia,
Uganda, we hope Kenya, as well as
Sudan, the A.U. chairman, Konare, and the U.N. special rep to the secretary
general, Qazi.
FRAZER:
In addition to the
head of state summit on the Great Lakes, the Sudan ministerial and the Somali
ministerial, the secretary, of course, will hold bilateral meetings with the
Ethiopian government including a meeting and dinner with Prime Minister Meles
and Foreign Minister Seyoun, in which you would expect the discussion to focus
on regional stability, fighting terrorism, democracy promotion, economic
development, and food security in Ethiopia, including
issues of the Ougaden, and, of course, the robust program that the United
States and Ethiopia are partnering on dealing with HIV and
AIDS, TB and malaria.
The bottom line is
that the secretary has been very much focused on the Great Lakes, Sudan and Somalia,
and she wants to, now, go to Africa, go to Addis Ababa, in
order to have the regional consultations, because in all of these cases we've
found that the key to the conflict prevention and promotion is to work with the
regional countries themselves and their leadership.
And so she's been
involved on all of these issues, doing phone calls, meeting with these leaders
here in Washington,
and now she's going to go to the region to have an opportunity to bring them
together once again so that we can try to promote conflict resolution.
And with that, I will
answer any questions that you may have.
QUESTION:
May I ask you about a
subject that you didn't mention which I think is very likely to come up, and
that's Ethiopia-Eritrea.
As you know, today the
boundary commission's mandate expired with no demarcation on the ground and
tensions high. Despite what Meles and others seem to be saying, things are just
as fragile as they were when, perhaps, when the war ended.
How much is that going
to be a part of the agenda?
And also how much of
just plain Eritrean -- the Eritrean issue on its own, the state-sponsor
designation, how much is that going to play into it...
FRAZER:
I would imagine that,
obviously, in her consultations with Prime Minister Meles and Foreign Minister
Seyoun, one of their biggest challenges is dealing with the boundary
commission. So I would imagine that that would be a topic of discussion bilaterally
between the secretary and the leaders Ethiopia.
As far as Eritrea's
role in the region, it would probably be more of a discussion on the Somalia
-- during the Somalia ministerial. And it would be a key one because we do need
to deal with how to bring legitimate opposition into dialogue with the
transitional federal government.
FRAZER:
And when we say
legitimate opposition, that's the need to try to isolate those who continue to
call for attacks, for instance, against the peace-keeping forces, those who
will continue to use violence as a tactic of dissent and a tactic of
destabilization.
And obviously, Eritrea
has played a role in training, financing and providing some safe-haven for
groups that are more extremist. But also, groups that are, what I would say,
legitimate opposition groups -- the, quote/unquote, "free
parliamentarians."
Some of them also sit
in Eritrea.
And so, yes, Eritrea certainly will feature prominently on
the agenda in this Somali ministerial.
QUESTION:
Can I just ask one
more very briefly on that Boundary Commission?
Former Ambassador
Bolton has written in his book that you, in February of 2006, told him that you
wanted to reopen the Boundary Commission's 2002 decision and to give the area
or parts of the area around (inaudible) to award that which had been already
granted to Eritrea to Ethiopia.
Is that correct?
FRAZER:
No. Thank you for
asking a question. I actually haven't read the book. So, I'm surprised that I
even feature in it. But I can assure you, unequivocally, that I've never
advocated for reopening the boundary decision, the EEBC decision, on the, you
know, the land -- the delimitation line.
In fact, we've been
very clear that we accept the delimitation line. The issue was how do you move
from delimitation to demarcation? And I've always advocated that that has to
involve dialogue between the countries because, clearly, territory that was
Eritrea's has been given to Ethiopia; territory that's Ethiopia
has been given to Eritrea.
That's what drawing
straight lines typically does. And so, not to reopen the decision, but rather
to have a dialogue about the demarcation, including options of open borders so
that the people on the borders can move back and forth.
And that really is, I
think, just a matter of how do you implement the decision, not reopening or
questioning the decision. So, I could say without -- unequivocally, that I've
never advocated for changing the delimitation decision of the Eritrea
Ethiopia
Boundary Commission.
Yes?
QUESTION:
You talked a little
about the choreography for the various meetings and for the summit of the
ministerials.
Can you give me -- us
a sense of the achievables, particularly when you're talking about the ministerial
on Sudan and, indeed, the summit on the Great Lakes?
And, you know, these
are enormously (inaudible) issues. The secretary's there for a limited period
of time, a very short period of time.
