[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ADVANCING UNITED STATES' INTERESTS AT THE
UNITED NATIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 16, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-59
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
TOM EMMER, MinnesotaUntil 5/18/
15 deg.
DANIEL DONOVAN, New YorkAs
of 5/19/15 deg.
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESS
The Honorable Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative,
United States Mission to the United Nations, U.S. Department of
State.......................................................... 4
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Samantha Power: Prepared statement................. 8
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 60
Hearing minutes.................................................. 61
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 63
Written responses from the Honorable Samantha Power to questions
submitted for the record by the Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida......... 64
ADVANCING UNITED STATES' INTERESTS AT THE UNITED NATIONS
----------
TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Royce
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Royce. This hearing will come to order.
This morning we look at the role of the United Nations and
we look at the role of the U.S. there with Ambassador Samantha
Power.
She has spent 2 years as the U.S. Permanent Representative
to the U.N. The Ambassador has approached her job with great
energy, great determination, perhaps best shown during last
year's Ebola crisis in West Africa. And, in that case, the
administration and Congress worked together to contain Ebola
and to save lives. Ambassador, thank you for those efforts.
Thank you for joining us today.
The Ambassador's testimony comes at an important time. If a
final Iran nuclear agreement is reached, and the deadline is in
2 weeks, then the Security Council will be expected to remove
international sanctions while preserving the ability to react
to Iranian cheating. And given all we know about the history of
Iran's nuclear program, cheating should be expected.
The committee wants to know how, in a case of cheating, a
proposed sanctions ``snap-back'' process would work. We know
for sure that Russia and China wouldn't make this easy. And I
have never known any U.N. process described as taking place in
a ``snap.'' Last week's revelation by a panel of U.N. experts
that there has been not a single report of Iran violating the
U.N. arms embargo not only lacks any credibility, but calls
into serious question the chances of the U.N. snapping back any
sanctions.
The committee is disturbed to watch the U.N.'S continuing
anti-Israeli bias, especially in the Human Rights Council. More
disturbing is that the Obama administration seems to be on the
brink of discarding decades of bipartisan support of Israeli
against the U.N. onslaught. President Obama has raised the
dramatic step of allowing the Security Council to impose
conditions related to a two-state solution rather than
supporting negotiations between the parties themselves.
Ambassador, as Ranking Member Engel and I wrote to you the
other month, an imposed plan will not get us closer to peace.
Nearby, Syrians are being slaughtered before the world's
eyes. Two years ago the United Nations called the crisis in
Syria the worst humanitarian disaster since the Rwandan
genocide. Yet, despite several U.N. resolutions, the Assad
regime continues its indiscriminate barrel bombing and chemical
weapons attacks.
Those responsible for these war crimes must be held
accountable. Ambassador, you have said this, to your credit.
But when? When will that accountability come? The committee
hears testimony tomorrow from some of the brave Syrians who
have appeared in front of the Security Council to share their
stories of responding to Assad's abhorrent attacks, including
chemical attacks.
Elsewhere, religious minorities are under attack. Unable to
claim citizenship in Burma or elsewhere, many have called the
Rohingyas ``the most persecuted minority in the world.''
Burma's persecution has led thousands to desperately flee to
overloaded boats. Many are rightly bothered by the United
Nation's poor track record protecting Rohingyas. Young Rohingya
Muslim girls can think that they are finding safe haven, but
end up being trafficked, being sexually exploited, being led
into a lifetime of misery.
United Nation's peacekeeping, by the way, despite many
shortcomings, has managed to protect innocent civilians and
minorities. In recent years, the missions in the Democratic
Republican of Congo, in Mali and South Sudan have saved lives.
The committee wants to continue working with the Ambassador to
see that these missions are appropriately supported, and we
hope that something can be done for the Rohingya people. That
is easier if failing missions some decades old are closed and
the horrendous sexual abuses are tackled head on.
U.N. reforms shouldn't be limited to peacekeeping. This
summer, when the U.N.'S scale of assessments is reviewed, I
trust the U.S. delegation will be working to spread the burden
and give major donors greater say in management decisions.
Ambassador Power, you will be wrestling with many critical
issues in the coming months. To say you have a difficult and
even hostile environment at the U.N. is an understatement, but
you do not appear to be one to shy away from a challenge. I
look forward to continuing to work with you on these pressing
matters. We thank you again for being with us today.
And I will now turn to Mr. Eliot Engel, the ranking member,
of New York for his opening statement.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing.
And, Ambassador Power, welcome. Thank you for your
testimony today and, more importantly, for your distinguished
service. As far as I am concerned, you are certainly the right
person at the right time to be our U.N. Ambassador and we are
lucky to have you.
Across seven decades, the United Nations has done a great
deal of good: Millions saved from starvation, diseases like
smallpox wiped off the map, sanctions that have ended conflict
and curbed terrorism, peacekeeping missions that have brought
stability to war-torn regions.
At the same time, however, we must acknowledge that the
U.N. is far from perfect. We need to improve the organization's
management, enhance transparency and strengthen internal
oversight, and we must continue to speak out forcefully when
member states use the U.N. as a platform to unfairly single out
Israel.
In my mind, the best way to address these problems and to
advance American foreign policy priorities is to maintain our
engagement with the organization. U.S. leadership at the U.N.
has headed off deeply biased and one-sided resolutions
targeting Israel. We cast a lone no vote against the Commission
of Inquiry into the situation in Gaza.
We have helped scale back the number of anti-Israel efforts
in the Human Rights Council overall. And the Human Rights
Council has really been a joke, as far as I am concerned.
We pushed back against the resolution recognizing
Palestinian statehood, and we have rejected efforts by the
Palestinians to use the U.N. to gain concessions from Israel
outside of the context of negotiations.
I want to thank you, Madam Ambassador, because you have
been such a champion to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador to the
U.N. said last week that, if it weren't for the help of the
United States and you personally, Israel--and I quote him--
``would be in real trouble.'' When the United Nations continues
to attack Israel, it really undermines the credibility of the
United Nations.
I am confident that you will continue to make clear, Madam
Ambassador, that the United States will continue to oppose any
biased or one-sided resolutions at the U.N. and that we will
not shy away from using our veto at the Security Council, if
necessary, despite some of the rhetoric we have heard from
President Obama.
But even with strong American involvement, the U.N. has
been virtually paralyzed when it comes to a range of challenges
around the world because other members of the Security Council
continue to block meaningful action. I would like to mention
just a few. I am eager to hear your views on these topics.
I will start with the civil war in Syria. Half the
population of that country has been displaced. An entire
generation is growing up in refugee camps. To be sure, the U.N.
has done a lot for refugee families in Jordan, Lebanon, and
Turkey, and most of the assistance for Syrian people inside
Syria has flowed through the U.N.
But Russia's intransigence has prevented the U.N. from
playing a more active role in helping the Syrian people chart a
better future for their country. And that is only the tip of
the iceberg with Russia.
Under Vladimir Putin's leadership or lack of leadership,
Russia has walked away from democracy, the rule of law, and
human rights. Their ongoing intervention in Ukraine threatens
stability and democracy across Europe. This war has left
thousands dead, tens of thousands wounded, and more than 1
million displaced. We need to expose the Kremlin's lies
wherever and whenever we can. So I commend you for shining a
light on the hard facts in the U.N.
With regard to Iran, we are all eager to see what a
comprehensive nuclear deal will look like. I am particularly
concerned about who will determine if Iran is in violation of
the agreement. What happens if we think Iran has stepped over
the line, but Russia and China disagree? I am also concerned
about how and when U.N. sanctions against Iran will be lifted.
The U.N. is going to have a big role to play, and I am eager to
hear your views about how this process will move forward.
Finally, in our own neighborhood, I am very pleased that
the mandate for the U.N. International Commission Against
Impunity in Guatemala was recently renewed. Creating similar
conditions in Honduras and El Salvador would make a big
difference in fighting corruption and impunity, and I hope we
can work together urging our partners to take this step.
Ambassador Power, thank you again for appearing today. I
look forward to your testimony.
Chairman Royce. Thank you.
So this morning we are pleased to be joined by Ambassador
Samantha Power. She is the United States Permanent
Representative to the United Nations and a member of the
President's cabinet.
