Briefing by Members of the U.S. Delegation to the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS

Dr. Paul R. DeLay, MD
Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division
Bureau of Global Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development

Mr. John Sandage
Attorney
Office of the Legal Adviser
Department of State

MR. BULLOCK: Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Jim Bullock, from the Department of State in Washington.

I am pleased to introduce to you, on my right, Ambassador E. Michael Southwick, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs; and, on my left, Dr. Paul R. De Lay, Chief of the HIV/AIDS division in the Global Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

We have one announcement, concerning tomorrow: Dr. Peter Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, and Duff Gillespie, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Population, Health and Nutrition for USAID, will participate in a signing ceremony at 2:15 p.m. in Conference Room E of UN Headquarters. USAID will be making its annual contribution to UNAIDS at that time, in the amount of $17 million.

Dr. Piot and members of the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS will take questions from the media tomorrow following that signing ceremony. So, we will have an event like this tomorrow over in Conference Room E. If you have any questions, there are telephone numbers on this release, which we have for you after this briefing.

Okay. With that, we are ready to take your questions; and would you identify yourselves, please?

Q: (inaudible)

Ambassador Southwick: I just came from a meeting with some of our JUSCANZ partners on this. There are negotiations going on right now concentrating on one paragraph, which deals with guidelines. As some of you know, some guidelines were prepared by UNAIDS -- I think they didn't come out until just a few weeks ago -- which were to be made available to member-states, countries, to use as they formulated their policies on AIDS.

The Moslem states, in particular, when this document first came up a few weeks ago in the negotiations, wanted to know more about it. They looked at it, and they felt that this was not a document that had been discussed by member-states and, therefore, sanctioned by member-states. As it was basically produced by experts from UNAIDS, they felt that it should not be given official sanction here.

So the negotiations are really over that point, whether there should be a reference to this kind of document -- guidelines -- even in a most muted way, or whether the paragraph should drop out. That seems to be the remaining sticking point; and I think that there is concern, on the part of some delegates, knowing that at UN conferences it isn't over till it's over, that even if a deal is made on this, is it going to stick?

My sense now is that, if we can get a deal on that particular paragraph, there is a good chance that the rest of it will stick, and the United States would regard that as a very good outcome.

Q: Bloomberg News. What is the relationship, if any, between the likelihood that the UN would implement the goals they set out for various percentage groups (inaudible), and these debates over the wording of sexuality and so forth? Is the fact that this language is watered-down, has sort of changed, to get away from all the man-to-man sexual language, has this really had anything to do with reaching the goals and implementing them?

Ambassador Southwick: Well, I think at most of these UN conferences you have two sets of problems, which run in parallel, unrelated to each other. One of them is sort of a technical discussion among experts about how to set goals, what kinds of goals, whether these goals are implementable and so forth. This has been sometimes less highly charged than the other -- what I call political -- discussion, views on social issues, moral issues, cultural issues, religious issues, however you want to describe them. It is this second set of issues that gets most of the attention and most of the people running around out there with placards and shouting and so forth. They are all on that second set of issues, not the first set.

The first set of issues I will let Dr. De Lay discuss. There has been considerable discussion about how they are set. I would just say, generally, that the record of the UN on implementing goals that have been set at major conferences like this, is mixed; and we are going to see that at the Food Review Summit in the fall. For example, have we reduced hunger by the amounts that have been set? But, in some cases, these do work at a national level to galvanize national governments to do more than they otherwise would do on these issues. So we think it is important to set goals.

Now, one of the goals that is in this, and for those of you who don't like UN-speak -- and I have to put myself in that category -- there is one paragraph in this document which I think really says it all, and I would almost say that the rest of it should just go away. That is this paragraph on "at the national level." If you look at it, this paragraph is committing 189 governments to address the epidemic in forthright terms; confront stigma, silence and denial; address gender and age-based dimensions of the epidemic; eliminate discrimination and marginalization; involve partnership with civil society and the business sector; full participation of people living with AIDS, those in vulnerable groups, and people mostly at risk -- and it goes on -- and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

So there, in kind of a concise way -- and if you want this, I can make it available -- is sort of everything that needs to be done in kind of a principled way. Now, whether they will do it is another question, but it is there.

Q: Bloomberg News. So, the answer to my question is that there is really not much relationship between the two? The fact that the language has changed and so forth doesn't really mean --

Ambassador Southwick: I wouldn't put it that way. I said there are sort of two parallel things that impinge on each other. The question here is to set these goals -- because when this is all over, what will count the most is whether governments are going to get down to that whole question of implementing those goals.

Dr. De Lay: A little bit of additional information. I come at this from the technical side. During the rather agonizing process to get to where we are with the declaration, in fact, we have not had changes in the goals and targets. The text that is controversial concerns how to get to these goals and targets. In fact, the things that have happened surrounding the targets have, partly from the U.S. delegation and from other countries, actually moved some of these numbers forward.

For instance, in the original declaration, there was language about developing a national strategy to deal with children affected by AIDS by 2005. Everyone felt that was absurdly too long to just develop the strategy. So, there were a number of cases moving these things forward to 2002.

But the gist of what I am saying is that the targets have not been diluted. It is the language that is underneath the targets that has been controversial.

Q: New York Times. Can you clarify the point; is that paragraph, the paragraph that's the sticking point, or is that a paragraph that's independent?

Ambassador Southwick: This paragraph was agreed to several weeks ago.

Q: National Journal/UN Wire. This means, the only sticking point now is the guidelines? Does this mean that the references to men having sex with men, etc. that these lines have been stricken from the document? Or what is this (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: There were four issues that remained. One of them was the vulnerable groups issue, and there is compromise language on that which treats it in a kind of a general way, not with the specificity which some delegations would like.

There is one on the status and empowerment of women, and some compromise language has been found on that. There is one on the effects of culture - that's this culture war kind of thing: Is culture damaging to the ability of a country to deal with the issue? and how is that portrayed in the document? Then there is this question of the UN guidelines. That was the fourth one. Right now, on those other three, we think we've got an agreement. It's only the fourth one.

Q: National Journal/UN Wire. Is there something in the guidelines, specifically that the Muslim countries are objecting to? Or is it just the principal?

Ambassador Southwick: There are some references in the guidelines to gay marriage, for example; and I can't remember the other things which caused some problems. John, could you give us some information? In the guidelines, what are the issues there which seem to cause the most concern? This is John Sandage, who is the lawyer on our delegation who has been deeply involved in most of the negotiations over the last several weeks.

Mr. Sandage: I'm sorry, because I'm walking in during the middle of your questions.

Ambassador Southwick: Okay, this is the question of the guidelines. What were the problem areas in those guidelines from the point of view of some of these other delegations? Part of it was kind of a reference to gay marriage, as I recall.

Mr. Sandage: There were a number of issues in the guidelines. There was sort of a process issue, which is that the guidelines were prepared by a group of experts serving in their personal capacity, not representing the governments. So, that was one set of problems.

Then, on the substance of the guidelines, the guidelines suggest that governments are obligated by international law to decriminalize prostitution, to provide clean needles for injecting drug users, to make legal same-sex marriages -- a number of provisions that posed some significant difficulties for a number of governments, as I say, on the substance. Then there was some concern on the process, that governments were being asked to endorse a document in which they played no role.

Q: Reuters. What is the input now from the Islamic groups now? Does it look more like the guidelines are going to have to be dropped, according to your argument, to come to a consensus document?

Ambassador Southwick: As I said earlier, some discussions are going on about this right now. The whole question is whether a deal can be struck on some kind of fix to that paragraph on the guidelines - and a fix would include dropping it.

Q: (Reuters) And, so, how do you foresee thing going? tomorrow night?

Ambassador Southwick: It's hard to say at this point. I think some delegations are looking, maybe, at some other points in the document that they don't like; but there is a very strong effort on the part of the co-facilitators not to reopen parts of the document that have been agreed. That would be catastrophic to this process.

Q: (Washington Post) Could you tell us in what context you see the declarations the guidelines have mentioned? In other words, does signing the declaration commit a country to following the guidelines?

Mr. Sandage: The text as it currently stands has a reference in the preamble, which says that -- it doesn't specify these particular guidelines -- but it says the guidelines prepared by UNAIDS and endorsed by the Commission on Human Rights. So, it's a euphemism for talking about these guidelines -- can be of assistance to governments in formulating their domestic AIDS policies.

Q: (Washington Post) Are there other countries that feel strongly about this phrase?

Mr. Sandage: Which phrase?

Q: The reference to the guidelines (inaudible).

Mr. Sandage: There are countries that feel very strongly that the guidelines need some appropriate reference in the document.

Q: Is the U.S. one of them?

Mr. Sandage: I think the U.S. Government could live with a reference to the guidelines, but we also could see the guidelines reference drop out.

Q: Could you clarify exactly what the U.S. position is in terms of these guidelines? I mean, would the U.S. delegation accept the legalization of gay marriage, the beefing up of women's rights, the decriminalization of prostitution?

Ambassador Southwick: There are obviously some things in the guidelines that we would not agree with. There are probably some things in the guidelines that a lot of other countries would not agree with. The question is, are these, as guidelines which are quite thick -- I think they're about 30 pages long -- are these helpful to governments in formulating their policies? Probably, on the margins, we would say, yes, they are valuable to governments who don't have the capacity that, say, a Western government would have, to formulate their own policy.

If you look at some governments around the world, they might have three or four people working on AIDS -- including countries in Africa where AIDS is a huge problem -- responsible for setting AIDS policy. So they have to refer to something.

Q: A question on another matter for Dr. De Lay: One of the things we've heard most often (inaudible) concerns whether Africans can take drugs on time and (inaudible) how often is that coming up to you?

Dr. De Lay: What I can say is that Mr. Natsios has met with a number of NGOs. He has met with the Congressional Black Caucus. He has met with other members of Congress, and he has apologized for those comments. They were insensitive and didn't really reflect what he was trying to get at, which is that we still have a lot of challenges about the complexity of the anti-retroviral regimens.

Q: Dutch Television: Can you address (inaudible) debt relief and (inaudible) what can you say about (inaudible) the 200 million and (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: I think every government that looks at this issue seriously knows that more resources are going to be needed; and, if you look at Secretary Powell's speech, he made a number of references that characterized it in several ways. One of them was that this is seed money. This is seed money. It's to get this thing jump-started, and it's to bring in other governments to participate, as well.

I mean, one of the things that I notice in the international system is that, sometimes, if one country comes in and says, we're doing it all for you, that's a disincentive to other governments to come in. So, one thing you want to do is to gauge this kind of contribution to something that will bring in other governments, and that is beginning to happen.

So, more resources have been promised by Secretary Powell; and I am confident that those will become available. There are going to be more resources in USAID.

On the debt relief issue, there is -- a lot of people don't seem to think so -- but there is a very aggressive program on debt relief, and this goes back to the early '90s and the mid-'90s. It's called the HIPC initiative, which deals with both bilateral and multilateral debt. There is an effort under way in the last couple of years to make that better. It's already showing substantial results. I think there are 40 countries that are eligible for this; and the whole issue here is to ensure that, in exchange for debt relief, there is a good track record on economic reform, and that the country involved will take steps to have good effective poverty alleviation programs. Now, you just don't say, sort of, that debt is bad, and that we're going to forgive your debt, and go on from that.

I was talking to one of the NGOs this morning about this. They recognize that. You can't just waive a wand and forgive debt. In many countries -- and I have served in some of them overseas -- that money would not wind up helping people with AIDS. It just wouldn't. So, you have to have a program in place. This program -- I have got some preliminary figures here -- depending on how you look at this, in present-value terms, or in nominal terms, it's over $20 billion, and will go up to -- in nominal terms, it's about $33-34 billion.

So, it is fairly aggressive. There will be an effort to enhance that.

Q: IIP/Washington File. With respect to contributions by other nations to the global AIDS fund. If you would expand on that? There have been a number in the last day and a half, many -- quite a few -- from African nations. Can you expand on whether that meets expectations, whether it's enough, whether it does fulfill this kind of seed money promise that you discussed?

Ambassador Southwick: Well, I was hoping to have on this panel someone who is more closely involved in those final negotiations, and maybe Dr. De Lay will want to add -- I think this is beginning to happen. Certainly, it hasn't been sufficient so far; but it is beginning to happen.

I was gratified yesterday when the Ugandan Minister, Eriya Kategaya, somebody I know because of my service in Uganda, said that Uganda, which is a very poor country, is going to put $2 million into this. This is the kind of buy-in we think is needed to make this work.

Dr. De Lay: I suspect most of you in this room know, there was the misperception that the goal of the trust fund was to achieve $7-10 billion, which is the estimated need to respond to the epidemic, both from a prevention standpoint and from a care standpoint. That was a misinterpretation. That total estimated need is supposed to come from a number of resources -- the bilateral community, the fund, and from host country governments themselves -- and, to some extent, out-of-pocket and from private insurance.

The fund is still under negotiation, but the tentative goal for this year was $1 billion. From our calculations, we are between $500 and $700 million now, based on the pledges. So it is moving along.

Q: I didn't understand that. So you are saying that it's not $7-10 billion, it's $1.5 billion?

Dr. De Lay: No, the total estimated need is $7-10 billion, of which the trust fund should be a portion. You look at the international donors right now -- the bilateral donors. They are putting forward about $1 billion as of this year. In addition to the U.S., that's the UK, the Scandinavian countries, and all of the traditional major bilateral donors.

So, the idea was that because this is a new fund, because a lot of the details have not been worked out, people are being asked to put money into something which doesn't exist; and there are details that the donor countries need to find out about -- that a realistic goal would be about $1 billion.

Q: Per year?

Dr. De Lay: Per year -- or next year it could go up to two or three. But for this first year, this would be something that they could try to achieve, that would mark that this was moving in the proper direction and was a success.

Q: Well, if you're that close to the goal. It seems that they're -- with the $500-700 million -- it seems that's kind of a buried fact of some significance, that you feel that that is coming that close in so little time.

Dr. De Lay: It should be made more widely known. This is the goal that has been expressed by a number of people who are intimately involved with the initial design of the fund. This is both on the UN side and on the -- those donors who have already stepped forward.

Q: But it's not a goal in the declaration? It's 7 - 10 in the declaration.

Dr. D Lay: No that's what needs to be gleaned from all sources. If the fund was supposed to pay for that entire $7-10 billion -- then there would be no reason for the bilateral donors. There would be no reason for other either the philanthropic donors or the corporate foundations.

The goal of the fund is to serve a niche in responding to this estimated need and to provide value-added to those funds that are already in place, be they from the host country governments or from the bilateral governments. The struggle now is to find out what are the things that the fund can do best, where can those monies go, what are the areas, where are the gaps in the response now; and how can that fund generate monies that would not have been seen, that would be additional to the bilateral funds and the multilateral funds that are currently being expended.

Q: I have a question. Secretary Powell alluded to additional funds down the road above and beyond the $200 million, and I'm wondering whether you have a position about whether those additional funds will be made available by reducing other federal AIDS spending, such as CDC research?

Ambassador Southwick: My sense is that -- and again, we don't have the fund person here, and I regret that -- but part of the $200 million is sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul, not from AIDS, but from existing resources of two agencies in the U.S. Government. What is to come afterwards -- and part of this is just how you do budgets in the federal government. You can't just say all at once you want some money, and you need some money, and you have the money. It doesn't work that way. It has to be planned through the budget cycle. What is projected in the 2003 budget would be additional funds, new funds.

Q: So the Bush Administration is committed to asking for new money?

Ambassador Southwick: Yes.

Q: Dutch TV. Two questions. (Inaudible).

Ambassador Southwick: Just a general comment. One of the things that I think has been useful about this whole process over the last several months is we're getting away from this debate about prevention, care, and treatment, and what is the more important, and you have to do this, you have to do that. Everybody has a kind of an angle on this, which they think is the entry point into making a good, comprehensive strategy work.

I think everybody now says it's all woven together. Secretary Powell has said this, and we are saying that, although we do -- and I think most experts would agree -- say that prevention, as long as you're talking about a disease that does not have a cure, you have to talk about prevention. That is the best thing we can do for people out there who might otherwise get the disease.

So, this fund, as I understand it, is going to have, in effect, kind of windows; and maybe some countries and some donors will want certain kinds of things done with this. Claire Short mentioned this in her speech yesterday. So, there will be a variety of things; but I think from our perspective it would not necessarily be good if all of this money went for commodities. We would rather see that most of it went for prevention.

Now, let's see, the second question?

Q: Dutch TV (inaudible).

Ambassador Southwick: Well, I think there are a lot of different parts of a solution here, and if France -- you know, France will be sponsoring this conference in Dakar at the end of the year. You know, that's on care and treatment. We can't ignore the elements of this; it's prevention, care and treatment. Some countries will have a particular interest, resources to put into that. That should be welcomed.

Q: (Inaudible.)

Ambassador Southwick: On the French proposal? I just can't speak to that except beyond what you may have heard or what you seem to have heard from Secretary Thompson yesterday.

Q: (Inaudible.)

Ambassador Southwick: Right. We probably won't get to the point, from what I understand now, of sort of some big announcement on this. I think this will come later. I mean, one of the issues here is, is this a UN fund? is this a G-7 fund? You know, who owns this thing called the fund? What people seem to be saying now, it's not one or the other; it's a world fund, it's something separate and distinct from these entities that certainly have a role. Certainly, the international financial institutions have role; the UN system has a role; bilateral donors have a role. That's why it has to be something that stands above all of that.

Q: (Inaudible) and how to manage (inaudible) does the US (inaudible) position that the money would preferably depend on (inaudible) and pay for programs and pay for (inaudible)? Now, is that your position or the US position? Is that a condition?

Ambassador Southwick: No. Again, I think this is sort of what are the elements that you can stitch together to make this work. And this Administration has a faith-based initiative to work domestically on certain kinds of social issues and so forth. I think what you heard in Geneva was sort of an extension of that to the international level and getting faith-based organizations involved. And for those of you who have traveled out in the field, a lot of really important valuable work has been done by churches in the field, particularly in East Africa. They're on the ground, they're in the slums, they're doing the work. So that's part of it.

But I can't imagine all of the money going into that particular pot. That's just one of the elements. And I've forgotten the second part.

Q: Well, were they just on abstinence?

Ambassador Southwick: Abstinence? This comes up -- I was just at a panel over here done by a couple of NGOs on this, and these are religious groups basically who are talking about abstinence, who are talking about -- there's this initiative in East Africa called, "True Love Waits." And they make a case on these cultural grounds for those kinds of actions. And certainly I don't think anybody can intellectually argue with the fact that abstinence works.

Q: To follow up on that, the US money, would it be earmarked or would it go into general (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: I don't think they're that far along.

Q: New York Times. To go back to the paragraph that is the sticking point, you said it was a procedural issue. Is this something that was a tactical error that was made by UNAIDS preparing this meeting and should have known that this would have been a problem? Or was it just something that (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: You know, there are a lot of expert panels through the systems on various issues, and WHO relies a lot, as it must, on this kind of approach. I think the preparation of those guidelines was certainly done in good faith. I think their initial view was that this was of value to member-states, to people who are trying to combat AIDS, countries that don't have the wherewithal, the intellectual capital as it were, to do this kind of thing.

If it becomes a sticking point and you sort of put at risk all of the good that could come out of this conference, I think that is something that they would probably not want to do. But you would have to pose that question to UNAIDS.

Q: If the (inaudible) three-day conference ends and they could agree even on a declaration or declaration with that paragraph, would the US consider this a failure? How would you look at it?

Ambassador Southwick: Well, I don't think we're going to get to that point, and our feeling right now is that this document, by and large, mainly for the reason I mentioned when I cited that one particular paragraph to you, has some very good, positive things in it, and as a kind of a pep rally, if you will, for the international community to mobilize itself, get it thinking together and so forth. I think already we've seen some good benefits from that. And what you described would detract from that obviously if we didn't have an agreement or if it became unraveled over something which most people would have to consider fairly minor at this point.

Q: (Inaudible). Is this unusual that this is becoming a sticking point right now? I know there were other issues that needed to be solved before, like the vulnerability. But do you feel that what happened yesterday (inaudible) kind of (inaudible)?

Mr. Sandage: I have been here since Thursday trying to close these final gaps, so I am pretty familiar with the tone, both early in the morning when people are friendly and late at night when they are cranky. And that includes me.

The issues of yesterday -- the resolution of the participation of the one NGO -- post-dates by many days the guidelines becoming a difficult issue. I think what happened is we got a relatively long way in the process, and some countries downloaded the guidelines and read them for the first time, and then were quite surprised by what they saw. And then those countries began to raise very serious objections on cultural and religious grounds to the guidelines. And that issue arose about three weeks ago. So it was totally unconnected to the NGO issue.