Can you give a sense
of what concretes you expect to get out of these meetings?
FRAZER:
Sure. Thank you very
much.
Well, first, I would
say that this is a continuation of her engagement. And so, it's not a one-time
engagement.
For instance, the
Tripartite Plus on the Great Lakes, we already have a mechanism in place for
sharing information between the countries. We have what we call a fusion cell
that sits in the Congo.
One of the outcomes of
this meeting would hopefully be to further empower that fusion cell, perhaps
get more resources for it, increase the representation there, clarify whether
the type of information that's being shared is sufficient, is it reaching the
-- is it moving out of the fusion cell to the ministers of foreign affairs and
defense affairs?
And so, we're trying
to strengthen and build security mechanisms that are already in place, both
ours through the Tripartite Plus, but also the Great Lakes Conference has
developed regional security mechanisms.
There was recently a
deal reached or an agreement largely brokered by the U.N. between Rwanda
and Congo called the Nairobi Agreement. And so, we would want to take
that agreement and also further flush it out, get the commitments of all the
regional players and see how we can support them having a collective effort
toward dealing with these negative forces in the Congo.
And so, that's on that
one. It's a continuation of a process. And we're trying to further
institutionalize common mechanisms and also continue to build confidence,
because, quite clearly, there's a sense in the region that there needs to be a
lot of assistance to the Congolese to address rebels coming from other
countries that are, you know, operating.
So LRA -- the Lord's
Resistance Army -- is another one.
And there's a lot of
good work that's going on very quietly, especially by the United Nations
trying to help with demobilizing, trying to help with picking up some of the
rebels who are actually defecting from some of these negative forces.
So, that's really the
purpose there. On the Somalia, I think that the key here is to try to
provide support to the new prime minister of Somalia.
FRAZER:
This is a real
opportunity for the transitional federal government to retool; to, in the
person of the new prime minister, try to build greater confidence, greater
credibility, and to further reach out to the legitimate opposition. And, again,
legitimate just means nonviolent opposition.
And so I think that
the timing is particularly important because it's a time for all of the
regional ministers to talk to the president and the prime minister, to say what
our expectations are of the transitional federal government, and also for the
transitional federal government to speak to us to say what their needs are in
terms of assistance.
At the same time,
we've had trouble getting the African Union forces up and running, the AMIS
U.N. forces. We've have the Ugandans there. We're hoping the Burundians will
come.
But with the secretary's
engagement, we hope to further mobilize the AMIS U.N. force and build support
for it.
It's also an
opportunity for us to reflect on the secretary general's recent report on
Somalia in which he said that there should be some type of multi-national force
or coalition of willing forces because the conditions are not ripe for a U.N.
force.
That's a new position.
And I think that we, the United States, the transitional federal government,
and the regional countries most affected by the crisis in Somalia
need to come together to figure out: How do we move forward from there?
QUESTION:
What is your
assessment that almost a year from the U.S.-backed Ethiopian intervention
there, people say that the -- Mogadishu is increasingly depopulated, the
violence has intensified, the Ethiopians are are largely stranded; as you said,
the Ugandans are alone in the A.U.?
It's a terrible
outcome so far, isn't it, for an operation to be U.S.-backed?
FRAZER:
No, the U.S. didn't
back -- I don't know which operation you're saying the U.S. backed. But it's
not a terrible outcome in the sense that this is more of the same in Somalia,
in which we haven't had a government sitting since 1991, and Mogadishu has been
a very violent place.
Yes, the violence has
intensified with the extremists and the insurgents using tactics to shoot and
kill civilians. And the government and the Ethiopian forces shooting back, and
sometimes, obviously, in a circumstance like that, the civilians are the ones
who pay the highest cost, which is why in this meeting of the ministerial the
secretary also wants to put an emphasis on how we can, as I said, reduce the
impact, the negative impact, on civilians and increase our humanitarian
emergency response to try to help protect those civilians.
FRAZER:
So, yes, we have a
responsibility to try to support the civilian population.
But the key here is a
process of political dialogue and reconciliation, which is what we always
supported, even a year, you know -- more than a year -- since June of 2006,
we've been calling for dialogue and reconciliation.
So we've not been
pursuing or seeking a military outcome, but rather a political outcome.
QUESTION:
On the various
negative forces back in the Great Lakes -- there are various ideas and
proposals in dealing with the group or the FDLR. Where does the U.S. come down
on these? For example, do you support a military offensive by the Kabila army
to disarm Nkunda's people? Or...