Prior to her appointment to the U.N., Ambassador Power
served as special assistant to the President and Senior
Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the
National Security staff at the White House. Ambassador Power is
the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ``A Problem from Hell:
America and the Age of Genocide.''
We thank you for being with us today.
And, without objection, the witness' full prepared
statement will be made part of the record and members will have
5 calendar days to submit any statements or questions or
extraneous material for the record.
Ambassador Power, I would ask you if you could please
summarize your remarks and then we will go to questions. Thank
you.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. PERMANENT
REPRESENTATIVE, UNITED STATES MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Congressman Engel.
Distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today and thank you for being here.
Thank you, also, for your leadership in advancing America's
national security interests and our values in the world.
Last week I traveled to Ukraine, where I had the chance to
see up close what happens when the rules undergirding our
international peace and security are ignored.
At a shelter for displaced families in Kiev, I met a mother
who told me how her husband and 2-year-old child had been
killed in February when a shell struck their home in a village
in eastern Ukraine.
The shelling, as you all know, was part of a sustained
assault by combined Russian separatist forces and the victims,
just two of the more than 6,300 people who had been killed in
the Moscow-manufactured conflict.
Shortly after the attack the mother fled town with her five
surviving children in a van whose roof and doors had been
blasted out. Her plea, one I heard echoed by many of the
displaced families I met from eastern Ukraine and occupied
Crimea, was for the fighting to stop and for their basic rights
to be respected.
As the members of this committee know, we are living in a
time of daunting global crises. In the last year alone, Russia
continued to train, arm, and fight alongside separatists in
eastern Ukraine. A deadly epidemic spread across West Africa,
and monstrous terrorist groups seized territory across the
Middle East and North Africa committing unspeakable atrocities.
These are the kinds of threats that the United Nations
exists to prevent and address. Yet, it is precisely at the
moment when we need the U.N. most that we see the flaws in the
international system, some of which have been alluded to
already.
This is true for the conflict in Ukraine in which a
permanent member of the U.N. Security Council is violating the
sovereignty and territorial integrity that it was entrusted
with upholding.
It is true of the global health system that, despite
multiple warnings of a spreading Ebola outbreak, including
those from our own CDC, was slow to respond to the epidemic.
And it is true of U.N. peacekeepers who too often stand
down or stand by when civilians they are responsible for
protecting come under attack, thus leaving populations
vulnerable and sometimes open to radicalization.
Representing our Nation before the United Nations, I have
to confront these and other shortcomings every day. Yet, though
I am clear-eyed about the U.N.'S vulnerabilities, the central
point I want to make to this committee is that America needs
the United Nations to address today's global challenges.
The United States has the most powerful set of tools in
history to advance its interests, and we will always lead on
the world stage. But we are more effective when we ensure that
others shoulder their fair share and when we marshal
multilateral support to meet our objectives.
Let me quickly outline five ways we are doing that at the
U.N.
First, we are rallying multilateral coalitions to address
transnational threats. Consider Iran. In addition to working
with Congress to put in place unprecedented U.S. sanctions on
the Iranian Government, in 2010 the Obama administration
galvanized the U.N. Security Council to authorize one of the
toughest multilateral sanctions regimes in history.
The combination of unilateral and multilateral pressure was
crucial to bringing Iran to the negotiating table and
ultimately to laying the foundation whereby we were able to
reach a framework agreement that would, if we can get a final
deal, effectively cut off every pathway for the Iranian regime
to develop a nuclear weapon.
Consider our response to the Ebola epidemic. Last
September, as people were dying outside hospitals in West
Africa, hospitals that had no beds left to treat the exploding
number of Ebola patients, the United States chaired the first-
ever emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council dedicated
to a global health issue.
We pressed countries to deploy doctors and nurses, to build
clinics and testing labs, and to fill other gaps that
ultimately helped bend the outbreak's exponentially rising
curve.
America did not just rally others to step up, we led by
example, thanks, also, very much to the support of this
Congress deploying more than 3,500 U.S. Government civilian and
military personnel to Liberia, which has been Ebola-free since
early May.
Second, we are reforming U.N. peacekeeping to help address
the threats to international peace and security that exist in
the 21st century. There are more than 100,000 uniformed police
and soldiers deployed in the U.N.'S 16 peacekeeping missions
around the world. That is a higher number than in any time in
history, with more complex responsibilities also than ever
before.
The United States has an abiding strategic interest in
resolving the conflicts where peacekeepers serve, which can
quickly cause regional instability and attract extremist groups
as we have seen in Mali. Yet, while we have seen peacekeepers
serve with bravery and professionalism in many of the world's
most dangerous operating environments, we have also seen
chronic problems too often, as mentioned, including the failure
to protect civilians.
We are working aggressively to address these shortfalls. To
give just one example, we are persuading more advanced
militaries to step up and contribute soldiers and police to
U.N. peacekeeping. That was the aim of a summit that Vice
President Biden convened at the U.N. last September where
Colombia, Sweden, Indonesia, and more than a dozen other
countries announced new troop commitments.
And it is the message I took directly to European leaders
in March when I made the case in Brussels that peacekeeping is
a critical way for militaries to do their fair share in
protecting our common security interests, particularly as they
draw down in Afghanistan.
This coming September, President Obama will convene another
summit of world leaders to build on this momentum and help
catalyze a new wave of commitments and generate a new set of
capabilities for U.N. peacekeeping.
Third, we are fighting to end bias and discrimination at
the U.N. day in and day out we push back against efforts to de-
legitimize Israel at the U.N. and we fight for its right to be
treated like any other nation, from mounting a full-court
diplomatic press, to heap secure Israel's permanent membership
into two U.N. groups from which it had long and unjustly been
excluded, to consistently and firmly opposing one-sided actions
in international bodies.
In December, when a deeply unbalanced draft resolution on
the Israel-Palestinian conflict was hastily put before the
Security Council, the United States successfully rallied a
coalition to join us in voting against it, ensuring that the
resolution failed to achieve the nine votes of Security Council
members required for adoption. We will continue to confront
anti-Israel bias wherever we encounter it.
Fourth, we are working to use U.N. tools to promote human
rights and affirm human dignity as we did by working with
partners to hold the first-ever Security Council meeting
focused on the human rights situation in North Korea in
December. We used that session to shine a light on the regime's
horrors, a light we kept shining through a panel discussion I
hosted in April with escaped victims of the regime.
One woman told of being forced to watch the executions of
fellow prisoners who committed the ``crime'' of daring to ask
why they had been imprisoned, while another woman told how
members from three generations of her family--her grandmother,
her father, and her younger brother--had starved to death. This
is important for U.N. member states to hear.
Fifth, we are doing everything within our power to make the
U.N. more fiscally responsible, more accountable, and more
nimble, both because we have a responsibility to ensure
American taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and because
maximizing the efficiency of our contributions means saving
more lives and better protecting the world's most vulnerable
people.
Since the 2008 to 2009 fiscal year, we have reduced the
cost per peacekeeper by 18 percent and we are constantly
looking for ways to rightsize missions in response to
conditions on the ground as we will do this year through
substantial drawdowns in Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti, and Liberia,
among other missions.
Let me conclude. At the outset, I spoke of my recent visit
to Ukraine. Across the range of Ukrainians I met, from the
mother who lost her husband and 2-year-old child in the
assaults by combined Russian separatist forces, to the brave
students who risked their lives to take part in the Maidan
protesters against the kleptocratic Yanukovych government, to
the young members of Parliament working to fight corruption and
increase transparency, what united them was the yearning for
certain basic rights and the belief that the United States
could lead other countries and the United Nations in helping
make their aspirations a reality.
I heard the same sentiment when visiting the U.N.-run camps
of people displaced by violence in the Central African
Republic, in South Sudan, and in the Ebola-affected communities
of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone at the peak of the
outbreak.
Some may view the expectation that America can help people
overcome their greatest challenges and secure their basic
rights as a burden. In fact, that expectation is one of our
Nation's greatest strengths and one we have a vested interest
in striving to live up to, daunting as it may feel in the face
of so many crises.
But we cannot do it alone, nor should we want to. That is
why it is more important than ever that we use the U.N. to
rally the multilateral support needed to confront today's
myriad challenges.
