Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141220

Theres a shortage of people to do the labs. Is it so coming to eventually. Your beds. The staff, one of the inputs for the total package of defense. The facilities, the isolation centers, a whole bunch of things. In the chart i sent you yesterday, i set out the planned numbers and actual numbers for how were doing to scale. So, if i can draw your attention to the easiest place to start s is people to start, facilities to be in relax and lodgistics and consumers. The dark line shows where we are at the moment. So, we have 15, basically 1539 total beds and spaces in sierra leone. 750 are currently provided by the u. K. All of those are stuffed. Were opening another suite of those facilities over england the next few days and with each organization weve agreed on, there is a staffing, a populated staffing plan from the u. K. And syrierra leone. So, the issue is to make sure from all the sources, which includes the nhs, for the available facilities that staff, at the moment, that is okay excement for the i talked about. So, the, we will be coming back to those fantastic volunteers. A thousand Public Servants at the moment, but what we need to do, is take the people as we need them for the particular rotations and facilities rather than in a more random way. Can i comment on the information that we have that cuba has committed 165 Health Professionals to work in the u. K. Treatment centers and where that quite significant number for a country thats actually quite small sent to the order yeah, so, i think the cubans, they were one of the first countries of the blocks that came to the london on 2 october. Talk talked to the minister then, they have they have staff in kerry town, lots of other ministries. They deserve a lot of credit for doing actual things on this and certainly, thats helped a lot in our facilities. I suppose that then begs the question that by your own words, have had a very Fast Response and yet, we appear and are not in any way whatsoever and havent reached the numbers that cuba has developed and assist with u. K. Treatment centers. The point is we have a staffing model for each facility and we have an open mind about exact exactly the nationality of who does what where. It was from our point of view, we have the same Critical Skills caps and the cuban offer. People and trust and so on. The i think the criticism is one and are we using what this, the volunteers actually engaging with one of the things that you have to have is the enthusiasm and commitment of volunteers and dont just leave those people lying, waiting for somebody to gi them a phone call. Thats all im asking. Many of my friends are out there. At the point we started this deployment, estimate varies my calculation is 10 . Cb dc is l 8 per person. 10 . And 70 of those were dying. Was incredibly dangerous and in my view and i think most people would agree to this, a total unacceptable thing to do for these volunteers who have put themselves on the line. Its still dangerous to do this. But because systems are now much better tested because theyve got proper training behind them, thats been one of the ways, the other, all of these people have come out in many areas, quite stretched and where nhs trusts have reasonably had to balance their own needs to the u. K. Population against the ability to restart and there have been many situations where theyve been quite nervous about that. Ive had a lot of phone calls where they have been nervous and reasonably so. I dont think you meant to imply that somehow, anybody in this economy was suggesting any members should be put into a situation that threatened either the health of their lives, so i swrus want to make that clear. I think you sort of implied. Didnt mean to imply that. I was trying to explain i think what we are trying to find out and the second may well have qualified why there has been a slowness in putting volunteers, its not to do with either the commitment of the volunteers, anybody else. But actually there are pressures on the nhs. But i come back and perhaps just to clarify the situation with the cuban volunteers or Health Workers. Should we be in u. K. Treatment centers would not be put into a situation where their lives are there and the health were endangered. On the first one, i think as everyone on the committee will know, has a tradition of a group of people who they send to emergencies. Theyre much better set up for this kind of situation. What would happen is the cuban doctors essentially took up the places we considered safe, more places behind and thats what the nhs doctors are now beginning to fill in in a phase way to make the introduction safer, but we want the same for any Health Care Workers, so the key is to do this in a way which is structured and safe. So, an agreement about workers and how long they do it and how the trusts from that and so on. Has there been a decision about enhanced compensation to encourage and support volunteers to go out because at the moment, you have to back fill that. So make a difference . The department will underwrite the finances. Weve tried to make sure the problem is not financial. So the problem is math fitting the actual actually, the r registered thing on a really good job. Theyve played a really Important Role in making sure the standards of the facilities are met with an appropriate cuban and other u. K. Health workers. We have are register of people but you could have a similar register for medical emergencies and be dealing with all of these issues in advance such as when that an outbreak becomes serious, we are in more of a position to the cuban one where we could send people more rapidly and do dealt with all thoeds domestic issues arise as a result. I think the one thing i wanted to add to the last answer is everyone would agree that one of the fantastic things about nhs is peoples sense of Public Service and when people deployed. Really got to play a great tribute to the star, there are gaps in this chef to fill which they have to fill. As he said, money is not the issue. Finding staff, particularly at this time of the year, can be challenging and others have really steppeded up to try and make that possible for their yes, i wanted to move on to where the money has been spent. Its gone up to 230, which a large amount is going to kerrytown treatment center. Actually being spent on that money, out of that money. Got a figure for that. Havent found one. And i know that youre working with other partners on that. So how much is being spent by the u. K. On kerrytown because you mentioned mr. Drake, 5 million somewhere. So, can i start to maybe 38 is allocated to kerrytown. Which is for Health Workers. Shes a 12 to 20bed facile thety. Then there is the safe children facility. Its going to over time have 80 beds in it. So, our commitment to kerrytown is 38 Million Pound sz. No now, we have obviously been continuing to work up other plans for things we will need to do. Not all of which have been announced yet, so i think over the Financial Year as a whole, were expecting to spend maybe about 270 Million Pounds and given what we are already planning to do to guard against the possibilities that there remains a significant problem into the second court of next year. Weve sort of planned and organized a second set of activities, which could take the second bill to 330. Id be very happy to give you a lot more of the breakdown if you would like. One of the things thats unclear, i think theres an acceptance amount. Lay that to one side. Its about the cost per beds. The ongoing costs. Whether whats temporary, permanent, what is there for them to take over and maybe convert into something long standing once the ebola crisis is gone. I know its very fast, but presumably, i would hope get more information on that because if this is public british tax pounds going in, we want to make sure its not going to run into the sounds eventually. Exactly and so just before focus completion on kerrytown, the, a lot of the facilities weve built or converted b have been done to meet an immediate need. So the expected life span is is not the same as were we building the Health System we talked about earlier. They will, they will have a life span and they will be main maintain ebola and so on. And some of them will be highly useful as part of rebuilding the overall public, especially premier Health System because theres a very heavy concentration on the western area, where wen we knew there would be a surge in plan for that. Weve built more facilities there, and then there will be a question, well, what can these things be used for. Some of them are that. There is bits and pieces for kerrytown. The program we faced was the doubling time at that point was every 30 days. It was ticking out. So, the choice was building something that would be able to repurpose, but might have taken us several weeks to months longer or going very fast because we could see that there was a real risk by this stage of the epidemic. Over 1,000 cases a week, which would have overwhelmed us and we had to get ahead of that curve or we would have been lost. That decision was taken quite literally. In an ideal world, it would have been better to do something that was not that. Lets bring this and i just want to, i mean, clearly, theres been stuff in the u. K. Press about all this. Charles mamboo being critical of you and saying its very, very slow. Handing over the facilities, have none an ebola facility. Thats a flavor of what ive picked up. The staff, those comments really do sting. In terms of the facility itself, ive come back there from a couple of weeks ago, obviously ran this morning just to give you an update. Just to tell you how far, but so far, weve treated 91 patients, we have 50 beds. 15 or 50. 50. From 80. We have a 17 survivors, of which an 8 and 9yearold girl, sisters, and 35 people who have died. In terms of our plan scale, that is actually on track. We had planned protocalls to not open the facility immediately. That would be wrong in terms of the training and the control. We are on track to reach 80 beds by the end of this month. Take us through some of the challenges because clearly, people out there, im not expert, thought you should have gone faster. 