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Colin Powell Speaks at State Department

Aired November 20, 2001 - 09:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We quickly take you live to the State Department where Secretary of State Colin Powell is addressing the issue of a future government for Afghanistan.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: -- what freedom is all about. The United States and our coalition partners, the United Nations and others, all of us in the international community are moving quickly to provide life-saving humanitarian supplies. Withdrawals of Taliban forces have opened up more and more regions of Afghanistan to international relief efforts.

The American people are proud that the United States has long been the leading humanitarian donor to Afghanistan. And in October, President Bush announced an additional allocation of $320 million specifically to help Afghan refugees; Afghan refugees that are located in neighboring countries and the displaced persons within Afghanistan itself.

The international community's vital humanitarian work clearly must continue and gain pace as the Taliban retreats and the winter gets ever closer. The time has already arrived, however, to look beyond just immediate humanitarian needs to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the country. We must seek and seize opportunities to begin reconstruction as areas of the country are freed from Taliban control. We cannot wait. We must act as fast as we can. We must act as soon as possible.

At the same time, the international community will be unable to carry out reconstruction on a scale that is needed until there is an Afghan partner. This requires the emergence of an interim political authority and such an authority must lead to a broadbased government that represents all the people of the country; people of every ethnic background and region, women as well as men. Indeed, in all of our efforts -- relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction -- we must ensure that women play prominent roles as planners, as implementers and as beneficiaries.

In order to survive through the years of fear and misery, the women and men of Afghanistan drew deeply on their courage, their ingenuity, their skills and, above all, on their faith. With our close cooperation and the disciplined management of the assistance we provide, we can help the Afghan people draw on those same strengths to recover and to thrive in a 21st century world. Success, of course, ultimately depends on the will of the people of Afghanistan and their legitimate representatives to build a free society with free markets and a stable drug-free environment in which political and economic freedom and activity can flourish.

We have called you here together today not for a pledging conference. We do not yet know how much money and other forms of rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance will be needed from the international community.

The security situation in Afghanistan does not yet allow comprehensive needs assessment, but we are confident that such an evaluation can and should be made soon.

Our meeting today is a crucial start, the start of a long process, one that must grow to include many other countries than those represented here and many other organizations that will have important contributions to make as we go forward. It is imperative that we begin today to address in a systematic way the many practical issues of transition and reconstruction that lie ahead.

One important step would be to organize a steering group to help focus our efforts at the policy level, encourage contributions and give overall guidance. The steering group would collaborate closely with the Afghan support group's work on humanitarian relief. We hope that the steering group would convene in the month ahead. It would take into account the meeting next week in Islamabad of representatives from the World Bank, the U.N. Development Program and the Asian Development Bank.

As soon as it is feasible --

ZAHN: We are dipping into Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to give you an idea of what will happen at this day-long conference today. The secretary of state talking about the challenge of rebuilding Afghanistan after the war, saying that the reconstruction must start in the areas that are free of the Taliban. The secretary of state making note of the fact that for a long time the U.S. has been the leading humanitarian donor to Afghanistan.

This meeting today being co-chaired with Japan in advance of a meeting being held at the end of month in Pakistan by the World Bank where more specifics of this reconstruction will be nailed down. At least 14 government and different international organizations and banks are attending today's meeting, once again, with the idea of how you reconstruct Afghan -- Afghanistan after the war.

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