Thank you. And I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Power follows:]
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----------
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Ambassador.
Myself and Eliot Engel have had frequent conversations on
this issue of Iran's nuclear weapons capability, and I
indicated several years ago that this was going to be the
primary focus of this committee, was trying to prevent what I
worry will be the undetectable nuclear breakout capability of
Iran.
Now, I want to ask you about this Iran agreement and U.N.
snap-back sanctions. If we have cheating on the part of Iran,
as they have cheated on every other agreement so far--and this,
I would presume, is going to be a real problem if we go forward
and we don't get the verification in this agreement that has to
be in the agreement--so now we take up this dispute resolution
panel, as it is called, this issue, which would likely include
the six powers and Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency
would also continue reporting on Iran's program under this
suggestion here.
But here is my question. You have got Russia and China
playing a role. So it is not clear to me how U.N. sanctions
realistically would snap back once the cheating is found. And I
would just add the caveat that we would also probably see a
situation where Russian, Chinese, French, German companies are
back in Iran. Commerce is flowing. It is going to be very
difficult stop, certainly not at a snap. So walk me through
that, if you would.
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First let me very much agree with the comment you made
earlier that nothing that happens at the U.N. tends to happen
in a snap. I have lived that firsthand.
But let me also underscore that President Obama and the
entire negotiating team and certainly I, as a member of the
administration, also embrace your premise that we cannot trust
on the basis of past Iranian actions, on the basis of current
Iranian actions, outside the nuclear sphere.
So I think there are two very important aspects, both of
which you have touched upon, but just to elaborate on, that
show that any agreement that we reach would be predicated, in
fact, on a lack of trust.
So the first is, in fact, one of the most intrusive
inspection regimes imaginable, the ability to monitor what is
happening along the nuclear supply chain to an unprecedented
extent, forever commitments related to the additional protocol,
and the modified code. I mean, these are things that are going
to last well beyond the life of this agreement.
And I think what is important about it is recognizing that
there, of course, are dangers of covert capabilities being
brought online. And that, again, is what this inspection regime
is oriented around.
But the second manifestation, I think, of the lack of trust
is the snap-back mechanism. And one snap-back mechanism, of
course, is within our own hands. There are many sanctions that
the President of the United States just would be able to snap
back with the stroke of a pen.
But, in my world, President Obama has been very clear from
the very beginning that we cannot allow a procedure for snap-
back to be left in the hands of Russia or China for the very
reason that you indicate.
While it is true that we were able to get the multilateral
sanctions regime through the Security Council, again, the
toughest, I think, in the 70-year history of the United
Nations, it does not therefore follow that, in the event of
breach, that we would be able to get that same resolution
through a second time.
And so, while I can't get into the specifics of the
mechanism right now because we are at a very delicate stage in
the negotiation and all of this is being worked through to the
finest detail, I can say, number one, Congress will be briefed
as soon as the deal is done, if it gets done, and, number two,
we will not support a snap-back mechanism or an agreement that
includes a snap-back mechanism that leaves us vulnerable in the
manner that you are fearful of. In other words, we will retain
the ability to snap that multilateral sanctions architecture
back in place without Russian or Chinese support.
Chairman Royce. I think that has to be the focus because it
took so many years for the international sanctions to be put in
place so that those companies terminated their business with
Iran. And now we have a situation as a result of the way this
is being negotiated where they are all waiting to position
themselves to get back into the country.
Now, the other aspect of this, as you say, we are going to
have an effective sanctions regime. That would imply, then,
that what the Iranians are telling the world, which is that
there is not going to be any investigation on their military
bases, that the international inspectors are not going to be
able to have access to those types of sites--and, as you know,
that is where they have done a lot of their testing, is on
those military sites--that would put us in the precarious
position of an agreement that would be like the 1994 Framework
Agreement with North Korea, where without the ability of the
international inspectors to actually go into those types of
sites, the cheating would be, in a case like that, not even
detectable.
So, again, this is why 367 Members of this body, the
majority of our colleagues on one side of the aisle and a vast
majority on the other side of the aisle, in other words, an
overwhelming majority of this institution, have written a
letter to the President saying, ``We do have to have the
international inspectors have this ability to go onto those
military bases and other sites anywhere, anytime. That has to
be in this negotiation.''
Let me raise another issue, too, and that is an issue that
I know you have spent a lot of time on at the United Nations.
Despite the deal with Russia to remove Assad's chemical
weapons, it is clear he still has some of them. It is clear he
is still using them, especially having them dropped on Aleppo.
And, Madam Ambassador, given Russia's clear desire to
protect the Assad regime, what can the U.N. do, and
particularly the Security Council here, to effectively confront
the crisis in Syria?
And I will just ask you for your thoughts, but also mention
that last month Ranking Member Engel and I offered a successful
amendment to the defense policy bill directing the Pentagon to
closely examine a no-fly zone over Syria's skies. This would
especially relate to Aleppo and the other civilian areas which
are routinely, routinely, bombarded.
And, you know, of course, the United States can't do this
on its own. It would need strong support and participation from
our allies and partners in the region. And many of them have
been asking and offering, by the way, their support, asking for
this kind of a step, a no-fly zone that would protect the
civilian population there.
And tell me about your engagement on that issue and where
that might stand at the United Nations.
Ambassador Power. Okay, Mr. Chairman. Let me, if I could,
just a quick comment on your additional comment on Iran to
simply say that there has been a lot of rhetoric from the
Supreme Leader, from the Iranian President, from many within
Iran, and there is a lot of politics going on, and I think it
is not helpful for us to get into the psychology of what any
particular Iran leader is thinking or saying at a given time.
Chairman Royce. Well, Ambassador, it is not difficult to
interpret what he is trying to message when he routinely starts
the mornings with rallies of ``Death to America.''
Ambassador Power. I understand.
Chairman Royce. I interpret that he means what he is saying
in these cases.
Ambassador Power. Well, all I wanted to underscore before,
turning to your important Syria question instead of comments,
is President Obama will not accept a deal in which we do not
get the access that we need in order to verify compliance.
Chairman Royce. Thank you. We want to hold the President to
that. Thank you.
Ambassador Power. I am sure you will.
So, on Syria, let me first address the chemical weapons
issue. Because of the credible threat of military force back in
2013, we were able to forge an agreement with the Russians, one
of the rare instances.
As you know, they have used their veto four times on Syria-
related issues, including a referral of some of the worst
atrocities we have seen since the second World War, a referral
of those crimes to the International Criminal Court. They
vetoed that. They vetoed very mild condemnatory language.
We live their alliance with the Syrian regime and the costs
and consequences of that every day. I mentioned in my opening
remarks Ukraine and the perverse consequences of a permanent
member trying to lop off part of someone else's country. To see
a veto holder use its veto in this reckless, disgraceful way is
extremely disturbing.
However, in this one instance, we were able to team up in
order to get this dismantling regime put in place. The OPCW and
the U.N. stepped up together, really, in an unprecedented way,
building the airplane as they flew it. And, as a result, we
have the removal and/or destruction of 100 percent of the
declared Syrian chemical weapons program.
But you are absolutely right. We also have alarming and
grave reports that the Syrians, seemingly incapable of fighting
without drawing on chemical weapons, have now found a new way,
even with the dismantlement of their declared chemical weapons
regime, which is to turn chlorine into a chemical weapon.
We are pushing at the Security Council. We have just in the
last few months secured another resolution again, somehow
getting Russia's support to make it very clear to the world
that just because chlorine is a household product doesn't make
it not a chemical weapon when it is put in a barrel bomb and
dropped on civilians. So we made that clear in the hopes that
that would be a deterrent, threatened further measures.
We are now at the point in which we need accountability for
these crimes. And we are pushing--I don't want to get ahead of
diplomatic discussions--but pushing Russia to take ownership of
this, to use their influence with the regime behind the scenes
and to move forward and get something through the Security
Council that would actually establish accountability.
Separate from that, in terms of the U.N., of course,
Staffan de Mistura is the U.N. envoy. We need a big political
push in terms of negotiations. Those negotiations have not
really progressed since the last Geneva Conference. It has
really been a period of protracted stalemate.