8,000 cases that we know declared by the government, probably underreported by say 50 . So thats 12,000, maybe as many as 16,000 in country in sierra leone. Weve got an 80bed facility and two weeks ago, the Prime Minister was asked by say it seems to be slow off the mark in getting this facility up and running. I think for the first two or three weeks, thats a fair response. It was a result of the speed it built. Theres only so much training you can do, which is vital because the first duty of care is is obviously to our own staff, Ministry Defense staff as well because if we were to jeopardize the health of that facility, we actually wouldnt have any beds there at all. That we were going to grow the facility. And have you had experiences . You were on the learning curve as well as growing the facile thety. Is that a fair criticism . It is. We have had a very steep learning curve. I think everyone involved in ebola who are the world Renowned Experts in this, has had to work out of their comfort zone, but it has been an Incredible Group effort to get to a point where we have over 450 individuals working in that staff in that facility at the moment. And the scale of it if i could just spend a second on that. With the 450 staff we have there, a lot of them only speak creole and the cubans only speak spanish and everything has to be translated. Theres about 1,000 metric tons of procurement and line items. So, we were very specific on scaling up as quickly as we could, but making sure some of the issues that the professor talked about were absolutely locked tight to ensure that the safety and security of our staff was paramount. If you dont mind, just to make a point about this. In august, everybody was saying that the existing institutions and facilities would not be able to cope. Nsf, who are the leaders in this space, were saying you need to bring in institutions. Including military and state institutions. By definition, none had ever run a ebola facility before. Its extremely dangerous. We had a series of conversations with a range of potential organizations. The First Organization who we thought had some able ility to this kind of thing, who were willing to take on the risk and do it at you know, safely, but up to speed to save the children, we pay tribute to them for being willing to do that. Actually, the scale is on track as he said. Nobody should be surprised if youve never done this before. If you face lots of problems, so, its not our view that this has been something that is being badly handled. There have been lots of problems to fick. We would loved to have done it faster, but overall, as the figure four on my chart shows to you, in part of contribution to the fantastic a bit ahead of where we planned it to be on the modeling. How long was it when you said save the children, were very grateful and we are as well, the first beds open. Ill have to sort of refresh my memory. So, during the course of the second half of august, after the declaring of the emergency, in other words, save the children and we had a series of discussions. F i was involved in them. We were discussing this with lots of other people as well. Had to do a lot of their diligence. They said to us repeatedly, weve never done this before. We dont know if we can do it. So i think the decision was on the 8th of september that we all afreed we would do it. The facility then opened. Took a patient on the 5th of november. There was an eightweek period. Now why did you, why did it take until the 8th of september and then obviously its going to take while to build the facility. The reason is is because there arent many institutions which have the capability of doing shorten be time because there are fewer people to speed it to. Well, but if they in fairness to them, we had a series of conversations with them before they were willing to take it on. We had the same set of converon a trivial thing for the u. K. To deploy its military capab capability. Our fa august, a hospital ship, essentially, could have been out there really by the beginning of september, if you, if the action had been taken. To be clear, its not that Nothing Happened before kerrytown. The key thing in all these responses is to build on whats already there, so a lot of the uk response was on bolstering up. The trouble with that answer, professor, is at least from the press reports that we read, there wasnt much there and what was there was completely overwhelmed by the scale of the outbreak to the debtriment of the treatment of any other endemic condition as all. So, made multiple points there. Ill take the one on the last one. On the part of diseases, absolutely. Theres a high chance that when we look back on this especially dem ic, more people who have not got ebola will have died as a result of the ebola epidemic. There are two big problems of the epidemic. It chews up the Health Service by panicking people quite reasonably, by killing Health Care Workers in an already challenging situation. All of these will have gone up significantly during this point of time. That is a very major issue. The second problem, its a disease of panic and has led to some irrational responses, which compounded this because people stop having Economic Activity with the countries affected and that has an impact on the poorest people, so theyre a whole series from effects. Thats something i think we want to come back to. What i dont understand, were sitting here in the comfort of the palace of westminster. The criticisms have come from people on the ground. You sort of feel something is happening there. Maybe you can take us through a little bit the challenges that you faced, which may have been frustrating and may have you know, made delivery tougher than you originally thought. It would be. And you should feel free in this committee to talk about corruption. You can do so freely if you want. A logical answer, then people on the ground give their answer. There has been a period, there was a delay between march and july, which we talked about, but then once the scale started, there was a delay while it was a scale up, but not many open and the disease continuing to go up. It is continuing to go up, it is likely to some time between now and the middle of january, come down to you. Very dangerous, the reproductive number, we started off around 1. 6, has drifted down and probably beginning across the bun line, which is where it stayed in the population sometime in the next few weeks. Now, in that period, people are understandably frustrated. They see the money going in, the numbers going up and they say a lot of from now on, the number of beds exceeds. This has been a bumpy period. Yes on the challenges and corruption. Yes. That number, is that taking into so, theres been clearly all the way through, been a fwap between the number which are there and the number which are reported and initially in the epidemic, we thought it was about two and a half times ro h roughly. Obviously, difficult to tell. As time has gone on, probably that quap gap has narrowed, but its difficult to estimate that. But i would therefore assume that trajectory, if anything, because of that, the trajectory would do the same thing as flattering the numbers. I think our expectation of this will plateau, while even now, were not picking up all cases. What will happen is there will be some areas that will not happen. Some are Getting Better. What are were talking about there is the overall picture. Still getting up in two of the districts at least in sier sierra leone, but its gone wyatt quite a long way down. There are three key challenges. Do adequate and efficient training and obviously, its only when youre beginning to use a facility that you stress tes it in terms of everything from septic tanks to water sources to speed enough to build and burn 331 sacks a day of this kind of personal protective equipment. Thats one. Then the staff build up. Then the third one is the issue about training the people who spray down the Health Workers coming out of the red zone. It takes about 20 minutes to take off your ppe. The issue about spraying people down is vital. Thats heavily chlorinated water and thats one of the times you can catch the disease. Theres about 200 of those people weve had to train, many of which havent been to school. So to give them an overview of what theyre doing, then taking them into the red zone, thats specific. We did talk about this 80bed facility opening this strong uk aid effort. I think we should have done better saying it would not be open with 80 beds week one. We would need to scale up safely. The facile thety has been a referral center. A place where people who are told their ebola positive, to row respond to. The president has been on te television talking about this facility being open, then you will have people there turn up. Now, we are working with the National Ebola Response Center to make sure that the systems are in place and every morning, we are saying we have this amount of operational beds that we are open for. As of today, we are asking for ten new patients to come from the various Holding Centers who will be taken by our staff and then go through that process. Unfortunately, because we are a referral center, many are coming to us who have had ebola for quite some time. So at any one time, theres an incredible feeling of elation from our staff to be working in that environment to see people coming through, but also, i have to say some of the levels of trauma the staff in 1994. A few other points are saying were involved with islation centers by putting cases who are suspected in a safe location where they can be monitored, observed, tested quickly and if confirmed, moved into a treatment center. One of the challenges we face there is the movement of the virus itself is seen from the within that area as well and remote areas, it surges. Were trying to keep up with the virus opening small 20bed at various levels so that people can get immediate treatment. But we need to map out is this the right location, is it moving somewhere else. We have to be ahead of the virus and thats a challenge. The challenge of staffing. We are pro dominantly over the staff are scared and one of the reasons they come and work for an ngo is they feel theres a higher level of safety and Risk Management by working with us. We need to continue aattract the best staff when youre hearing about doctors dying of the virus. Doctors have gone on strike. Is that right . Yes. Because theyre not being adequately protected and reffing sir hardship payments. So, can i just have one point. Mistake really was not being clear with people. The scale will be slow and gradual. I dont know if youve read gave to the select committee three weeks ago. They are clear theyre scale is js the same. Everything the department is financing in terms of the delivery effort is being done outside of government essentially. We have brought in dlifrry partners because their own system is under so much strain that its not sensible to be putting more money through that system. Now, that of course, their own Health System is doing the best it can in these circumstances and there is a really big problem about making sure that people are properly paid and theyre getting their hazard pay and weve seen some graphic examples of what people will do if those things dont come through. The world bank is in the lead responsibility for helping make that financing set of arrangements ab salary payments work properly. The president of the world bank was there last week. He acknowledges there are some really difficult problems. Hes clear they havent solved the problems yet. Also advice for things they can do. So they are determined to get on top of that. So in this particular corruption i was trying to find, it was a figure in some of my papers, was it in your document, the amount of money