FRAZER:
What we have -- well,
there's two things. There's no one single solution, let's be very clear. There
has to be a local process of reconciliation among the communities there.
Certainly, there needs
-- we have asked the President Kabila to aact with restraint to try to end the
crisis with Nkunda through dialogue -- not a direct dialogue, but through
offering asylum for Nkunda to leave and his forces to go into (inaudible) or to
demobilize, as the case may be.
So there is more than
one solution. Clearly, as a sovereign government, President Kabila has the
right to try to exercise territorial sovereignty, i.e. that he should be able
to provide security throughout his territory and has the right to use his
forces against what is essentially a rebellious general from his own military.
And so, obviously,
that's also there. But our concern is that the civilian population not be
caught in the middle of such an offensive against Nkunda.
And so, we've been
urging Nkunda, the government of Kabila to try to end this through a peaceful
means. And I think the best way is for Nkunda to go into exile.
And so, he hasn't been
willing to do that up to this point. And so, it may be necessary for President
Kabila to bring greater pressure on him, including military pressure. But
that's a problem for the civilian population.
So I guess what I'm
saying is that we continue to ask and seek restraint and that this end through
negotiation.
QUESTION:
Have you been in
direct contact with Nkunda?
FRAZER:
Yes. Yes. We're not in
-- the United States is not in direct conttact, but my special envoy, Tim
Shortley, has spoken to Nkunda and Nkunda has called him several times. And
we've clearly conveyed the message to him that he should surrender, go into
exile and allow his forces to go (inaudible).
QUESTION:
Madam Secretary, I was
shocked yesterday when VOA dispatched -- disclosed that (inaudible). The
government said (inaudible) percent of the African-Americans in Washington, D.C.,
are HIV-positive.
QUESTION:
I'm wondering to which
extent Secretary Condoleezza Rice is going to address the
HIV/AIDS issue with Africans, as you said earlier.
FRAZER:
Well, I would imagine
that it would come up most directly in her discussions with Prime Minister
Meles, bilaterally, in Ethiopia, because we will deal with the full
range of our issues and Ethiopia is a major recipient of the president's
Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief. It's one of the top recipients of that program.
So I would imagine that there will be discussion about HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia.
I don't anticipate it
being in a point of conversation in the ministerials, but it may come up as
well in the Great Lakes, especially given the gender-based violence that's
taking place in Eastern Congo.
QUESTION:
Along with the relief
program, as you said, she is going to discuss, I would like to know about your
In lieu of this problem, I would like to know about your efforts for a cure,
since your global coordinator on HIV/AIDS, Ambassador Mark Dybul, told us here
on November 1st, that we have to eliminate the word cure from our vocabulary
and to replace it with the word treatment.
I'm wondering, Madam
Secretary, are you to brief the Africans about your efforts to find a cure for
this deadly disease?
FRAZER:
I don't imagine that
that will be a subject of Secretary Rice's conversation during her meetings in
Addis, on a cure versus a treatment.
Certainly, we've
pursued a strategy to provide treatment to keep people alive, to prolong their
life, through the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. But I think the AIDS
coordinator, Mark Dybul, is the expert best placed to have that conversation
with African countries on what we're doing also on a cure.
QUESTION:
Have the countries
that are involved in the trip, have they expressed a request or made request of
their specific goals, what they might be looking for?
The second question:
And what might be the indicators that the American people can look at, not
predicting what the trip's going to be yet, but at its conclusion, those
indicators they can look at to determine the success?
And then, the
president's going to travel there and any remarks you might have on that.
FRAZER:
I can say I have no
remarks on the last question on the president's travel. I think you have to get
that from the White House.
I think that the
indicators of success are difficult to measure -- are very difficult to
measure.
And I say that in the
sense that this is not a one-time engagement. This is a continuous engagement.
Indicators of success, for instance, on the Great Lakes region
would be that Secretary Rice and President Bush worked together to bring
President Kabila and President Kagame together in one of their first meetings
when Rwandan forces were still very active in Eastern Congo.
And so we've helped to
strengthen and increase the coordination, the dialogue between these regional
countries which had once been at war with each other.
We moved from there to
helping Kabila to have a legitimate government through an election process. And
now what we're faced with is the last part of stabilizing that region -- and we
see that as these negative forces.
FRAZER:
And so we're trying to
work with all the parties necessary, most importantly the regional countries
themselves, but also the United Nations, which have major forces on the
ground with Monuk (ph).