But the regime, of course, has suffered a series of
military setbacks. Russia and Iran themselves, of course, share
at least one additional concern with us, which is the growth of
ISIL in Syria.
And so we are pushing Russia on the Security Council and
outside of it to join with us here and make a serious political
push so that we can get a kind of peaceful transition, one that
brings about an end to the Assad regime, which would gas its
people and has committed such unspeakable atrocities, but one
also that would not leave Syria vulnerable to ISIL actually
coming in and filling the breach.
On the no-fly zone, finally, I don't have a lot to add.You
know that every day we are looking into the toolbox and trying
to ascertain which tool is appropriate in which circumstances.
On the humanitarian, on the sanctions, on the support for the
train and equip program, we have done an awful lot, again, to
try to influence the situation inside Syria.
A no-fly zone, if implemented and executed, would entail
using military force against the Syrian regime. And our
judgment is that, at this point, the risks of doing so would
exceed the potential benefits, not least because of the number
of extremists, again, who could conceivably benefit from such
a----
Chairman Royce. Well, remember, the main beneficiary right
now, Ambassador, as the regime drops those chemical bombs on
Aleppo, it is the ISIS fighters that, you know, the middle
class, the Free Syrian Army, are battling on the outskirts. So
here is the case in this instance of the regime working in
tandem with ISIS in order to collapse, basically, the
resistance to ISIS up in the north.
But, anyway, tomorrow this committee will hear from the
brave responders who are recently back from their efforts to
save--these are physicians who were out there to save civilians
from these chemical attacks--on the nature of the chemical
attacks.
But thank you for your good work. I need to go to Mr.
Engel. Ambassador, thank you very much.
Ambassador Power. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Engel. Ambassador, as I said in my opening remarks, let
me acknowledge the very strong work you have done in defending
Israel at the U.N.
You listed several instances in your written testimony, and
I want to acknowledge your personal commitment to pushing back
against efforts to de-legitimize Israel at the U.N.
The ridiculous nonsense from the U.N. Human Rights Council,
which consists of some of the worst offenders of human rights,
really makes that Council, in my opinion, a joke and undermines
the credibility of the U.N. itself.
The President recently gave an interview with Israeli
Channel 2 news in which he said that the U.S. was
reevaluating--and I quote him--``how we approach defending
Israel on the international stage around the Palestinian
issue.''
I understand that this reevaluation will not affect our
security relationship with Israel. The President made that
clear. But, frankly, his remarks were troubling, as were other
remarks he has made on the same subject.
Reevaluating the ways that we defend Israel on the
international stage could have ominous consequences and it is
obviously very concerning for those of us who seek to
strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship.
If the U.S. priority is achieving a permanent two-state
solution, giving Israel another reason for unease will not help
that goal. So I want to ask you: What is the status of this
reevaluation? And what is it based on?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congressman Engel.
First, as you yourself have noted, the President was very
clear, I think, in that interview and has consistently been
clear that we are not reevaluating our bond with Israel, our
security and military relationship, the tremendous friendships
that exist between the American people and the Israeli people.
I think what we are engaging right now is a moment in which
it is not exactly clear how progress toward a two-state
solution is likely to be made. And so we are in daily touch, as
you know, with the Israeli Government. The Israeli national
security advisor is here in Washington, I believe, still as we
speak, meeting with our national security advisor.
With a government now formed, we are deepening those
discussions again about how we find a path forward toward a
two-state solution, recognizing, as I know we all do, that that
is the way in which Israelis and Palestinians can live durably
side by side in security and in dignity.
With regard to the area of concern that you have flagged,
the United States--the Obama administration--has consistently
opposed the de-legitimization of Israel. We have also pushed
consistently for the the legitimation of Israel across the U.N.
system. And I can give lots of examples of that.
We uniformly oppose one-sided actions designed to punish
Israel, and we will continue to do so. I want to be very clear.
In most cases, in many cases, at least, we are actually able to
build coalitions and prevent things from coming up to a vote,
as we did in December, again, when I cast a no vote. But we
were able to deny the Palestinians--when a resolution was
brought forward and it was biased, it was one-sided, it was
hastily sort of jammed upon the Council, we were able to forge
a blocking coalition.
I also want to note that there are occasions in which we
work with our Israeli counterparts up in New York on
affirmative U.N. resolutions, on things that Israel thinks can
advance its interests. And so I think it is hard to speak about
hypotheticals, and I would caution against doing so.
During the Gaza crisis last summer, where I know you were
very engaged, we came very, very close, working with Israel on
a U.N. Security Council resolution, that we thought potentially
could be additive as that crisis was winding down. In the end,
it didn't come to pass. But, again, the text and the content of
what we are talking about I think would really matter.
And suffice it to say, again, I want to underscore that the
United States would oppose any resolution that we believe is
biased or would undermine Israel's security.
Mr. Engel. Well, thank you for that answer. And it goes in
line with your written testimony--and I quote--``We have
consistently and firmly opposed one-sided actions in
international bodies and will continue to do so.'' So it is a
welcome message.
But how do you anticipate this pledge manifesting at the
U.N. as the French and others pursue a Security Council
resolution that could set artificial timetables for
negotiations?
Ambassador Power. Again, we have not seen--or I have not
seen--a French resolution. We read in the press the same things
you read, and we have certainly heard about various texts that
are flying about.
But I will say, since I have gotten to New York, there have
always been texts circulating relating to this set of issues.
So I think, again, I am not going to speculate on hypotheticals
beyond saying we are not negotiating any U.N. Security Council
resolution.
Mr. Engel. Let me just say, in conclusion, what is
disturbing about some of the remarks that the President has
made is that there is the hint--or maybe not even a hint--that
perhaps next time around on some of these resolutions, rather
than vetoing them, the anti-Israel biased resolutions we might
just abstain. And that, of course, would allow it to pass.
When some of us hear that, we cringe because, if we can't
count on the United States to stand firmly behind Israel
against these ridiculous one-sided, biased resolutions, then I
think it makes the U.N. almost worthless in terms of trying to
be a group moving the process along rather than beating up on
Israel with the built-in bias at the U.N.
So when we hear those remarks from the President, it
disturbs many of us that have supported a two-state solution,
that support Israel's right to exist, and that fight against
the legitimization of Israel all the time.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
Mr. Engel. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. We now move to Representative Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and
North Africa.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank so much, Mr. Chairman.
And, Madam Ambassador, thank you for being so kind to my
interns before this session.
Following up on the excellent remarks made by Ranking
Member Engel, as we know, President Obama issued a not-so-
veiled threat to Israel that the U.S. might not be able to
support a veto of the French resolution at the U.N. Security
Council on Palestinian statehood.
Now, you use the word ``oppose,'' ``We will oppose.'' But
will the United States--yes or no--veto any resolution at the
U.N. that forces, imposes, this two-state solution on Israel?
What will our position be? Will we veto? You say we oppose. But
will we veto? That would send a strong message.
Ambassador Power. Again, given that we worked last summer
on a U.N. Security Council resolution with Israel that we were
potentially prepared to support and we weren't able to get
everybody on the Council to rally around, I think it is
perilous to make blanket statements.
But I want to underscore we have consistently opposed. We
will oppose anything that is biased, anything that would
undermine Israel's security. And I think our track record is
very solid here.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. I think it is that track
record that worries Israel. I applaud you for saying that you
are going to root out the anti-Israel bias that exists. And
sometimes we don't have to look too far to find that bias.
Moving on to U.N. reform, can you provide to this committee
later in written form a breakdown of exactly how much money
across the entire U.S. Government have we contributed annually
to the U.N. since 2011? I would appreciate that, Madam
Ambassador.
And regarding the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran and the
sanctions we have on Iran, recent reports indicate that the
administration will not only seek to lift sanctions at the U.N.
on Iran's nuclear program, but also lift sanctions on Iran for
its ballistic missile program, its conventional military
support for terror, and its abysmal human rights record.
Will the administration lump all of these actions against
Iran as nuclear-related? When we tried to bring it up, we said
they are not nuclear-related, but it seems like, to lift
sanctions, everything is nuclear-related.
Ambassador Power. First, on your first question, thank you
for not asking me to do that math here on the spot. It would
have been deeply humiliating.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. It is tough for me to chew on that, too.
Ambassador Power. And then, second, on Iran, absolutely
not, I think is the answer to your questions. The sanctions
that we, the United States, have put in place that are so
important on human rights, given the deplorable human rights
record which has not improved, their support for egregious
atrocities in Syria, support for terrorism, all of those
things----
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. It is a long list.
Ambassador Power [continuing]. From the administration's
standpoint, should remain in place.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. They won't lump them together. Thank you.
If I could continue, last week a U.N. panel stated that the
U.S. has neglected to report Iranian sanctions violations,
which the administration has denied.
Has the administration deliberately failed to report or
refer violations of Security Council resolutions to the
sanctions committee? And has there been a formal or informal
directive from the White House to not fully implement or report
on violations of Security Council sanctions?
Ambassador Power. Absolutely not. And I myself am involved
often in raising sanctions violations that Iran has carried
out.
We have also, even over the life of this last delicate
phase of negotiations, instituted more sanctions designations
under the existing bilateral sanctions framework that Congress
has been such a critical part of. So there is no pulling of our
punches, even during these negotiations or ever.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
And, lastly, I remain concerned about the security
situation in Haiti. Just last week this committee sent staff to
Haiti to report back to us on the status of its elections.
According to our staff, several people in the security and
diplomatic sector expressed concerns that pulling U.N. troops
out during an election year was a huge mistake and that the
Haitian National Police may not be ready to ensure stability
and security.
What is the justification for the troop withdrawal at this
critical juncture? And why were those concerns ignored? And
will you commit to keep the few troops that will remain in
Haiti after the elections are finished, we hope, in 2016?
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
I myself was in Haiti in January asking many of the same
questions that you have just posed. I think what is very
important is that the environment now in Haiti is different
from the environment post-earthquake. We had huge engineering
battalions who were part of MINUSTAH, the U.N. mission in
Haiti, who were removing rubble. Now almost all of the rubble
in the country has been removed.
So what we have really seen is, yes, a drawdown in terms of
the authorized number of troops. And that is something the
United States has helped spearhead, in part, back to the
chairman's comment at the beginning, recognizing that the
system is massively stretched around the world, recognizing we
have to answer up here, also, in terms of the budgetary demands
that U.N. peacekeeping makes on the American people as well as
on other member states, but mainly, in this instance,
recognizing that police, foreign police units, mobility, more
mobility, fewer engineering battalions, that, basically, you
needed a recalibration of the mission according to new
circumstances.
So it is true that there has been a significant drawdown,
but there is still a substantial infantry presence. There is
still the ability to do rapid response. We have introduced more
helicopters to allow troops and police to move more quickly
across the country.
And a lot of the functions that the U.N. peacekeeping
mission had been performing are now migrating to the so-called
U.N. Country Team, the development professionals, the election
experts, and so forth. That is not really a job for the
military in many cases.
I also would note that you are right that the Haitian
National Police have a long way to go, but the strides that
they have made, I think, over the last 2 or 3 years are really
extraordinary and very much the product of U.S. and other
member state bilateral support as well as the U.N. training
that has gone on there.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
Haitian Americans have greatly enriched our south Florida
community, and we pay such close attention to Haiti. Thank you
so much.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. Mr. Brad Sherman of California, ranking
member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.
Mr. Sherman. Ambassador, thank you for your service not
only in government, but before you joined the government. Thank
you for your work in opposing and exposing genocide,
particularly the Armenian genocide.
I want to echo the ranking member on the protection of
Israel at the United Nations. We were all concerned by some
indication that the administration would cut back that support.
It is good to support Israel. It is even better when it is
difficult.
And I want to praise the administration for standing with
Israel at the NPT consensus review process where, in order to
prevent actions inimical to Israel, we not only opposed the
inimical actions, but we opposed--because we had to--the entire
agreement.
So, hopefully, that answers the question as you have here
when you committed to the ranking member that it is our
position to veto one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.
The President has recognized that involving the U.N. in the
details of the peace process is not a way to advance peace.
Obviously, the U.N. might adopt a resolution that had a few
noncontroversial provisions: Two-state solution, peace and
security for all.
But would we veto any U.N. resolution that tried to codify
the parameters of a peace deal and included controversial
elements in that codification?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congressman Sherman.
I think that is a reprise of the Congresswoman's question
with a slight shift. I really am going to resist making blanket
declarations on hypothetical resolutions.
Our position, again, I think has been very clear for some
time. I have said, again, we would oppose anything that was
designed to punish Israel, that would undermine Israel's
security. But I think, again, it is perilous. There is no
resolution in front of us.
Mr. Sherman. I will move on to less hypothetical questions.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
Mr. Sherman. First, under current U.S. law, the
administration is required to cut off Palestinian aid if the
Palestinians pursue or support charges against Israel at the
ICC, and I am confident that you will follow the law on that
one spirit and letter. I won't even ask that as a question
because I know of your dedication to law.
The United States Constitution vests specifically power
over all international commerce, particularly sanctions, in the
United States Congress. The administration has in the area of
trade recognized that the Congress is the primary arbiter and
has asked us to pass a statute providing limitations and
structure, but I want to make sure that the administration will
follow Article I of the Constitution when it comes to sanctions
on Iran.
We have got this review process. I would hope that you
negotiate a deal in Switzerland so good that Congress
universally supports it, but that may not be the case. Imagine
a situation in which there is a deal that is cut, the
administration supports it, but less than one-third of either
House has indicated support for the deal.
There are news reports that you will prevent a lifting of
U.N. sanctions at least for a month to give Congress a chance
to go through the process of review. Will you be allowing a
lifting of U.N. sanctions during the statutory review process?
Ambassador Power. Thank you. I thought you were going to
another hypothetical, but you went directly to an issue I know
that is in the news.
It is useful and appropriate, needless to say, for
Congress' voice to be heard. And I think the bills that have
come now through both Houses provide----
Mr. Sherman. And signed by the President.
Ambassador Power. Pardon me?
Mr. Sherman. And signed by the President.
Ambassador Power. [continuing]. And signed by the
President--provide a structure for that voice, and there is
some predictability to it, I think, at least in terms of
process.
As you indicated, our view is that we will be able to
defend any deal that is good enough for us, and we will come up
here and seek to do so.
On the precise sequence, it is clear that there are now two
bodies whose voices will need to be heard. And how that will
all work I think is, again, one of those details----
Mr. Sherman. So you are saying it is possible that, if the
United States Congress declares by over a two-thirds majority
in both Houses, that we reject the deal, if we establish U.S.
policy on this deal pursuant to Article I of the Constitution,
you might still be at the United Nations undermining that
policy declared by Congress pursuant to the Constitution?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen [presiding]. If the gentleman will
suspend, we will have the Ambassador answer the question, but
we are going to try to get everybody in with their 5 minutes.
Ambassador Power. Okay. Just simply to say, again, that is
a hypothetical about what the vote in Congress would be.
Again, we feel this will be a deal that we can defend where
we can convince Congress also to support the deal. All I am
getting at is the precise choreography of how the sequencing
works through, that is just a matter still for the negotiation.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
And now we turn to Mr. Christopher Smith of New Jersey,
chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global
Human Rights, and International Organizations.
And we will try to do those in 5 minutes so everyone will
have a chance.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And welcome, Madam Ambassador, and thank you for your
testimony and for your work.
More than a decade ago, Madam Ambassador, sex trafficking
and sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping was exposed
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I chaired a series of
hearings beginning in 2005. I went to Goma. I spent a better
part of a week meeting with peacekeepers and trying to get, you
know, a real plan to try to mitigate and, hopefully, eradicate
that horrific abuse.
I chaired, like I said, a number of hearings. Jane Holl
Lute sat where you sit. She is my third cousin. She did a
magnificent job at the U.N. trying to get zero tolerance for
the Secretary General's policy. Unfortunately, some of our
witnesses then--and some would say still--there is a lack of
compliance with that blue helmet bulletin.
Last year the Advisory Committee on Administration and
Budget said nearly half of the allegations reported in
peacekeeping issues involved the most egregious form of sexual
exploitation, abuse of minors. They cited Haiti, DR Congo,
Liberia, Sudan, and South Sudan as the chief offending
deployments.