that went in on health and the amount we front line . No. There is a big problem. One of my appearances a year ago, was asking me about the sector in syria sierra leone. We had recovered from commodity provision through the Health System and its a characteristic of a country whose institutions were destroy ed in the sieve wa and the difficulty of rebuilding them and weak capacity. This is the environment where operating. It adds to the challenge. Theyre doing the best we can. We are supplementing them. Of course its doing the best they can in these circumstances and there is a really big problem about making sure people with properly paid and are getting their hazard pay. Weve seen graphic examples of what people will do if those things dont come through. The world bank is in the lead responsibility for helping make that financing set of arrangements and salary payments work properly. The president of the world bank was there last week. He acknowledges there are some really difficult problems. There is corruption in the Health System and hes clear they havent solved the problems yet. He asked our advice for some things they could do and we gave him some advice. Has that been a feature in this particular i was trying to find it, it was a figure in some of my p papers, was it in your document, the amount of money that went in on health and that we front lined . Ive got it somewhere. There is a big problem, chair. One of my appearances before you a year or so ago, making the point that we had suffered a loss. We had fully recovered from commodity. Provision through the Health System and its a characteristic of a country whose institutions were destroyed in the civil war and the difficulty in rebuilding them and less than perfect behavior by some people in key positions of authority. This is the environment were operating in. I think theyre doing the best they can. Its did i feel. We are supplementing them by directly commissioned delivery, but that doesnt mean we want their own system to work as well as it can. Coming op the infection rates. Because in the note, dont know if youve got the same note weve got. Page two. Case incidents continue to increase and transmission remain high. Just the rough, about half of the cases are dying in guinea and lie beery area but only a quarter in sierra leone. Perhaps you can tell me why that is if its the level of death rate in guinea and liberia, whats being done to spread from that. To some extent, the numbers are still going up. And therefore, because theres a lag, it asht artificially looks better sadly than it is. What we hope to see is that the mortality rate is decreasing. Just to do with the okay, so not a risk of sort of spread. Mortality of this particular strain. Around 70 , does that sound about right . Its around 70 . Up to the point where weve got reasonably reliable data. Probably as people are Getting Better at managing it, its beginning to come down, but doesnt seem to fall below 50 with Current Treatment in both centers. T that seems to be the base. Clearly, were trying to bridge on new treatments we hope will take it down further. But theyre not yet there. Ask about vaccines and so on. I represent one of the largest west african groups of the communities in the country and there are i know a lot of west africans supporting it. Also, education, i think mentioned that early on about the role of education. But also, uk, i have people ive spoken to in the uk who are afraid to tell their family in nigeria, their colleague, because thai worried about how people will react when they come back. That brings me to the issue of what happens to volunteers when they return. I think thomas said something about some of the things weve been doing. We trained 2,000 community volunteers, were supporting 40 radio stations which are broadcasting Public Information messages. Were engaging with about 600 religious leaders because one of the big problems is transmission in funerals and safe burials. Were also doing research to understand better what people there know and how thats changing their behavior and what the constrains to behavior change and risky behavior continue to be and what were seeing is knowledge are rising. Most people are willing to quite substantially change entrenched religiously important rituals to protect themselves funerals and so on, but there are a proportion of people who because there is not a reasonable suspicious of authority, continue to place primacy over the rituals that have been intrinsic to their culture. There is a continuing issue there. We are making progress. Met a big group of earlier in the week and one of the things that is helping in managing the epidemic is the 117 call center, which youve probably heard about and theres a National District center and thinking about what people get told when they hear the number. Its a bit like im here, where do i get help. Thinking through the protocalls for making that system work as well as possible. West kafr africa supporting region. Well, there are, i dont know what the numbers are. Chris should probably sup lement. Is running a program to do that. And certainly, there are lots of international starts. Who have volunteered and are working. Some of who have lost their lives in doing so. We also are obviously involved in preparedness. Weve got a 25 million Fund Allocation in the countries bordering the three affected countries, so mali, senegal, thats obviously the first wing of risk if you would like. Its on the countries that we have the strongest link. We have been working closely with the nigerians. Many of the other countries, we dont know the history, a better place than us. I just want on the way just the record because the figure i had is a shocking one. Its liberia. Its not sierra leone, only its an eu program reached the front line. Its a really big problem due to the fact this isnt one of those emergencies where you can write a check and something good automatically happens. Theres been Something Like 4 billion of money committed, but it cant actually do anything until you turn it into people on the ground or facilities or programs. And one of the other big learning points from this crisis is we dont have enough constitutions which can be put instantly to work in these countries where institutions of their own cant be expected to solve the problem and thats why weve been scrambling around. Will be put to very good use because there will be an economic recovery and theres a lot of fiscal recovery in the world bank should help with that. But, youre exactly right to say the problem isnt the money. Its what are you going to do with the money . This is the point mr. Phillips made in fairness on 5 november in the debate. Its not a new point. Sorry. Just two quick points. We talked about the problem, doctors and leaving. In hindsight, are there things you could have done would made a bit or other Capacity Building country and going on, you started to talk about your preparedness as one of your aims here. Can you you say what you learned from this that would change how you look at preparedness for the next epidemic or whatever it may be . Where ever it may be. And where ever. On the first of those, i think its important to remember that actually health has been imrooufing rapidly since the civil war. So the idea that nothing has happened i think is wrong, but it started from an incredibly low base. If you look at the numbers, they have gone down. Send you note which that in terms of strengthening the system, but i think this is mr. Phillips point, strengthening the system is the biggest thing trying to put together kind of fancy systems in europe and the states and theres probably useful thinlgs to do, but much more important is to get the front line. Weve got time to think about it and causes as well. The dwromt fwomt Development Sector when she was getting evidence to the idc the other day, she thought it would be good for parliament to be engaged, but just three things to flag. The first is Early Warning surveillance. Clearly, the world we want w. H. O. Is the director generals knowledge to do a much better job on that and theres a special session on 25 january, start start to get into that. But there is a very important question about what other things should compliment w. H. O. The u. S. As you know, have a lot of institutions in this space and cdc have played an Important Role. It is a question for us about what news we want to make of our own scientific call capability, which Prime Minister has been asking about, talk eed about. Thats the first set of issues. Second set is around response institutions. Obviously, nationally, but also recognizing that you cant build a Health System thats going to deal with major epidemics in ten years or 15 years, so all we can to build up the systems, but we do also have to sa ask ourselves how next time are we going to know that we have a larger set of institutions to go to who would be ready much earlier to deploy. And then the third area is around technology. And research and development. We are financing with Others Development to vaccine, the first phase trials with three candidates all underway. Is in phase two three trials. Thats been all fast tracked. There are other technologies as well. We are for example, i talked about how labs and testing has been constrained. We have a constrained. We have a Research Program at the moment which is testing a new rapid diagnostic tool for use in the field, probably familiar with the one youre familiar with on malaria. So you dont have to send the blood to the lab. It kind of does raise the question of why there was no proper funding for what appears to be any relatively simple vaccine at an earlier stage, going forward, whats the next thing. We think pretty soon, excellent. What are we doing about an outbreak . I think on the first one, why we havent got a vaccine now, youre absolutely right, there are actually three vaccines that are advanced stages of Preclinical Development already in a sense on the shelf. And the reason they have not been deployed its in the rural part of the dn dnc when it comes to testing a vaccine in terms of trials, you need a certain number of people with the disease so that you can test it. Actually its also, this has been up until now, small, quick, in medical terms epidemics as a result of this, i think there will be a big push as you rightly implied. Not for ebola, but one of the five other strains. And more marlberg, and you need to look at other diseases. What are the other diseases we should be looking at which could do this. Because this is important question. It looks as though that is a useful use of taxpayer spend, which actually prevents this very large pox when we have an outbreak. Research on the tropical diseases has been a big thing the department has been doing over the last 10 years or so. One of the challenges is, what is the order in which you do them . As chris said, it was difficult previously to contemplate testing an ebola vaccine. Maybe there were higher priorities. Malaria, theres denguay. Theres