And so this meeting, I
want to lower your expectations that this meeting will result in, you know, the
end of Nkunda and FDLR all leaving. That's not going to happen. That's going to
be a continual process.
But what the meeting
will do, we hope, is to provide a common approach, help build the capacity of
the Congolese to address these negative forces in their country, support
coordination of the three countries together or the four countries together in
dealing with these forces, which could potentially -- if, for instance, there
is an offensive from Congo, those forces could go back into Rwanda.
But they need to
coordinate on how they deal with the FDLR and, at that same time, build the
confidence that they are taking a common approach and working with -- working
not only closely together, but working effectively together.
QUESTION:
Secretary, in the
past, you mentioned that the Burundian forces would be deployed to Somalia.
And now, I just heard you -- you're saying you're trying to build support.
I mean, what's going
on over there, as far as the situation on the ground, in reference to the
deployments? The other question I have for you is, in a recent interview on Al Jazeera,
the president of Ethiopia, Mr. Zenawi, denied completely that
there was no evidence that it was a quagmire going on Somalia.
I mean, what do you
make of that?
FRAZER:
Well, I think that --
on the first question about the Burundian forces -- we've been training the
Burundian forces for more than a few months now. And we expect them to deploy
at any time.
In fact, I think their
redeployment is imminent, in that they have a few soldiers in Somalia
now doing the necessary reconnaissance to bringing in the rest of their forces.
And so we hope that
we're close with the Burundis. And we're also working very closely with other
countries, Ghana and Nigeria, which have
said that they will also deploy forces.
So the United States
continues to be a major supporter, in terms of training, financing and
providing logistical lift for any forces that are willing to step up.
FRAZER:
Now, we can't do it
alone. We cannot shoulder the burden alone. And so we need to look at how we
can have a less ad hoc mechanism for financing these forces and equipping them.
The United States simply can't do alone.
The Brits have also
been helping and also training, but we need others to do so. And I would say
that if the United Nations can't deploy a force, it may be
able to help pick up the financing of the AMIS U.N. force, as much as it's --
like it's done with the AMIS forces.
On the issue on a
quagmire in Somalia, what we clearly see is that there is
continuing and growing violence, and there hasn't been the expected deployment
of the AMIS U.N. to allow the Ethiopians to leave.
That has been what the
international community has impressed upon Ethiopia, that they
couldn't simply leave, they had -- which would leave a vacuum, they needed to
leave as part of the deployment in of the AMIS U.N. forces.
So I don't know that
there's a quagmire. I couldn't say that there's a quagmire as such, because a
quagmire suggests that you can't get out. But I do think that we do need to put
a greater emphasis on getting the AMIS U.N. troops in.
QUESTION:
Some of the countries
you are going to talk to Addis Ababa, including Ethiopia, are those
who openly rejected your effort to set up AFRICOM inside Africa.
Is the secretary
likely to persuade them to reconsider?
FRAZER:
I'm not sure of any
that openly rejected AFRICOM, including Ethiopia, because they
never were asked to host AFRICOM. I don't think we made any formal request from
any country at this point to host AFRICOM.
There are some who
have offered to host and only one that I know of that has clearly said that
they think that there shouldn't be an AFRICOM on the continent, that being Libya.
So I think it's
inaccurate -- you know, maybe it's accurate, but I haven't heard any of the
countries that I mentioned that she's going to meet with in Addis come out
publicly or even privately say that they would not be a host to AFRICOM. But we
also have not asked any one of those countries to host AFRICOM.
QUESTION:
This is two extremely
brief ones.
One, is Darfur
going to be come up at all in the Sudan, or is this simply north/south? And who
do you expect to show up? Do you expect Bashir and Salva Kiir to show up, or is
it going to be a lower level on that one?
And I got one more,
but it's equally brief.
FRAZER:
One, on Sudan, we
expect it to focus on CPA. Of course, there's a relationship between CPA and Darfur,
but we expect the focus to be on CPA.
And as for the
government -- the government of national unity or the Sudanese participation,
it's still very flawed. I'm not sure. We, certainly -- it's a ministerial, so
we certainly would hope for a minister. But it may be -- Salva Kiir may come
himself, but I'm not really sure.
We certainly don't
expect President Bashir to attend.
QUESTION:
And my last one, it's
just on the negative forces and the LRA and what -- you know, there's all sorts
of rumors out there about the situation out with Vincent Otti and, in fact, the
entire Juba peace process.
What is it that's your
understanding of what's going on with him, personally? Is he alive or dead?
What's going on with Kone and what's going on with the actual process?
FRAZER: