Interview With Reuters and Associated Press in Banda Aceh

BILL TARRANT OF REUTERS: What were your impressions today?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: The first impression was that there is incredible contrast between a place that is incredibly beautiful in terms of the greenery and the physical, and the mountains and the sea, and the overwhelming tragedy and the miles and miles of destruction. But, the point that gives you the greatest sense of hope is the spirit of the people that you meet here. And they are obviously still going through great trauma. Many lost, sometimes, all the members of their family, but they are trying to rebuild. So, probably the most important stop was seeing the small community, where one of the few survivors was the elected leader who was a fisherman, and how he was trying to rebuild the garden, start to rebuild the community center, start to get people organized. And you have orphans that need to be taken care of. So, our AID mission here is doing a fantastic job in terms of getting the basic supplies of water and food in. And on top of that, they’re trying to give people a chance to rebuild their future. So what I also came here for was to launch a road that is going to be critical for the redevelopment here, about 240 kilometers, about $240 million dollars. It’s going to be expensive because you have to build about 113 brides and culverts along the way. But the personal side is what certainly drives you.

BILL TARRANT: What do you think is the overall, in Aceh, I know you’ve just had the day here, but what do you think is the biggest priority?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: I think that the appointment of Pak Kuntoro a week ago is very important because I think that one of the reasons that I came here was to get a better sense of the pivot from the humanitarian aid, the food, the water, the basic shelter, the reconstruction and building process. One of the things I’ve learned is those two activities are going to have to be woven closely together. You are probably going to need to provide food in here through the end of the year, if not beyond. Some of the sanitation methods are going to have to be updated as time goes on. One is going to need to be able to start to channel the money from other governments, from the Indonesian government, and others into some specific reconstruction projects. And our AID mission here again has done a great job because they’ve got experience from around the world in doing this because they, I hope, will also offer a pattern for some of the large private sector support. The US government’s support after the tsunami is over $900 million, which you got 1.2 billion in private sector funds. But some of the private companies that want to donate, some of the NGOs, haven’t really been in the development business. So I think Kuntoro’s role will be vital in terms of making decisions, connecting it to the community interests, obviously making sure that it’s a transparent process and an accountable process and I think President Yudhoyono of Indonesia picked a very good man. Mr. Kuntoro, he’s got a good record of this. He’s a Stanford trained engineer. He’s done a great job in his prior roles, and I was very pleased to have a chance to talk with him in some length today.

BILL TARRANT: How much international aid do you think Indonesia can expect, when all is said and done?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: I don’t know the total sums that will come in. I think the good news so far is that there has been a very generous response from governments, but most of all from the private sector, NGOs, companies and the challenge now is to make sure that is constructively interconnected with the particular needs. Some of this is going to take a while and so assessments will have to be made over time. This road that we’re talking about, 240 kilometers, including the environmental assessments and other things that have to be done, this is going to take a couple of years or more to get done. But right now were talking underneath a huge coal barge that got thrust on the middle of the road. So it’s not the normal road reconstruction business here. I think one of the other aspects that I hope will come out of this is the fact that Ach has always had a difficult relationship, first under the Dutch colonial period and then under Indonesia. It’s a very independent province, but I hope that coming out of this there will be a closer sense of Aceh and Indonesia and its connection with other broader countries around the world.

BILL TARRANT: Is this the single, this road project, the single biggest aid project that the US government has undertaken, in terms of one specific project, anywhere?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: We’re building big roads in Afghanistan, which is kind of the heart or artery around Afghanistan, so Indonesia has done some very big projects, but there’s no doubt this a huge effort not only because of the length, as I mentioned 240 km, but frankly because you’ve got so many bridges that you have to build along the way, over 113 bridges and culverts I’ve been told.

CONSTANT BRAND OF ASSOCIATED PRESS: There’s concern in the European Union that all the funds will not be spent wisely. Do you share that concern, are there similar concerns in Washington?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: There’s been problems in the past with corruption in Indonesia so one of the points I made yesterday in talking with the government is to say the world’s eyes will be on Indonesia and how it handles this project. So far, the government and the finance ministry has been extremely careful about the expenditure of funds and it’s important to have auditing and proper accounting concerns, but I think they also have to get the balance to get some of the money out here too. That’s where again I think President Yudhoyono is vesting considerable authority into Pak Kuntoro, and he certainly has a sense, as I talked with him, he wants to make sure that there are auditing firms involved in this process. But he also wants to move, which we need to do.

CONSTANT BRAND: Do you think it would be wise that perhaps the world’s biggest donors, like the European Union and US, get together and sort of over site, to make sure this money is spent correctly.

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: You have to have some sensitivity here. This is Indonesia here, people of Indonesia are ultimately responsible for this project, but the donor community is certainly actively engaged. The Ambassador set up a session for me yesterday with the World Bank country representative, the Asian Development Bank, UNDP as well as representatives from Australia, they’ve been a good partner on this, the Dutch, the Japanese. I know the European Union has been involved, so I think there has been pretty good coordination, and frankly I want to compliment our country team. They’ve been a key in doing this and also coordinating a lot of the NGOs too.

CONSTANT BRAND: Just straying for just a second off Indonesia, I wonder if I could get your reaction to what happened in Myanmar overnight with another 11 people killed and 100 some people injured in bomb blasts in Rangoon?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: I don’t really have any updated information since its Sunday here, I get some reports from our operation center, but other than to make the point that I made at various stops along the way, which is that Burma will be better able to deal with all these tragedies if it is an open country, returns to democracy. I don’t know who is involved in this, I haven’t seen these sorts of things in the past, but the path for Burma is one of national reconciliation, to release Aung San Suu Kyi, and open up to the world, and so I hope that’s the course that it will take and I know that a number of its ASEAN partners that I have visited want to try to encourage it along that path.

BILL TARRANT: Did the subject come up in your discussions in Jakarta?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK:  What we discussed, I said about the bombing, what we discussed was the broader issue of Indonesia has traditionally played a critical catalytical role among the ASEAN countries. Since the 1997 crisis and with the turnover of various governments, it has been more retiring in that aspect. I think President Yudhoyono intends to return to a more active role, and he has been involved with the Burma issue from an ASEAN perspective, and I believe the UN Secretary General also encouraged him to play a positive role. So yes, we talked about it in a number of aspects. Indonesia has a lot to be proud about, it’s a large country, it covers about 13,000 inhabited islands, but its a democracy. It has struggled with that. But this president was the first directly elected president in Indonesia’s history. It’s a country that’s facing tragedies like this in Aceh. But one of the other things I was doing yesterday, and another support we announced was in education, and some we offered in terms of financial auditing, and trade capacity building, some in inspectors general, was the fact we have to keep our eye on the rest of Indonesia too because it is a very important country in the region and the world.

BILL TARRANT: What I was first struck… I was in Indonesia before in the 1980s, and nobody was allowed, Indonesian press or foreign press, or NGOs, no one was allowed to come to Aceh. What struck me on the plane coming up was the plane was about 1/3 full of foreigners, old people, children, families all traveling together and that was the first thing that struck me is how open this place has become. And for the last question would be along those lines, did you talk about the GAM talks and where they might be headed?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: I talked about those while I was in Jakarta yesterday and again if out of this tragedy there can come a sign of hope, one is that I think the people of Aceh have recognized the incredible out-pouring support from countries around the world. And this is a province that has often felt itself on the wrong end of treatment from people around the world. And so you can see the response of that. Similarly, the support that they’ve got from the government, including the army, the TNI, in terms of some of the reconstruction effort. Third, what I at least got the sense of is that people were worried about the fighting with rebels, and at least that hasn’t impeded the operations to any significant degree so far. That might be because this is primarily a coastal devastation and they are more in the mountains. But on the terms of the mediation, there does seem to be some positive movement. I don’t want to overstate it because this is a challenging problem, but former Prime Minister Ahtisaari of Finland is mediating the process in Stockholm, Sweden. The GAM has representatives in Aceh but also some that have been overseas. This is often the case, sometimes the overseas representatives are the ones that are being more difficult than the ones who are actually living here. And the bigger issue here that all parties are going to have to factor in is the people of Aceh, and because rebel groups may not necessarily represent large segments of the population here, and so I think again, if coming out of this process the civil society of Aceh plays a key role, and I know that’s Pak Kuntoro’s goal here, to try to have this bottom up process in terms of the development. I hope this actually strengthens the overall context for peace and reconciliation. And finally, when I met with the president and the Coordinating Minister for Security yesterday, I mentioned that we certainly encourage the progress. We don’t want to interfere, but if there are ways we can be constructive, sometimes there is US groups that have helped in the mediation, or if they reach an agreement ways that we can be supportive as we are in other parts of the world, we surely want to do so. Because that would at least give some additional sense of hope out of the terrible tragedy and loss of life.

BILL TARRANT: Support after a peace for a framework is agreed about in Helsinki, is that what your talking about?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: Yes, for example, what we’ve done in some place is, in fact, I think we’ve done this in Indonesia as well, is that we’ve had some particular aid prospect, oh no, in the Philippines where I was recently, we have a special aid project dealing with Mindanao and as the government reached some peace with one of the Mindanao national liberation fronts, we had a reintegration into the community project, because for a lot of these people its been going on for generations. They lose a sense of what was the purpose and they just want to get jobs and get on with their life, and then there are some people who are irreconcilable, but those are often of more modest number. This has happened elsewhere, its happened in Central America, and other countries. So if we can help in that sense we certainly want to be open to that possibility.

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