different sort of adjustments in the order in which you do them. Technology faster develops is going to help deal with these epidemics in falluja. H1n1 is about one to worry about. On one level, we have been lucky with ebola in the sense that it is noz t as transmittable throu the air like some of the others are. We the you know, how people are treated in the uk when they come back, which i think comes very much to this point youre making. I think that the uk places politicians and actually the press have been extremely responsible in the way that this has been reported by and large. And i think the hysteria thats had other countries have had about people returning, the United States in particular, i wouldnt there are a number of them. And i think the uk has been very good. So for example, there are people that have recently come back from syria, that are doing very good job. Thats a rational science based approximately. Just to bring up one point, if i may very quickly. This also of course makes it easier for us to get people to go and help tackle the problem. We have 100 staff from the department who are, you know, part of the response as well. And, you know, they are all volunteers like all the other Public Servants. The fact that we havent had the kind of problems you have seen in other countries, has made it easier for us to get all the people we need to go and help tackle the problem, where its best tackled, and therefor avoided spread, not just in the region, but also potential in other places. Can i just ask about m. O. D. , because i understand youre having to fund their effort. Is that right . Its not quite right. Good. The situation is obviously theres a standing cost of m. O. D. , the program in kerrytown, the trainers who trained the 4,000. They all economist and theyre in a now we have a long standi standi standing arrangement with to the m. O. D. The protocol that has us pay those costs. So far the cost for that is 230 Million Pounds. I think that is a very good arrangement. Its unreasonable, this counts it goes to treasury for other it goes to treasury, i cant remember what the fund is called, but anything in afghanistan is picked up by the country. Yeah. So i cannot for the life of me understand why were asking, we may have different views around the table. We do. You do . Okay, from my point of view, ill put it in a personal way, i cant for the life of me is being asked to pay for m. O. D. You know, im not sure what else they would be doing if they werent helping you. If every time we wanted to say ask the Aircraft Carrier to help in the philippines, every time we had to have an argument about whos going to pay for what. The whole thing would slow down. The system we have got enables us faster than would other wise be the case to deploy these resources, i would have to say without those hundreds of thousands of other people, we would be in a worse worst. Theres a final point which i know is important to the m. G. A. S, but i know its something thats important to your staff as well. And thats direct flights. Obviously we need to look at that at the value of the money perspective. But it has a number of impacts. The first is obviously the lack of competition on the route and either to go through brussels for casablanca and its a disincentive and a moral its a disinsentive to people to travel. And it also affects the morale of people who do travel. Theres justification, the absence of direct flights, so why must they block why arent you beating down British Airways door to get them to restart direct flights. Well, as you know, mr. Phillips, the government took the view that as part of a whole set of measures to avoid a risk of the spread of the epidemic, its is there any risk at all as the chief scientific officer in direct flight, but is the risk absolutely negligible, which is what the w. H. Of the says. This was not purely driven by science, which has had costs to the taxpayer. On the other hand, the system is functional a functional, we in addition to the we take a long layover in casablanca. And we also have the american air services flight, which is operating on the three countries. So of course it would be and we thought about whether we should starter for example that was going to be my next question. Why didnt you get the raf to fly the flights . The reason were not doing this, is because we think the currency is sufficiently functional. There are much Better Things for us to dotf with our resources, which is to get our facilities up and running. Do you not think that would be a good use of that money . I would agree that in order of priority, i would still be focused on getting ebola under control and in response to your questions, some o medium term things that we need to get a handle. I did fly however, it is functional, and it is working. Thank you, very much. Thanks very much. Coming up tonight on cspan 3. A look at the u. S. In special envoys in american diplomacy, and update on the Ukraine Russia conflict. And members of the clergy look at the part later a discussion about turkeys policies toward syria in the fight against the militant group isis. Before heading to his holiday vacation, president obama held a year end News Conference this afternoon saying that sony erred in choosing not to air the including the president talking about the u. S. Response to north korea. Lets talk of the specifics of what we all know. We can confirm that north korea engaged in this attack. It says Something Interesting about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all out assault on a movie studio, because of a satirical movement, starring seth rogan. And james flaco. I love seth and i love james. But the notion that that was a threat to them . That gives you some consistency of the kind of regime were talking about here. They caused a lot of damage. And we will respond, we will respond proportionally and we will respond in a place and time and manner that we choose. Again, you can see all of todays News Conference by president obama any time on our website, cspan. Org. The u. S. Has special envoys for sudan and south sudan. The israelipalestinian negotiations and other places around the world. The u. S. Institute of peace hosted a discussion on if using special envoys works in addressing International Conflicts and what should be done to bolster the effectiveness of the envoys. This is about an hour and a half. And also the issue about overall operations in areas of conflict has certainly been a topic thats come up a great deal. Im going to hand it over for very brief bios well, thanks very much, tom. Im princeton lyman, a Senior Advisor here, assistant secretary of io. I want to talk about the origin of this study a little bit and the methodology. Then well get into the substance. But as both ron and tom have mentioned, the use of special envoys, particularly in conflict situations, is a fact of life. It is something that administrations have used in the past, they will use it in the future. While there is some controversy over the amount of effort, the use or overuse of special enjoys, the fact is they are an important instrument of u. S. Foreign policy and what we wanted to get at this study together or to institutions is how do we make that more effective, what are the issues that arise, how do you make the use of envoys more effective. I came off of two years as the u. S. Special enjoy for sudan and south sudan so i had some thoughts on this. But in our doing this study, what we did together, bob and i, was to first develop a set of issues that we thought were the relevant issues. We then convened two roundtables of diplomats, former envoys, military officers, et cetera, to review those terms of reference, if you will, and make sure that we will targeting the right issues. And then following that and revising it, we then sent out the interview. More than 20 people, former envoys, people who had worked or selected envoys, and others. And then we reviewed a lot of the memoirs of envoys who had worked on conflict situations. Now i want to mention that we focused on special envoys in conflict situations. There are a lot of other special envoys. Some for islamic outreach, for climate change, et cetera. Some of our recommendations may be relevant to those, but we focus on conflicts because there are some special characteristics. Theyre dealing with life and death situations. And they usually attract very high level of both political and public attention. After our interviews and our review of memoirs of several of the envoys, we covered a lot of conflict areas from northern ireland, the middle east, the balkans, south asia, and several situations in africa. So we tried to reach out and get a perspective from people dealing with these issues over more than one administration, and in various parts of the world. So let me turn to bob who will talk about the basic elements of the study. Thank you. Let me begin by thanking the u. S. Institute of peace and princeton the opportunity to work with him has been really great. And i do appreciate it. Just touching briefly on the structure of the report and what we tried to cover. I served as special envoy to the Bosnian Federation at the end of the bosnian war just a little under 20 years ago now. I later went back to bosnia as ambassador as head of the uscoe mission. We look at purpose, empowerment and authority. In brief terms, whats the mandate. It is broad or narrow, is it clear or vague, are the goals evident. And we looked at a number of cases. We then looked at empowerment. Whats the authority that the special envoy has or wishes that he or she had. What is the relationship to foreign governments. And what are the relationships with the u. S. Government. After empowerment, we turn to policy authority. What is the role in policy formulation that the special envoy has or does not have. What are his or her channels in to the Decision Making process. The next issue we looked at was dealing with what we called unfavorables. Sometimes its the special envoys responsibility to deal with people that the u. S. Government ordinarily would not touch with a tenfoot pole. But when you are in an immediate postconflict situation, these are the people who are still relevant and the question is how you define the relationship with these people and how much you tell washington about what youre doing. I dealt with some later indicted war criminals in bosnia, but it was necessary to get past the conflict. We go into that at some length. Then there is the issue of structure and turf battles. Exactly what kind of team can a special envoy put together, if any. Where is the special envoy going to be working from . We say in the report that in almost every case, special envoys are physically located at the state department. I was physically located in a broom closet in sarajevo. But i did have a window. And i got to know everybody at the embassy because my broom closet was the only access to the bathroom. So either you have a staff in my case, i served both as special envoy and ar as charge deaffairs. So