Transcript 
(as delivered)

Press Conference Ambassador B. Lynn Pascoe U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia 

January 1, 2005

Voice: I'd like to introduce Ambassador Lynn Pascoe. Ambassador Pascoe will be making some general remarks about the nature of U.S. assistance to Indonesia in this time of disaster. He'll talk for awhile and then he'll take some questions and he'll be supported here by the Director of our U.S. AID Mission, and by the Defense Attaché of the American Embassy.

Mr. Ambassador?

Ambassador Pascoe: Thank you very much for coming. We'll make this fairly short and fairly informal because you all do have a list of the U.S. response to date.

What we are trying to do is to just give you some idea of where we are and we'll probably be updating as time goes along in the future.

I think the thing that I'd like to note is that as soon as we heard about this on Sunday, we were beginning to do what we can do most efficiently and quickly and the first thing we started to from that first Sunday was to put $100,000 in discretionary funds that are under my control immediately in to the Red Cross so they could start getting up there and start moving.

Then as you see, we also were talking at that point with the Commander in Chief in the Pacific, Admiral Fargo, who immediately called his guys off of R&R in Hong Kong to put them on the USS Abraham Lincoln to start steaming down to this area.

Now this was at the time we didn't even know what the range of the problems were, we had no sense of the magnitude of it, but we knew we needed to get things positioned and get moving in the right direction.

It was then at that point that we immediately started getting sizeable money literally the next day to the Indonesian Red Cross where we came up with $2.1 million to provide shelter, water, medical services.

Then we put $3.5 million into the International Organization of Migration to again start supporting in the region.

Now some people asked sort of, well, you know, Lynn, why didn't you sort of come up with a big sign that said the U.S. government is out here doing everything? Because that's not what we were all about. Our interest was to find out very quickly, and we discussed this in considerable detail, how do we get aid to the people that are still alive up there the fastest? The answer to that was that we work through the people that are on the ground, the people that we've worked within the past that we know are good. They had difficulties, of course, because they had lost people too, but that's why this first effort was to get money and to get food and other things into their hands.

We immediately started scrounging around for every fund that we had, every bit of rice that we knew of somewhere, or food, noodles, other sorts of things that we knew that we had around immediately in the area, to start figuring out a way to get that up there and to move it up.

As you know, the government has been working very hard at this. Everything we're doing is trying to support their efforts. They set up a center in Medan. We immediately, as you know we keep one person there, we have, but we immediately ugraded our staff there to seven or eight, now it may be 15 people or so altogether counting the military personnel the are there, to coordinate with the local authorities on how we get this food and other issue up as fast as we can.

When it became clear that one of the main problems was transportation inside Aceh because of all of the losses that had occurred there, we again tried to be creative and we went out and I, correct me if I'm wrong, Herbie, but I think first we hired 30 trucks in the region, the Medan region, filled them up and said we're going to hire you for a month. Your job is to go up there and provide transportation. That has since been upped to 80 trucks that we are sending up there to move around.

These trucks don't necessarily look American or any other thing, but these trucks are the ones that you see transporting the food and other things around in Banda Aceh.

We also worked as fast as we could to try and get other kinds of assistance there. For example, obviously everybody in the embassy that has anything to do with this area was working as hard as we could to get people out and to get equipment and resources flowing there, but we reached into the embassy and out of our Naval Research Unit, which most of you know is part of the embassy here. It's a naval group which is designed to work on tropical diseases. They do fantastic work in malaria and other tropical diseases in the region. We reached into this group, and we have three doctors from the group who we immediately sent up to Medan to be able to be positioned to go in. They have for the last two days been some of the first foreign doctors, if not the first foreign doctors, in [Muipo], out there working to try to find people to help, to see what we can do to help them, and also to figure out how many loads of food and such were needed when the helicopters and others arrived.

You will see the numbers there. I'm not going to go down through all of them, of the kinds of things that we have done and that we've supplied. But let me say as this process moved forward, as we got the military equipment here closer, we got C-130s out of, mostly out of Okinawa to come down and to first stage in Utapao. The couple of C-130s that you're going to see today are part of that process. We've had flights up there already delivering water, food, medical supplies. They are going to join in with the Australian effort as sort of a continuous belt of transportation and help up in the region.

But all of us knew, and we all know, that when you start flowing a huge amount of aid through you're going to hit bottlenecks. We all found it. The government found it, we found it, it's perfectly normal. We couldn't get the stuff out of the Banda Aceh airfield fast enough and it was slowing down everything else. So we did everything we could except triple the speed of the aircraft carrier to get it here as fast as we could possibly get here. Even while it was coming up the Malacca Strait, one of the helicopters with the leaders of the group flew into Medan to consult with your government leaders there about what our strategy was going to be when they got up there the next day.