On May 15, as you know, the U.N. Office of Internal
Oversight Services evaluated efforts to combat sexual
exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers. They found that,
pursuant to the 2007 MOU, truth-contributing countries who
retain the primary responsibility to investigate misconduct
apparently are not doing a very good job.
Questions about the quality of the investigative standards,
wide variations in sanctions that weaken the commitment to zero
tolerance--and get this--the penalty is often simple
repatriation and disbarment from any future U.N. peacekeeping
deployment, not prosecution and jail.
OIOS made some recommendations--six of them--that I think
bear consideration on an expedited basis. Perhaps you could
speak to that. They also noted that there was a real lack of
helping victims, particularly little girls, who have been
abused.
Secondly, let me ask you about a Syria war crimes tribunal.
In 2013, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post and then
held, again, a series of hearings. We had David Crane, the
former prosecutor from the Sierra Leone Special Court, and he
and so many others made it clear, the ICC is not up to the
task.
We need a regional court like Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and
Rwanda, take all of the lessons learned from that and prosecute
both in Iraq and Syria those on either side that are
committing--or any side--these terrible atrocities. Your
thoughts on that.
And, finally, the committee on NGOs for ECOSOC recently
voted down the application for consultative status from an
American NGO known as Freedom Now. The no votes came from
China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, Nicaragua,
Azerbaijan, among others.
I have worked with Freedom Now for 15 years. They have
worked on Gao Zhisheng, Liu Xiaobo, Father Ly in Vietnam, Aung
San Suu Kyi in Burma. A great organization. On the same day the
Palestinian Refugee Center, which works with Hamas and
Hezbollah, was approved.
What are we doing to try to help Freedom Now get their
accreditation?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congressman. I will try to
move quickly through each of these three very important issues.
I will work backwards.
First, on Freedom Now, I couldn't agree more. They are
doing some of the most important work to highlight the plights
of political prisoners around the world. I know I personally
use their work, try to reinforce whatever they are campaigning
on. I know Members of Congress also have teamed up with them.
And the just very sad fact is that the NGO Committee, in
which members are elected by the U.N. membership often by their
regions, is stacked with a group of countries who don't
themselves tolerate NGOs in their own countries.
And so, you know, every frustration that one feels about
who gets elected to this or that in the U.N. body stems from
the same issue, which is that regions are not taking sufficient
responsibility for the integrity of who they are putting
forward on behalf of their continent.
And this is a classic example, but we are not giving up. We
are working behind the scenes with Freedom Now, and now that it
goes to the full Economic and Social Council from this subset
or this smaller NGO committee, we have a chance to overturn the
vote.
It is going to be challenging because, again, recall that,
in the United Nations as a whole, a body of 193 countries, more
than half are not democratic. So we always have our work cut
out for us.
But, again, we have been able to score a number of very
important victories for political prisoners and human rights in
civil societies and other bodies, and we are going to dedicate
ourselves to that and welcome the support of Congress also
leveraging relationships in capitals and so forth.
Second, again, working backwards, on Syria, I remember very
well your op ed, and I think it is a very, very important idea
that you have put out there.
The issue with the ICC--it may well not prove up to the
task, but the bigger issue with the ICC is there is no way to
get ICC jurisdiction that doesn't go through either the Syrian
Government, which hardly wants to hold itself accountable for
monstrous atrocities, or through Russia, which, by supplying
and supporting the Syrian regime, is implicated in some of
those atrocities.
The same challenge, as you know well, would apply if we
were to try to replicate the Yugoslav or the Rwanda Tribunal.
Both of those came about through votes in the Security Council.
And that goes back to the first point I made in my remarks at
the outset, which is just this deformity, in a way, where a
permanent member of the Security Council can block the
creation--whether an ICC referral or the creation of an
international criminal tribunal of the kind you are describing.
You know, again, somebody--I think it was Chairman Royce--
raised this issue before on accountability, saying, ``Yeah. You
always say they are going to be held accountable. The question
is when.'' You know, we just in the last 6 months have seen
perpetrators of the crimes carried out 20 years ago in
Srebrenica held accountable not only at the ICTY, where they
had been held accountable, but, also, in Serbia proper, in
Bosnia, et cetera.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Thank you. I
apologize. But we are 1\1/2\ minutes----
Ambassador Power. I will find a way to get the sex
trafficking in somewhere else.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I am now pleased to turn to Congressman
Albio Sires of New Jersey, the ranking member on the
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ambassador, welcome.
During last year's Gaza crisis, five Latin America
countries pulled their Ambassadors from Israel. I am talking
about Chile, Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Brazil.
I am wondering. What efforts are we making to urge those
countries to send the Ambassadors back? I know that we have
sent letters to those countries urging them to be engaged
again. Are we making any efforts to urge them to send the
Ambassadors back?
Ambassador Power. You know, I think I am going to take that
question--all I can really speak to is what I do every day in
New York, which is lobby those very countries not to take the
positions they usually take in the General Assembly or with the
Human Rights Council and so forth.
On the very specific issue of their level of
representation, I actually don't have an answer for that, but
will get back to you quickly.
Mr. Sires. Okay. Well, that is going to bring me into the
U.N. Human Rights Commission. I personally feel that they are
not effective when you have a Cuban sometimes leading the Human
Rights Commission.
Since the President made his announcement, the abuses have
increased. People are put in jail. Women are beaten just to go
to church. And this Human Rights Commission--I never hear
anything regarding the abuses on the island. And I know, at one
time, Cuba was in charge of this Commission. I mean, that is
the biggest joke I ever heard.
So what can we do to get them to speak up about the abuses
on the island? I mean, this is a crackdown on the very people
that we are trying to help, supposedly.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
Again, let me just say that, on the question of the
conditions inside Cuba, I couldn't agree more. There have
been--I just looked up these numbers on the way over here--600
arbitrary detentions just in the month of May alone and 2,300
over the course of this year, in 2015.
So there remains a significant human rights crisis inside
Cuba. And I want to underscore, again, that the effort at
normalization is aimed at getting at some of these issues. Now,
clearly, it is not having an overnight effect. I don't think
anybody could have expected it would.
But the bet that we are making is that, over time, more
access to information, more Internet, more exposure to
Americans and American values, is going to actually, you know,
help ensure that Cuba, again, over time, liberalizes. But, in
the meantime, we have to spoke out about these abuses.
Mr. Sires. I was just going to add, if nobody speaks up
about it----
Ambassador Power. Well, I certainly do.
Mr. Sires [continuing]. It is not going to help the Cuban
people, no matter what efforts we make.
Ambassador Power. Well, if I could, again, in addition to
the earlier followup that I owe you, I will send you the public
statements made by senior U.S. officials, you know, even since
the changes in our relationship with Cuba were announced
because I don't think we have, again, held our tongues at all.
I myself also make a point of meeting with dissidents like
Yoani Sanchez, like the daughter of Oswaldo Paya, and the
people who, you know, may well have been murdered by the
regime. I mean, we need to walk and chew gum at the same time.
It is extremely important.
But if I could distinguish that from the Human Rights
Council issue you raise. They are related. The Human Rights
Council is vulnerable to the flaws that you and Congressman
Engel and others have pointed to already in this hearing and
that others have made clear their views on. It is, again, a
body in which a country that does not have a good human rights
record can end up in a leadership position. That is officially
true.
It is also a body that the United States, by virtue of
being a member, has used to create Commissions of Inquiry for
Syria that otherwise would not exist because of Russia's veto
on the Security Council. That has moved the ball very
substantially on LGBT rights. It is the first time the U.N. has
said LGBT rights are human rights.
It created a Commission of Inquiry for North Korea that
documented the systematic horror that the gulags are inflicting
on the people of North Korea every day in a way that in the
entire history of that regime had not been done before. We have
a special rapporteur for Iran that would not exist if not,
again, for the Human Rights Council.
So like a lot that exists at the U.N., it is not us. It is
not the body----
Mr. Sires. So do we expect that maybe this would also
happen with Cuba?