there was some gray area between what the Embassy Staff did for me and what the Embassy Staff did for the special envoy. We played that game i think pretty well. So turf battles. There are turf battles taking place in washington. There are battles between authorities in washington and in the field. And there are battles locally. All of this required a certain amount of creativity and fast footwork, at times. And then there is the question of state nsc rivalry which is another kind of turf battle which we can talk about later. Finally, outreach. Whom do we reach out to. Theres congress. There are advocacy groups. And there is Civil Society when there is Civil Society in the conflict areas. The concept of Civil Society basically doesnt play very well or didnt 20 years ago in the former yugoslavia. But we had to work with all of these people, and in some cases create at least the bases of a Civil Society who would then, we hope, take root on its own. So those were the areas that the report covered. As princeton said, we had the opportunity to talk to current and former special envoys and learn from them about how they did their jobs and compare it against our own experiences. Bob and i might just share some of our experiences. Then ask dan and david do the same. Excellent. Let me start with this question of power, mandate and authority. If youre a president ial envoy, what everybody wants to know is, are you really the president s envoy. That is, are you speaking for the president , do you have the president s backing, does the president look to you as the key person in that regard. And that comes from both the substantive relationships but also comes from appearances. One of the first things i did when i even before i became the full envoy but the assistant envoy is when president obama went up to new york, the general assembly. It was important i was sitting right behind him. The visible characteristics are important. We have cases where envoys are appointed and not empowered. Theyre forgotten. They dont show up. But then the question of authority and mandate. Because authority comes, yes, in part from empowerment, but it comes from much baltimore. If youre going to have authority as the leader in the policy situation, you have to have credibility. You have to show respect for all the other actors in that situation, the bureaucratic actors, substantive actors. And then you have to come up with credible policy recommendations. In sudans case, we had two policies running at the same time. On the one hand, the president and several senior people in the Sudan Government were indicted war criminals. I wasnt even allowed to talk to the president or those so indicted. On the other hand, my mandate as the president repeated every time he introduced me, this is principleston lyman, hes working to prevent sudan, south sudan from going back to war. And to do that we had to get sudans cooperation to allow for the independence of south sudan. Walking those two lines of policy meant we had a lot of differences, overshading, et cetera. And it was important to respect the interests of the War Crimes Office in the department, the democracy people, the human rights people, and at the same time, give me enough leeway to be credible with the Sudanese Government that what we were looking for was going to be in the longterm interests of that country as well as south sudan. So how you get authority, use authority, create authority has a lot to do with how you act in those situations, but also starting with the empowerment you get from the president or in some cases from the secretary of state. That contrasts interestingly with the situation that i encountered in sarajevo when i arrived there in the summer of 1996. The war had just ended. There was still some shooting going on. The u. S. Military had come in heavy. We had 50,000 american troops in bosnia and herzegovina, with a population of 4 million. Also 1 million refugees and 200,000 casualties. We also had a holy writ. It is called the dayton accords. The dayton accords, which were the product of the will of one single person, the very special envoy, Dick Holbrooke, in effect outlined a government which did not exist. In fact, the dayton accords were signed in 2 cases out of 3 by nonbosnians. They were signed by Slobodan Milosevic in belgrade and someone else. The only bosnian to sign them was the muslim bosnian leader. What we basically had done was given ourselves cover because the neighbors signed it. But we didnt want to deal with the local war criminals. At least as a government. I, however, was in a position where i dealt with indictables, as we called them, all the time. And a number of them were later indicted and ended up in the hague which, in most cases, was a richly deserved location for them. But in other words, we had a structure we, the United States. We, the socalled Peace Implementation Council which was the u. S. , plus canada, plus the european union, plus russia, and and turkey, representing the organization of the islamic conference, to put together a country which did not exist. And so we didnt have to worry much about purpose. The purpose was to, we in this country tend to call it nation building. I prefer to call it state building. To build a viable state. As for empowerment, the state Department Led the process. Working hand in hand with the u. S. Military, i worked very closely with a then twostar general named David Petraeus who was the first one in. To enforce the peace and prevent a reigniting of the conflict. As for policy authority, it was all here. We had the authority. Dick holbrooke called the shots from washington, once a month would come out to sarajevo and scare everybody. But we worked together very well, and i was his man on the ground, and spent my time shuttling between mainly the croats and the bosnians, that is to say between the catholics and the muslims, and then when i game charge as well asked the serbs to the list of people to shuttle to. It was a jawboning exercise. Because there was no resistance. We called all the shots. Very different. Let me talk a little bit more about this question of dealing with what we call unfavorables. Its one of the chapters in the report that i think is one of the most important. There are risks in dealing with people who are either indicted or war criminals, or in some cases terrorists, and it is important to weigh those risks, and have an understanding of whether its worthwhile or not to engage. Its not necessarily the thing to do in every case. I was not allowed to speak to the president of sudan. It clearly limited to a large extent our role in the situation. I reserved the right to ask for that policy to be reviewed if i felt it essential. I never reached that point, because there were risks in opening that door. But i think it had to be an issue on the table. There were others out there who were also indicted, that i found it necessary to engage with. And that comes to another question. If youre going to be a special envoy you have to take some risks. If you feel you have the right authority, and you feel this is necessary, you have to take some risks, doing things that may not have received all the blessings in the world. If you take those risks you ought to be ready to take the blowback if they go sour. But i think some risk, and giving the special envoy some latitude in that regard, is one of the uses you could make of a special envoy, because that person is not in the line of normal diplomatic representation and activity. And therefore, it doesnt convey the same, necessarily, recognition of the interlocutor with whom youre engaging. Let me go on to this question of relationships within the bureaucracy. Now this comes up all the time. And one of the most sensitive areas with the special envoy, especially a president ial one, but even sometimes a secretarial special envoy, is the relationship to the department of state, to those mechanisms that are there all the time, dealing with that conflict, and our diplomacy. And particularly the regional assistant secretary and the regional bureau. Theres no cookie cutter way to resolve those issues. It depends a lot on the structure of the situation, et cetera. What we found in all our interviews was chemistry matters. And chemistry means that you respect each other, you respect the importance of roles that embassies play, and theres its, as we indicate in the report, where people, envoys, did not involve the embassies, and pay the price for it. Respecting the role of the department, and, in my case, i was recruited by the assistant secretary. I know this guy, he wont give me too much trouble. And we worked very, very closely. The other thing that we were able to do at the request of the department was actually to help in the state white house rivalry over who controlled sudan policy. And after we made it clear i made it clear that i wasnt going to engage in that very much in one side off the other, the state department said, well then would you coordinate our representation at the embassy on these issues . Which i did. And that facilitated the state departments role with the nse and i worked very closely, of course, with the assistant set. Its important that that relationship be understood, that it has inherent rivalries, but they can be overcome if people really make an effort to do so. And after we made it clear i made it clear that i wasnt going to engage in that very much in one side off the other, the state department said, well then would you coordinate our representation at the embassy on these issues . Which i did. And that facilitated the state departments role with the nse and i worked very closely, of course, with the assistant set. Its important that that relationship be understood, that it has inherent rivalries, but they can be overcome if people really make an effort to do so. Again, an interesting contrast. In the case of bosnia, there was little nsc or white house direct engagement. I think its fair to say that president clinton had hesitated to engage in the balkan wars until the events of the summer of 1995, srebrenica, and the bombing of the market in sarajevo. In that at that point it became the First Television war. And we saw a whole lot of Christiane Amanpour all the time. The consequence was that there was pressure to, quote, do something, unquote. And thats when Dick Holbrooke got the players together in at Wright Patterson air force base in dayton, ohio. So the objectives were basically defined by holbrooke and his people. He was the assistant sect for european affairs. And execution was left to him based in washington, mostly in general terms, and to me on the ground for the specific execution of what we had envisaged. This change when John Kornblum succeeded Dick Holbrooke in 1996, dick stayed on for awhile as special envoy but John Kornblum was the assistant secretary. Holbrooke came out once in awhile every couple of months in a c20. My job was to create what was called the Federation Forum. Which was a group of croats bosnians, so catholics and muslims, because these things are always seen in confessional terms in the balkans, who had been fighting each other. Having started out as allies, they ended up fighting each other, and this was to get that half of bosnia working again. And the Federation Forum met virtually every week. My staff consisted mainly of me and embassy officers. Ill leave it at that for now. Can i just deal with one more. The next question of the structure of the Envoys Office within the state department, and as bob mentioned, he had very few staff. We looked at various envoy situations. Some had staff from the regional bureau. Some had little. There are three instances we deal with in the report of significantly autonomous officers under the special envoy. Currently the special representative for afghanistan and pakistan. And the office that i directed, the u. S. Office on sudan and south sudan. In my case the Desk Officers were under my office, as well as a cadre of regional specialists and others, contracted by the conflict and stabilization bureau. I had tens of millions of dollars of resources to dispense. I had a lot of control over the machinery of policy, and support, which is very helpful. But theres a danger in that degree of autonomy. You can get separated too much from the rest of the structure. As i mentioned, the importance of the embassys role. My case i found strong embassies were critical. But in some cases, those offices dont pay enough attention, and second, resources are helpful. They were helpful in my case. But i found we also strayed into areas that were better done by usaid. And that we sometimes didnt lack the oversight for running projects in the field from washington. So i think there are pluses to that kind of an office but there are warnings, as well. Why dont we shift to you and get some reaction to the report and a little bit of your experience on how we might carry it out. Sure. First of all, this is a very important report. And i want to commend them giving us something to work with thats now organized and very well structured. It raises the issues that need to be thought about, and in a sense can provide a guide path for an administration thinking about deploying an envoy. What it also needs to do, however, is to stimulate case studies. What weve had today, even, are two examples of successful envoys. But theyre successful in part, i would think, because of both of these gentlemen came up through the system. They were both experts before being appointed envoys. They were experts in the fields that they were asked to focus on. They had experience in the field. And they knew how washington and the department of state, and the interagency system worked. That has not always been the case. In all of the conflict situations where envoys have been appointed, as suggested in the report itself. So therefore, a series of case studies on the way envoys worked in different situations could be quite helpful. As some of you know, i spent most of my career in the middle east, particularly focused in the arab israeli conflict area ambassador to egypt, ambassador to israel, and i saw 15, count them, 15, envoys over the course of about 30 years. If you review the names of those envoys youre talking about what we would call an allstar list, boy erson, don rumsfeld, jim leonard, maury draper, richard fairbanks, dick murphy, dennis ross, tony zinni, john wolf, george mitchell, martin indyk, and now Frank Lowenstein. You would expect with this kind of a lineup if were using our baseball analogy, that the scoreboard would look pretty good. But the scoreboard actually shows no hits, no runs, and lots of errors, which suggests that this is one of the case studies which needs to be undertaken to find out whether or not its the idea of an envoy in this situation, or the individual selected as the envoy, the conflict itself, or the criteria that the report has suggested. Was it an absence of empowerment by a president . Was it an absence of authority . Were there turf battles in washington . And i think youd find if we did this case study and we havent done it yet, but certainly this report should simulate it and i may grab the opportunity and do it myself, i think youd find that there are a combination of factors at play here that suggest that even some of the smartest and most senior people selected for this job, were not necessarily the right choice, and not necessarily the right choice for this conflict. After all, if you look back at the last 35, a little more than 35 years, in the arab israeli conflict resolution process, there have been three american successes. But they have all been shepherded by secretaries of state, and by president s. They have not been shepherded by envoys. Now, part of this may be a problem that we have created ourselves. We have raised the level of engagement in this conflict to a point where the parties simply dont pay much attention to an envoy below the level of secretary of state, and sometimes not even to a secretary of state. Waiting for the president. And that may be a major factor at play in the arab israeli conflict. But it also suggests that context specificity, and i would add, and i want to say this carefully, because were talking about smart envoys, understanding of nuance and details. Not all of our envoys enter the job knowing what the arab israeli conflict is all about and many of them left the job not knowing what the arab israeli conflict was all about. And what that does is not only a waste of an american asset, which is the power to do diplomacy, but it also weakens our ability to then pick up the conflict resolution process once that envoy has left the job. I had an experience when i was serving as ambassador in israel. We had an envoy who was appointed to monitor the compliance of the parties with the road map. You mentioned his name, john wolf, a Senior State Department official who was asked to drop his job in Political Military Affairs and come out for a few months and john was a strong diplomat but had no background at all in the arab israeli conflict and no background at all in trying to resolve the arab israeli conflict. And it was a series of errors, and problems over the course of three months, some of which actually impeded the efforts of israelis and palestinians to reach small agreements on what we called then the road map that president george w. Bush had unveiled a short time before. Now during that period i came back to washington for a couple of days, went in to see the thendeputy secretary of state rich armitage and i said, rich, i like john wolf, why did you appoint somebody who didnt know anything at all about this conflict or this job . And for those of you who know rich armitage he said, that was exactly why i did it. He wanted somebody who would be tabular rasa. In some situations make it works. It doesnt work when youre dealing with two entrenched parties in a protracted conflict. Theyve been at this thing for decades. They know each other far better than they know us. And they deal with each other far better than we assume they deal with each other. And in walks somebody a babe in the woods, and doesnt really help resolve issues. I could go on. Weve had other situations referenced in this report. For example is the fact that when dennis ross was appointed the special middle east coordinator one of the things that he demanded was that that office be taken out of the normal bureaucracy of the state department. And in fact, in 1992 93, 93 actually when that office was created, i was serving as a Deputy Assistant secretary in the near east bury, i went in to see our assistant secretary and i said ed, im sorry youre leaving your post. Ed said why, im not leaving my post. I said wait theyve just taken one of the heartbeats, one of the jewels of your portfolio, away from you. Why would you remain as the assistant secretary when you no longer have responsibility for one of the most Critical Issues in the portfolio . And it suggests to you that this bifurcation of responsibilities was a problem from the outset. And it became a more pronounced problem over time. Because, what nea had to offer was the expertise and experience of a lot of very good officers who had served in the field, but who now became separated from the conflict resolution process. I think it ended up hurting that process over time. On the issue of latitude to deal with unfavorables, were still living with this problem. We had envoys who who could not deal with the representative of the palestinian people, Palestine Liberation Organization because of american policy. In fact, the United States government for many of these years was talking to the plo, but through the cia. Not through the state department. So we had a channel with an organization that was an unfavorable but it was a channel that was not helping us at all deal with the conflict resolution process. We have the same issue today with hamas. Where if youre going to appoint an envoy to deal with the arab israeli issue, for example, as martin indyk was appointed or now Frank Lowenstein is acting, does it make sense for that envoy not to be able to talk to all palestinians . Doesnt mean we like them. Doesnt mean we support those who are engaged in terrorism, which hamas is engaged in terrorism. But if the envoy doesnt have the mandate or the scope of responsibility to reach out to all elements within the two societies in which he or she is working, how effective is that going to be in trying to produce an agreement that can be agreed and indicated. There are a number of issues taking the israeli case as a case study which suggest that using the five categories or five criteria that this very useful report has given us could be very important in understanding whether or not this thing works. Whether the envoy works in conflict situations. I would as an opposing sentence my own bias that is in the arab israeli conflict, president s and secretary of states will be fooling themselves to believe that they can outsource this conflict resolution process to an envoy. It doesnt mean that the secretary has to run out to the region every week or two. May want to comprise a team of his own experts to pursue this, but weve created a situation in which arabs and israelis are stating to see that the president and the secretary of state are engaged in that process and an envoy is simply not going to substitute for the president ial power, and the secretarys prestige. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. David well go to you. Youve seen this from the inside, from the Advocacy Community. You know some of the hill dynamics on it as well. Talk a little bit about what lessons you feel weve learned over the last however many years looking at this and any reactions to the report as well . Thanks so much. And thanks so much for usip for inviting me to participate in this panel and thanks to the authors for laying out some very interesting ideas. And i actually came away from the report feeling somewhat like dan did that there was a lot of very interesting nuggets, and descriptions of case studies, but to really understand some of these issues you really have to go more indepth. And i think that one issue that really needs to be on the table is why do we have special representatives and special envoys . The report does talk about that to some degree. But, if you go back and look at diplomatic history weve always had special envoys and special representatives. If you go back to 1789, George Washington had a personal representative who went to the court of st. James to represent the United States with what had to be the most important relationship that the u. S. Had at the time and congress didnt even know about it until a year and a half later. Similarly you could go to Woodrow Wilson who had a bad relationship with his secretary of state, and who sent colonel edward house to try to negotiate peace in europe in 1950. This was a central issue to try to keep the u. S. Out of the war, and the president said im basically a private figure, someone who was working for the white house, but who did not have relationships with the state department in any significant way. Of course, Harry Hopkins is an example that, i wont spend time talking about. I think that the report does raise a number of issues. And, dan, i think that while i accept what you say about trying to dig deeply into the arab israeli conflict, but i think that the arab israeli conflict in some ways is unique in this kind of context because of the very deep, domestic political dynamics that are involved. The great deal of energy that has been invested by the United States, and over the time since the 70s, at least in particular, so i think that its its an important one to look at, but perhaps not the best one to measure these criteria again. So for example, one of the areas that i have been involved with was the democratic republic of congo and the appointment of senator feingold as a special envoy there. If you look at what was happening before that, our policy with respect to the drc was somewhat in disarray. We had very conflicting views within the administration regarding what was the role of rwanda, how do we approach president kagame, what was the right view, and approach. And you had some significant dysfunction, and in that context, as pressure was building from the Advocacy Community, and congressional members of congress, who were interested in this issue, to appoint a special adviser, as was reflected, ambassador Johnny Carson who was assistant secretary at the time appointed a very skilled diplomat, but someone who was not very wellknown in the region. He had served there. Didnt have a huge amount of stature, and was considered a special adviser. And was, frankly, not the kind of dynamic individual that was needed. So there was a big push to have a more significant individual brought in line. And, in fact, people were very surprised when senator feingold agreed to take on that position. And i think that someone like senator feingold, in that position, can do things that are important. So if you look at the effort of the bureau and their scope of jurisdiction there are some huge problems the assistant secretary has to deal with. Theyve got nigeria which could perhaps the entire continent if it goes down. Its got zimbabwe, which is a huge human Rights Problem weve spent a lot of time on. Kenya was on the cusp of violence and came on the cusp of violence again. Of course you have sudan, south sudan and look what happened to the Central African republic just last year. In the context with an assistant secretary have multiple crises that have significant political attention, bringing in a special envoy can sometimes, i think, be a constructive approach to try to deal with it. In the case of drc, though, i think something that the report indicated happened that was very important. Which was, when senator feingold came in, he had a policy structure to go forward with similar to what bob beecroft was saying. You have the peace and security koop ration framework that basically was the road map. Was it a detailed road map . No. Implementation of that road map was going to be critical in order for it to succeed, and therefore, having someone who could go in with the stature, indicate that he had a personal relationship with the president , and to dans point, had been studying these issues for a long time, as a longtime member of 9 Senate Foreign Relations Committee did understand the building, at least to some degree, and was able to fit in within the bureaucracy in a way which i think most people see as fairly constructive. So i think that that contrasts the before and the after in a context where there are multiple different pieces is important to think about. On the other hand weve seen envoys who have had mandates constructed for them in part because of advocacy from the Advocacy Community that were real failures. So its interesting to look at the list of envoys that are on the American Foreign Service Associations list of 25 envoys, and we have two envoys for north korea. We have an envoy thats supposed to negotiate on the issues around north Korean Nuclear section, but because congress felt that there was not enough attention for human rights, you have a north Korean Ambassador for human rights. Special representative for human rights. So how does that work . Or in the case of sudan, as im sure princeton will remember, the in the context of the north south negotiations that was the real focus offer the special envoys view, there was very little attention being played to darfur which was kind of an intractable situation in many ways at that time. And so there was a big push to have a Senior Adviser or special representative on darfur. That was not a very successful or wise advocacy push in my mind in hindsight. There were reasons for it. I think reasonable people could differ about whether it was a good idea when we were pushing for it. And at the end there was a good result because the u. S. , when pressing for implementation of the separate darfur Peace Agreement saw that that would never go anywhere actually helped, i think, get the United States to the point where it was looking at what the right solution was with respect to sudan, which was a comprehensive approach to deal with all its conflicts. So, if you believe that the only way to have an effective envoy is to have someone whos really empowered, who is seen as important, who is sitting behind the president at the meetings, and who has the policy authority, then how is it that theyre really outside of the chain of command, or outside of the political challenges that can be faced if they meet with the unfavorables . And i think that this points to, you know, a challenge that i think goes very much, i agree with princeton in his analysis, that theres a risk reward issue here. So we had a big debate between s the two of us about the visit of one of president bashers advisers. Who was an adviser to the president who had been involved or we believe, most people believe was involved in the darfur genocide. Princeton had met him in khartoum. Most of us, i cant speak for the Advocacy Community, but most of us had no problem with him meeting with nafi. But when there was a suggestion that the administration would invite nafi to the United States, people got very much in arms, and, in fact, the founder of my Organization Called me in an irate fashion. And i think the question in meeting with unfavorables is whats the risk or the reward . Whats the strategy . If youre going to bring an unfavorable here to the United States, what are we getting for it . Are you going to actually be able to do something constructive and productive with him . Because it is going to confer legitimacy on that individual. It is going to be a propaganda coup for a regime that the whole strategy is around isolation. So i think this is a tough issue. And i think that the its one of the reasons why i think there has to be some significant conversations around what are the right kind of individuals for these kinds of positions, who are willing to take these risks. Because, is it the case that its only professionals who have been in the field and so on who are able to do these jobs because of all the things dan said . You need people who have an inside knowledge of the department. You need people whove had negotiating experience. You need people who have had field or international experience. You need people who are willing to collaborate. You need people who had multinational experience. I think one of the things that princeton benefited from was his time as assistant secretary for international organizations. Because in the context of the very complicated way sudan was being dealt with, the u. N. System had a very Important Role, peacekeeping missions in both countries, very capable special representative, so that experience which is often very common not in the arab israeli conflict, because there the notion is lets keep the u. N. Out because of various political dynamics, but in most of these conflict situations, view as really critical, do a lot of for Service Experts career ambassadors or retired ambassadors have that kind of experience. But at the same time, individuals who are outside the system, as we say, also lack some of those key experiences that i mentioned. The front part. So i think it really goes to how do we select individuals. Maybe ill just make a couple of brief comments. With respect to turf battles, i really think theres no right answer on structure, and so on. It really is very personal. I think the chemistry matters issue is very big. I think there is something very interesting about where there are conflicts in dynamics between the white house and the state department over the issue because of its political volatility, because of its importance domestically and so on. It is a real question about whether its an addition or a subtraction to have a special ambassador. I was in meetings in during the Peace Process when dan was Deputy Assistant secretary. If you see smoke coming out of my ears because im not sure if theyre talking about my experience in state or on the hill or in the Advocacy Community. But there was some very frosty meetings. And they werent just frosty because the state department had responsibilities in this area, it was also because those in the nsc who had responsibility in those areas were chafing under the kind of structure that dennis was able to build for himself. And sometimes it could work out. Because you had three sort of power centers, and you could kind of negotiate through. Sometimes it didnt. So, i think that those that have a lot of personality issues that really need to be thought through, and the kind of tethering that has been talked about. We can perhaps talk more about that. I think the outreach issue is significant. I think its another piece of if youre going to have a special envoy, particularly in an area thats politically volatile or theres a lot of political interest or a huge amount of civic interest, being able to negotiate the halls of congress is really critical. Being able to