Those planes, I think nine are flying today and they are carrying food, medicinal equipment, water, other things down all along that west coast which has been so horribly devastated.

Finally, I'd like to make two last points. The first one being that this is not a U.S. effort. We're not taking credit for it. This is an effort by the entire world at this point. Clearly the lead goes to the government of Indonesia which has been doing I think as good a job as one could possibly expect considering the horrible conditions that are out there. We've been quite impressed with their operation. We've been trying to help where we can. But in addition to that you have many countries around the world that are contributing. But most striking to me I think has been how the individual American corporations and citizens are contributing to that. So much of the food and other items that are out on the trucks that you saw out there lined up today that will be going up by C-130 to Banda Aceh, those were contributed by either American companies or the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Marriott has been deeply involved, Nike has been involved, Caterpillar is trying to get heavy equipment up there, City Group has been involved. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is trying to find all of the sorts of ways that they can contribute. So when they bring [it up], we said bring this up here today, we'll get it on our airplane and get it up there as fast as we can.

So that's what we're all about. It's a cooperative effort. We're not trying to take credit. We're not trying to blame or suggest or anything else. What we're trying to say is we're all working at this together and we want to do anything we can to ameliorate this terrible tragedy for the Indonesian people.

Let me must mention two things and I think you've got, again, a list of what we're going to put on these planes today. The important thing I think is to mention how this is a cooperative operation again.

We are trying to use the various resources that we can beg, borrow or steal -- not literally, but you all know that American expression, and some of our bureaucratic people might think that's what we're trying to do as we're trying to get the money, but we are trying to get the things up there as fast as we can. This is very much a volunteer operation. Several of us came out from the embassy to join others that are going to be out here loading this up today. Our real effort is to get the stuff, get it on the planes, get the planes turned around and get them up to Aceh.

That's all I have. If anybody has any questions, please.

Q: [inaudible]?

A: Yes, we've been talking with the Australians from the very first, and early on. Our military commander in the Pacific has been talking with General Cosgrove at great length. I've been in some of those conversations. We're trying to, I've talked with Admiral Fargo afterwards. We're trying to make sure that everything we do is coordinated, that there's no wasted motion. Frankly, this is too important and too many lives are at stake to get into any sort of bureaucratic mixups or things. We're doing everything we can to avoid it.

The cooperation with the Indonesian government has been superb. The cooperation with the Australian government is superb. And I'm sure as we watch over the next few days as assistance flows in from other countries we're going to do everything we can to make that as smooth as possible.

Q: [inaudible], Associated Press. I don't know if you're aware, but over the years the opinion at least among the majority of Indonesians about America has gone down, maybe in the light of the Iraq war, Afghanistan war. How do you think this effort can help maybe change the hearts and minds of Indonesians about America?

A: I think this is a very straightforward issue. We are trying to save lives, we're trying to help rebuild, we're trying to help the Indonesians take care of what is just an overwhelming tragedy themselves. I must say that that's our goal, that's our aim, and that's what we will continue working at.

Q: [inaudible]?

A: This issue, as you know, is being discussed internationally, and I'm sure the discussion will go on over the next few days.

Frankly, what we have been doing is trying to concentrate on the shortest term needs. Someone asked me, I was talking to our representative at the Asian Development Bank the other day and he said Lynn, we want to do everything we can. We've got all of this money we want to put in for the rebuilding. I said that's wonderful. We want to be part of that. We will have lots of ideas on good ways for that to be done. But I have to tell you, right now we're in the very short term business of trying to get food, medicine and water up to people who are in desperate need and some medical assistance to people that are in desperate need. So that's our first focus for this week. I am sure that all of these other issues will be discussed out there, and we certainly can talk about them.

Q: Sir, [inaudible]?

A: I'm sorry, I don't want to oversell anything. At the moment we've got three people up there, and they're medical doctors that are trying to help. We are working and trying to again work closely with the Australians to make sure that the medical help we bring in is in a different place, is complementary, and is most effective as the government of Indonesia sees it.

So we do not at this point have in place a military hospital. We're working on that issue. But I think it's going to -- It will really depend I think on what our team finds and what the medical people from the aircraft carrier that will be going in to work really find the needs are, then we'll work from there. We are still at this point really trying to define some of those needs.

As you know, no foreigners had even been in [Meulaboh] and [Jem] just a couple of days ago, so we're trying hard to get them there.

Q: -- the death toll from the Asia region, from Indonesia. And I was wondering if you spread amount of money or amount of assistance to all these countries, the same amount, or Indonesia has maybe more of that is from here.