Ambassador Power. I think one of----
Mr. Sires. If the abuse----
Ambassador Power. I think one of the effects over time in
the U.N. system of the steps that the President has taken vis-
a-vis Cuba--my prediction will be that people will be focusing
less on the embargo and on U.S. policy, which has been a
diversion from the human rights situation inside Cuba, and now
we will have a better chance of drawing people's attention to
human rights crisis inside Cuba.
Mr. Sires. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Sires.
We turn to Mr. Dana Rohrabacher of California, chairman of
the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
And, Madam Ambassador, thank you very much for your
service. You are much respected, your energy and your
commitment.
And although there are some things that we obviously
disagree on, I want to associate myself with my colleagues'
concern about the blackout of reporting of human rights abuses
in Cuba.
And let me just note this idea that--well, it is offset in
some way by the fact that there is going to be more Internet
connection between people and more communication with people in
the United States.
The people of Cuba know when their neighbor has been
arrested or beaten up in front of them. They don't need to see
it over the Internet. And the people who are beating them up
and throwing them in jail, they know, too. And, in fact, what
they know is we have given up a huge amount of leverage over
them and gotten nothing in return as they continue to oppress
their own people.
And I believe perhaps this travesty that we are discussing
and describing there really reflects why some of us don't have
faith that the United Nations--considering that there is a
Cuban head of the Human Rights Commission. That we don't have
faith that the U.N. is going to be doing the right thing to
create a better world, that the United States has to play
perhaps a more active, direct role rather than trying to spend
our time maneuvering through the United Nations all kinds of
different resolutions and policies that could have the opposite
impact of what we are looking for.
With that said, I would like to ask you a little bit about
Ukraine. You were mentioning the people that were shelled, a
family that you know that--or you described being shelled by
the Soviet--or--excuse me--Russian allies there in Ukraine.
How many civilians have died since this whole incident
began? Do you know?
Ambassador Power. Sixty-three hundred is the official
number, but we think there is underreporting because the
separatists don't allow access.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, of that 6,300, how many were
separatists in separatist towns and villages?
Ambassador Power. That I don't know offhand.
Mr. Rohrabacher. You know, I want to tell you, when I ask
that question, almost nobody knows. But it was my
understanding--I went over to Europe and met with some people
involved in intelligence agencies in various countries.
They were telling me that, actually, in the Ukrainian
military, which was one-third made up of people who were not in
their military, but were instead on the payroll of some
oligarch, they had heavy artillery and were indiscriminately
shelling these separatist villages.
Do you know anything about that?
Ambassador Power. First, let me actually correct what I
said earlier. You asked how many civilians had been killed.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Ambassador Power. To my knowledge, the 6,300 figure that we
have is both civilian and soldiers. So let me also get you the
breakdown on the actual civilians, if it exists.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Fine.
Ambassador Power. One of the issues that I raised in
Ukraine in my visit was how critical it is for the Ukrainians
to abide by international humanitarian law. It is absolutely
critical.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yeah. Okay.
Ambassador Power. And it is critical for hearts and minds
as well as for the law.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is it possible that the majority of the
civilian casualties that you are talking about were actually
civilian casualties that were the victims of the Ukrainian Army
and the oligarch that financed one-third of their Army at one
point? Is that possible?
Ambassador Power. If I could say two things.
First, I think it is highly unlikely on the basis of the
reports that we received from the United Nations and from the
OSCE.
Second, I want to underscore again why this conflict
started. It started because Russia moved troops and weapons and
so forth into the----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Just so you know, Madam Secretary, the
Russians would suggest it started when there was a violent
overthrow of an elected government.
Ambassador Power. Right. I don't make it a point of
listening to President Putin's claims, as a general rule. I
don't find them credible.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I think that you are our
representative and you should pay attention to everybody's
claims and you should refute them if they can be refuted rather
than dismissing them.
Because I happen to believe that, if that coup, meaning
violent overthrow of an elected----
Ambassador Power. Violent.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Violent overthrow of an
elected government, had not happened, we would not be in this
situation and the Ukrainians would have been spared this.
But our--and you can go beyond that to where our European
allies didn't offer Yanukovych the deal that he wanted and the
response that most people in the Ukraine have. They don't like
Russia and they didn't want to be in agreement with Russia.
There are a lot of things that led up to this. It didn't
start with Russia going into the separatist areas. That is not
where it started. At least that is what they explain.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
And now we turn to Mr. Ted Deutch of Florida, the ranking
member on the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Madam Ambassador, thanks for appearing today. Thanks for
standing up for the human rights of the people of the Ukraine.
I also want to thank you and commend you for the
outstanding work that you have done representing this country
and our values at the United Nations. Your efforts at the
Security Council on the Syrian conflict, your continued
willingness to speak out in support of human rights, your
efforts to get the U.N. to act on Iran's abysmal human rights
record, and your unrelenting pushback against unfair and biased
attempts to de-legitimize Israel deserve to be commended.
In Syria, we cannot succumb to a condition that you taught
me, psychic numbing, despite the ongoing slaughter. And I thank
you for pointing out today that the use of chlorine against
one's people is the use of chemical weapons against one's
people.
I also want to especially thank you for your recent efforts
at the NPT Review Conference to block language that would have
jeopardized Israel security and for preventing anti-Israel
efforts to place Israel on the list of children's rights
abusers.
I know that, going forward, you will continue to use your
platform to prevent all efforts to use the United Nations to
de-legitimize Israel or, importantly, to impose any outside
solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when only a
negotiated settlement can ultimately bring peace.
I appreciate your efforts as well you described at the
Human Rights Council. But I would suggest that the Human Rights
Council cannot be taken seriously. And I am someone who
believes in engagement at the U.N., but I am repeatedly shocked
by the decisions of the Council, including how some of the
world's absolute worst human rights abusers are allowed to sit
on the Council.
My colleague from New Jersey talked about Cuba. Cuba is
ally to Venezuela, plays a prominent role as well. And I expect
the same bias will apply when the investigation into last
summer's conflict in Gaza comes out, which we expect will be
equally one-sided.
I find it absurd that the Council has only one standing
agenda item, the Agenda Item 7 that relates to a specific
country. And that country is Israel.
And my question is: While it says at the Human Rights
Council's Web site that--it describes the election process, but
it says, ``The General Assembly takes into account the
candidate state's contribution to the promotion and protection
of human rights as well as their voluntary pledges and
commitments in this regard.''
Under your leadership, Madam Ambassador, has the United
States suggested that any reforms can be made to the Council so
that the members of the Council perhaps have to recognize the
importance of human rights as well?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congressman.
I mean, let me say the language that you have just read out
was hard-thought language negotiated by our predecessors, by
the Bush administration, by the United States. Unfortunately,
simply putting that language in the kind of founding ethos of
the Human Rights Council doesn't make it such.
Fundamentally, as I was saying earlier, regional groups put
forward the candidates they seek to put forward and sometimes
there are a whole set of back-room arrangements and, you know,
all kinds of bilateral issues that are at stake in which people
agree to give votes to certain countries on the basis of things
that have nothing to do with human rights, so just stipulate.
There are two reasons that I would like to at least appeal
to you to still consider the United States' membership in the
Human Rights Council very worthwhile.
The first is the very reason that you point to, which is
the absurdity of having a single standing agenda item on Israel
and not on North Korea and not on Syria, which is gassing its
people, not on ISIL. You know, it is ridiculous.
However, by the United States being on the Council, we are
in the room and we are calling it out. In fact, since we joined
the Council, the number of Human Rights Council resolutions on
Israel has gone from a half of the Human Rights Council
products to a quarter. Now, a quarter is still absurd, given
the state of the world.
Chairman Royce [presiding]. Ambassador.
Ambassador Power. Yes.
Chairman Royce. If I could interrupt, we are going to have
to recess the committee for 15 minutes. And then we will
commence again.
Ambassador Power. Okay.
Chairman Royce. But I am going to have to ask the members,
also, to--we will be clearing the room. We will be leaving the
dais. And afterwards we will reconvene at that time.
Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Ambassador Power. Okay. Thank you, Congressman.
[Recess due to police activity.]
Chairman Royce. This hearing will reconvene.
And let me say we appreciate the work of the Capitol Police
to make us aware of a security situation and to ensure that the
hearing here is safe to reconvene.