Q: (Inaudible.)

Mr. Sandage: The guidelines I think came out in '98. So they have been around a long time. Didn't they?

Ambassador Southwick: No, I'm not so sure of that. But we'll have to check.

Mr. Sandage: I thought it was '98. But they have been out a while.

Q: Well, they could have looked at them, and those issues could have been dealt with earlier.

Q: (Inaudible) sticking points (inaudible) this delegation forward (inaudible) compromise?

Mr. Sandage: When you say "broker," I'm not sure whether that's giving us too much credit or not enough credit. I mean, it's a very didactic process and --

Q: Did the delegation have a major role in arriving at this compromise?

Mr. Sandage: We certainly had a role. On various questions, different delegations took leads on trying to find a common way forward, and ultimately, I think we were successful on not just the four issues that remained open as of this weekend, but many, many other issues that over the course of the weeks have been closed. And we played a positive and constructive role. I think the Chair indicated her appreciation to us for the role that we played on facilitating compromise on some issues. But many other countries share in the credit. It's not just the U.S.

Q: What is the best way that you will -- or the best feeling you have about how to measure this ultimate success or failure of this conference? And based on the anger (inaudible), what has happened here in terms of drafting or (inaudible) and so forth that leads you to believe it will or will not ultimately (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: I don't know. I'm just reminded of -- this is anecdotal, and memory doesn't serve -- about when Zhou Enlai was asked about the French Revolution, and was it a success or not, and he says, "It's too early to tell."

It is hard to tell on these things. This I think has been gratifying because of the quality of the document and the level of commitment we have seen in a lot of the speeches that have been made, and clearly that the whole dynamic of this issue worldwide is changing because of what is happening on the drug issue, and what is happening on -- people are coming to terms with the fact that this is an enormous tragedy affecting tens of millions of people already, and likely tens of millions more people. And we just can't ignore it. This has been going on for 20 years, and I hope that this will be a kind of a high water mark so far in the world's understanding of this issue and the world's commitment to do something about it.

But we won't know until the shouting is over, the fat lady sings -- if I can use a sexist and moralistic term -- and we see what happens in the two or three years to come, whether people are taking these guidelines seriously.

Dr. De Lay: Can I add to that? Certainly there is appropriate cynicism, and many of us have been involved with other declarations.

The thing that sets this declaration apart I think falls into two areas: the targets and goals are fairly clear, and they are also five-year goals and less. You will often see in other UN declarations that the goals are 10, 20 years out, and the ones I am most familiar with are the World Summit Goals for Children, potable water and all, which have been around for a number of years.

The second thing that makes this document unique is that there's very discrete description of how we will be held accountable, and there is a requirement -- requirement may be too strong a word -- but that countries need to report -- first to analyze internally and then report on where they are in achieving these goals. And again, some of these goals are more relevant to some countries versus others, depending on stage and state of the epidemic. That data would then be aggregated, and the UN will have an annual meeting connected to the General Assembly that will aggregate these national reports.

That is something you don't often see in a UN declaration.

Q: (Inaudible.)

Dr. De Lay: Right.

Q: (Inaudible.)

Dr. De Lay: No, and the one I am most familiar is the World Summit for Children. There may be others that do have a little more rigor.

Q: (Inaudible) are reporting requirements for that.

Ambassador Southwick: There could be others, but I'm just not aware of them. But I'm familiar with the Food Summit ones.

Q: Speaking of children, has (inaudible) issue also of whether the declaration should include a reference to (inaudible)?

Ambassador Southwick: If I heard your question right, did you say, does it include a reference to the right to child conventions?

Q: Yes (inaudible) to make sure.

Ambassador Southwick: I'm not aware that there was a genuine issue on that. I think -- and I know -- that the agreed negotiating position of all countries was that we were going to try to get a document that stood on its own, because this is a unique problem, and we were going to avoid references to other UN documents and other contexts. There were some cases where some language was borrowed back and forth, but I don't think anywhere in the text was any explicit reference or footnote or words that talk about other UN documents. There was a conscious effort to make this a unique document to respond to a unique problem.

MR. BULLOCK: Thank you, everybody. The announcement again about tomorrow's signing ceremony is on the table here. Thank you for joining us.