A: Let me just say that, I watched this on the television programs and such in debating who is giving what and how much and who gives what at what time. Quite frankly, other than as a morale booster, that is not the issue because this is going to be a terrible problem over time. I think the fact that the U.S. upped their overall assistance from $35 million -- which in fact the $35 million did not include most of what we have already spent already -- to $350 million, was mostly an indication of the fact that everybody sees the tragedy as growing, the problems are growing, and what we will try to do, and as we always have in the past, is to match the resources and the money to the crisis and the problems out there.

So it's perfectly normal, people said, when we first said we put in $100,000. Well everybody said gee, that's not much money. Of course it's not, but it's a lot of money in one day for the Red Cross to be able to get in and operate. But that's the issue. How do we get money in fast to where it's needed without making big, broad promises that some money somewhere down the line. That just doesn't work.

I think we've made it quite clear, everybody understands that one of the largest focus, certainly the largest focus is going to be on Indonesia. That is no question. Again, that's something we might not have said four days ago because we didn't know what the numbers were at that point, but we do now.

Q: -- $350 million, do you have any idea how much of that will be going to Indonesia?

A: Not yet at this point. We'll have teams that will be working on that. As I say, at some point a fair amount of that money and I would guess it would be commensurate with the destruction which of course is huge here. But we will have to even begin to be talking about what kind of reconstruction, what kind of help needs to be done, and Bill and his guys are going to be into that in a huge way.

As you know, our program for the next five years in aid planning and such already had a sizeable emphasis on Aceh. That was before we knew that we had this kind of a huge problem.

We will see over the next few days and weeks exactly what that problem is and how huge it is. But right at the moment we're still in the phase -- I really want to make -- the point I want to make is the short-term issue for us this week has been how do we get food, medicine, assistance out to these people and we are not looking around about who's this, who's that, who gets credit for what. What we're trying to do is to put it into the most effective organizations on the ground that can make it work.

Q: How long do you think it will be before you can get a system up and running --

A: I would say it could take as much as two weeks to have a system in place and things like that. What are you thinking?

I don't like to make great predictions. In terms of on the ground I think we've got a system already in place that's running. Our big problems as we deal with each one, we move as quickly as we can to get that to work. So when we found we were having trouble transporting things around in Banda Aceh and getting them up there and we had an airport full, then we went for the trucks which are very critical.

We knew all along that as the pictures came out on the west coast, that only helicopters can get to most of that area out there, and the biggest batch of helicopters we had anywhere in the region is on the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's why we have them here.

Q: -- Indonesia, and who from the U.S. government will arrive [inaudible]?

A: As you know, Secretary Powell will be arriving here and be here on the evening of the 4th to the 6th. We have not, I have not heard from Washington at this point who is going to make the, who will in the end represent the U.S. government. We'll probably know that by tomorrow. At the conference. But certainly Secretary Powell accompanied by Governor Jeb Bush and Andrew Natsios the head of AID, our FEMA Director which is our emergency program that has a lot of insight. The United States had a lot of experience with hurricanes this year and lots of destruction, is on that delegation as well as Jim Kelly, also from the State Department. So it will be a sizeable group of people that will be here, and the clear purpose of that delegation is to show U.S. concern and have some of our most expert people see up close the problems so we can jumpstart this follow-on reconstruction and other assistance.

Q: [inaudible]?

A: That's exactly what we've been trying to do. We've gone at this in two directions. One is by hiring these 80 trucks that we are actually renting them for a month. If the problem continues I'm sure we'll rent them again, or some of them. So we are trying to provide the truck transportation in the immediate area of Banda Aceh so we can get, as far as the roads go, so we can get food out to people.

The second thing is by all odds the biggest push to get assistance on down the coast are those helicopters that are on board the aircraft carrier. They're operating today, I'm sure. I haven't seen television today but I'm sure there are going to be pictures of them carrying, making trip after trip after trip to pick up the stuff, to carry it over, to let it down where people are, and to go back and make another run at it. That's what they're going to be doing day after day after day is getting every bit of food down country on the west side that they can get down.

Q: -- aid effort, as you know, mil-to-mil relations haven't been all that, there's been a lot of tension over mil-to-mil in the last years. Again, this is the first time in a long time that U.S. troops have landed in Indonesia. They appear to be welcome. What do you think that says about the future of mil-to-mil, this effort, what you guys are doing up there?

A: I'd like to go back to the same thing I said before, Mike, and not make great predictions. I think the issue really is how do we get help most effectively to the people who need it today? That's what we're doing. We're working very closely with the TNI. The TNI is on those helicopters. We are cooperating with them wherever they are, at the airports and other places. I think that cooperation has been very good and we are fully sure that it will continue to be very close because we're working with the same goal, trying to decide how we can help these people in their time of need.

Thank you very much. We've got some work to do outside.

(END)

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