talk to the members of congress in both the house and the senate, as well as Civil Society, thats a skill set that not everyone has. That, you know, i think that scott glecian who was special envoy had his challenges on both those scores and that really undermined his role in being able to be effective. And so, having the right skills in that area can be really critical. Let me just leave it at that and see whether you have any questions, tom, to kick us off or you want to go to the audience. I do. I have some questions but i really want to open it up and give folks a chance. Because before we end. And i want to come back to again this issue of turf. Theres a certain sense, ill just ask one question and then hand it over. Is it too simplistic to say that part of the message here is when it comes to envoys, go big or go home, that this tension of saying if its just another seat at the table . There seems to be an inherent tension here which is these are buildings that really believe in working things up through the building, working through a clearance process, et cetera, sort of consensus or what sometimes seems like coconcone us is, building up through, and the effect is, as you noted youve got to be able to sit down with the head of state or foreign minister and people know that youre in charge. So is this one of these things where if youre not willing to give it that authority, you may end up just with the another cook in the kitchen . If youre going to appoint an envoy you dont give him authority, you shouldnt bother. I dont know what the point would be to do that. We have cases that allude to them in the report where thats happened. Where the authority or the empowerment has been undercut. By the secretary or the president , or otherwise. With. In the sudan case, the issues on the ground bilaterally were a integral to the Peace Process. In other cases, that isnt necessarily the case. So, in the sudan case, i found it very valuable that the structures and the outreach to the ambassador system came through my office. But there may be other cases where that is not quite the case, and that the bureau supports the envoy is sufficient. So i think when we look at that in terms of what is the nature of the conflict, and the mandate. I would go along with that. My experience was that the European Bureau played a very big role, in the postconflict situation in bosnia, for example. And that was fine. Secretary of state was comfortable with it. The president and the nsc were very comfortable with it. And as i said before, we had a clear road map on what we were supposed to be doing there. And it was a situation in which the United States largely called the shots. So, in that situation, it was more executing a policy, but doing it on the ground, and understanding the issues. And in effect building the country, which didnt exist in 1996. Excuse me. My question has to do with my question has to do with cuba and iran. Do you think those two special envoy . I would i dont pretend to be an expert in those two areas. But i would have thought on the question of iran, where you already have a major negotiation under way on the nuclear, that to have a separate envoy on the overall issue probably gets in the way. But beyond that, or leading up to that, perhaps a special envoy might have been useful. A special envoy in cuba might have been useful beforehand. But now that we are in the process of establishing a regular structure and diplomatic relations, im not sure that that would be necessary. Well, i would just underscore what princeton said. Youre talking two different types of issues. The cuba issue seems to me is a nixon china question. Its reversing a many decades long policy, and so in a sense, there had to be not only complete coherence in how youre going to run it but the policy issues really do need to be run out of the white house until the point where the president has now announced the change where it can enter in to a more normal building of a diplomatic infrastructure. With iran, and were still in the middle of that, youve had so far an interesting case study of the utility of multiple tracks that are very well integrated at the source. You had the professional negotiations through the p5 plus 1 that were proceeding along a certain track, and you had a secret channel also run out of the state department by the deputy secretary of state bill burns, with white house involvement, and the two were connected at the hip. So if we did our case studies this might prove to be one of the most efficient issues of a variety of envoy types but it would also, i think, prove the idea that you need people with the experience, the expertise, and familiarity within the system to be able to maintain that integrity of the effort. Just let me put a punctuation point on that particular comment, because i think its something that we havent talked about. There was a special envoy for cuba. It just was an Unnamed National Security Council official until we found out about it. And thats what happened. Is that they ran it out of the National Security council. There was obviously some coordination with the state department and secretary kerry was involved. But in terms of some of the key meetings, that were at sort of the operating level, it was really the nsc that did it. I think that the you know the iran example i would agree with dan. There was a special envoy for iran. His name was bill burns. He was within the system, he was not named, he had, you know, all the authority. He had the undersecretary for Political Affairs also back him up. We had a huge amount of senior attention there. And i think that it was an effective model that you have to look at. I just dont think that every situation in which the u. S. Can make a real difference can have that kind of involvement from senior officials. But i think that its a really important case, and you see this in other cases. I think that one of the warnings that is in the paper is about just dont do something because Congress Says you should do it. That you know, you really need to look at how you do it. But i think there is a way of dealing with those issues, through the double hatting concept that is mentioned in the paper. For example in our china relations, of course tibet always gets short shrift. That is the nature of the u. S. Relationship with china. It isnt there arent people who think its important, there are people working on it within the u. S. Government. But it always gets short shrift. So the u. S. Congress said there has to be a special coordinator on tibet. What did the Bush Administration do when that happened . They appointed Paula Dobriansky as the special coordinator for tibet and i think that did help both politically for the administration as well as internally to say, yes, we need to think more about these issues and how we deal with those issues. So i think that kind of fusion approach is something that is useful to consider. There has to be a decision taken at the outset. Is the special envoy, especially when its a publicly known envoy, therefore symbolic purposes, or to actually do stuff . Would you concede that there can be some value in the symbolic . Depends on the situation. Yeah, but its also its also its also somewhat deceptive to your international interlocutors. Youre pretending to have a stake in it, and youre going to deliver something, and you really dont have the support behind it to do so. You know, it highlights an issue, but ive known people in that situation, and i i describe it like it is, so walking naked into the jungle. I mean youre out there with nothing behind you. And i dont recommend it. You know, princeton, theres a reality show about that. So [ laughter ] tom a little bit of diplomatic experience in the back. Tom, i could just add one thing to princeton . Sure. When the 2006 lebanon israel war broke out i was asked to go on cnn there one of those cases where they had four little boxes, you know, four talking heads. Three from congress, and me. And the three from congress were all very upset that we had not appointed an envoy to solve the problem. And they got to me, i said, i dont have a problem appointing an envoy. I first would like to see what our policy is. And it kind of struck everybody as strange that we would ask that question. But i think that gets the point princeton made. What is the envoy being asked to do . And if its symbolic just to kind of wave the flag it actually hurts our interests in these conflicts. If i may address the congress question but well go with a question first. Thank you, tom. I just had two brief points, and question. One is, im very supportive of the idea that dan kurtzer raised that youve now opened the door, i think its an excellent report but its very clear that there is a next level, if i could put it this way, of understanding, and indeed of detail that would be enormously valuable as this process goes ahead. And particularly in the area of conflict resolution, and i would strongly second him. I think that the rest of you up there are probably tilted in that direction. The second question is the broader question. For a number of you slid into the question of envoys who are not there to deal with conflicts. As we understand the word conflict. And they raise a different sort of set of situations. Some of which are very much parallel to what the report has considered and some go beyond that. And some of them, i think, transgress a number of the lines that you have drawn, that in some ways would be very useful. And so i raise the question, isnt it time now for somebody, whether its the academy of diplomacy, the qddr process, contracting people from outside, whatever we want to do, obviously paying attention to the knowledge to do that. In many ways over the years, there was a process of the state department of being light on these kinds of people, and often gathering them up to create a new bureau. And in some cases the absorption of these people into the structure was the natural element of what had to be done. If people think the state department wasnt paying attention and wanted a special envoy, over a period of time we probably needed a bureau with deep experience working in the subject rather than the, what i would call, attention light factor of the special envoy. There is also finally the question of, how does the special envoy relationship, particularly in conflict resolution, accord with the rest of our policies . Youve touched on some of that, and the natural conflict, if i could put it this way, between the functional bureaus, particularly those that deal with democracy and human rights. And some of the more difficult questions that arise in conflict resolution. But, id be grateful if you would address the two questions. The broadening question to other special kinds of appointments, and the other question in how and what way the special envoys have to take care and attention to look at the rest of u. S. Foreign policy, and how it fits in to the context in which they work. Thank you. Well, i hope youll comment from your work on the