And I appreciate the cooperation of our witness. Thank you
very much, Ambassador. We will now go to Mr. Chabot, Ambassador
Power, for the questions he was going to ask.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And welcome back, Ambassador Power.
I first of all would like to associate myself with my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle with respect to Cuba.
There is a great amount of skepticism there. I won't go into
that great of detail because others already did, but I share
that skepticism.
The topic I would first like to go into in a little detail
is the fact that Russia, as we all know, by force has taken
Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine. Yet, this administration
still hasn't supplied Ukraine with weaponry that is going to be
necessary for it to defend itself. And, our U.N. allies have
done very little to help, but that is not really surprising.
Secretary Kerry met with Putin last month and, in effect,
told Putin that we would lift sanctions on them if they would
promise not to take even more territory, not that they would
abandon Crimea, but that they not take any more territory.
Earlier this year, my Democratic colleague, Mr. Connolly,
and I introduced the Crimea Annexation Non-Recognition Action,
H.R. 93, which states that it is U.S. policy not to recognize
the sovereignty of Russia over Crimea or its waters or its
airspace.
What is the U.S. and what is the U.N. doing to get Russia
out of Crimea? It is no secret that some believe that this
administration wants Russia's support in the Iran deal so badly
that it is willing to cut Russia some slack on Ukraine and
especially with respect to Crimea. What would you respond to
that, please?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, sir.
Well, having, again, just returned from Ukraine, these
issues are particularly fresh in my mind as is the suffering of
the people of Crimea, many of whom have been displaced to Kiev,
the Tartar community there, unable to exercise its rights,
independent media completely shut down, disappearances,
detentions.
So there are two issues, in a way. One is the fact that
Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, has
attempted to lop off part of someone else's country. The second
is the conditions in which people in that territory are now
living or the displacement that has arisen from the abuses
being carried out.
At the United Nations, as we discussed earlier, because
Russia is a permanent member and a veto holder, a privilege
that all of us really should exercise great responsibility in
having, but Russia is not, our ability to get the Security
Council to sanction a permanent member or a veto holder, of
course, is blunted.
However, in the U.N. General Assembly--and this is
unheralded, not widely known--we were able to galvanize 100
countries to vote against what Russia was attempting to do in
Crimea, to stand for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial
integrity, to reject the phony referendum which gave the people
of Crimea a choice between independence from Ukraine and
joining Russia. Didn't even give them, as you recall, the
choice of remaining part of the country that they were a part
of.
The consequence of that resolution, which may sound
symbolic, is that the maps at the United Nations, the maps
under international law, will not change. And so it is still
the case that all the maps at the United Nations, again, show
Crimea where it belongs, which is part of Ukraine. As you know,
U.S. sanctions that were put in place by virtue of Crimea will
not be lifted until Crimea is restored to Ukraine.
And with regard to Secretary Kerry's meeting, I don't know
if there has been misreporting, but the U.S. position has been
very, very clear, which is Minsk implementation is required in
order for there to be any off-ramp on the eastern Ukraine-
related sanctions. Minsk implementation, as you know, would
result in the restoration of the international border to
Ukrainian sovereign control.
So that is our position. That is the position also that the
Europeans agreed to at the G7 meeting.
Mr. Chabot. All right. Thank you.
I am getting close to the end of my time. I have two
questions, but I am just going to get in one.
I think, as we all know, pretty horrific things have been
happening to Christians especially, but to Muslims as well
under ISIS control.
We have seen dozens of people taken out to beaches and
beheaded in Libya. We have seen people kidnapped, and God only
knows what has happened. There have been crucifixions. There
have been a whole range of things that have happened.
What is the U.N. doing to help protect Christians in places
like Syria and parts of Iraq and Libya? And what can we do to
push them, get them off the dime, to get involved there?
Ambassador Power. Several things. I mean, first, part of
ensuring protection for civilians who are vulnerable is being
able to shelter them when they flee their homes and making sure
that they are not vulnerable then to secondary attacks.
Because of the horrors carried out by ISIL, you are seeing
a lot of advanced flight. If people even hear that ISIL is en
route, they are picking up their families and their kids and
getting in the car and moving forward.
It is the U.N. working with the Iraqi Government and,
indeed, even in parts of Syria with the Syrian Government and
with Syrian opposition groups that are providing humanitarian
assistance through the World Food Programme. UNHCR is
sheltering refugees, the International Organization for
Migration. That is on the humanitarian side.
But the U.N. is also the venue where President Obama
chaired a Security Council meeting on foreign terrorist
fighters where we have tried now to create an international
framework where people share information, stop the flow of
these, you know, many thousands of individuals from neighboring
countries who have staffed ISIL, who are helping them replenish
their numbers even as the coalition degrades the organization.
So the U.N. has become a venue in which we measure
compliance and hold countries accountable when they are not
doing what they should be, again, to prevent people from either
leaving their territory or from crossing borders into Syria and
Iraq to actually staff ISIL.
The coalition effort also has gotten a lot of legitimacy at
the United Nations. We have 60 countries that are a part of it.
Iraq came to the U.N. Security Council with a letter and asked,
in fact, for the United States and the rest of the
international community to step up militarily and through using
diplomatic, political, and other means against ISIL.
So it is also a venue in which coalition countries come
together to kind of compare notes and figure out what more we
can be doing because, obviously, this is a long campaign that
has a lot of ups and downs and it is going to be critical that
we keep the military line of effort moving at the same time
some of the governance issues get addressed so that people are
not attracted at all to ISIL.
At the same time, we counter violent extremism in our own
countries as people are getting alienated and radicalized. At
the same time, we work the social media piece, the foreign
terrorist financing, which can be done through oil revenue or
other resource streams that we have sought to degrade, again,
building on international cooperation.
But so much of the ISIL equation is the product of things
crossing borders. And this is where, again, the United Nations,
for all of its flaws, show its indispensability because it is
the one organization that can impose standards that can hold
people accountable globally, that can be a venue for naming and
shaming, but, also, for mobilizing resources.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. We will go to Representative Karen Bass of
California, ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa,
Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Operations.
Ms. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for calling today's
meeting.
Ambassador Power, in your opening statement, you really
demonstrated in a few minutes the complexity of what is
happening in the world today, the unprecedented number of
conflicts.
And, in this context, I really wanted to commend your
leadership for focusing on conflicts and crises, especially in
Africa, that often don't rise to the attention of the world.
And I wanted to discuss a couple of examples and then end with
asking you a couple of questions.
You mentioned Ebola, but I really want to highlight the
fact that you led the effort in the U.N. to push the
international community to take action. You chaired the first
emergency meeting to gather momentum for international support,
and I really think it is a source of pride for all of us, the
role that our Nation played in stamping out Ebola in Liberia.
And I do want to ask you about this in a minute because we have
some new cases.
In terms of Boko Haram, in October of last year, the
Security Council took an important step to help the Nigerian
Government defeat Boko Haram and assisted in an effort to
return the girls. And you may know of a weekly campaign that
goes on here that is led by Representative Wilson where members
come together and make sure that Members of Congress do not
forget the girls that have been missing over the last year. So
I appreciate your support for U.S. funding to directly support
the AU's effort to eliminate Boko Haram.
And in terms of the Central African Republic in Burundi, I
had the privilege of traveling to both those countries with
you. You were first in pushing our response, in part, because
of your leadership in forming the Atrocities Prevention Board.
And my understanding is the Board was informed and responded to
the crisis at its onset and delivered $11 million in
humanitarian support, $60 million in military assistance to the
international effort.
In Burundi, when we traveled there, U.N. Ambassador Thomas-
Greenfield met with the President and encouraged him not to try
to run for a third term, and he did just that. And there was
the attempted coup and now there is chaos.
And so a couple of the questions I had--I wanted to know if
you could provide an update about the U.N. response to the
crisis in Burundi, CAR, and then also the new cases of Ebola
that have emerged.
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Just to your opening point about the extent of the crises,
the gravity of the crises, one of the lines I have been drawing
on lately is Shakespeare's line from ``The Tempest,'' which is,
``Hell is empty. All the devils are here.''
Ms. Bass. I will remember that. Sometimes it feels that
way.
Ambassador Power. And just to underscore also the pride I
think all of us--and it really was a massive bipartisan--you
know, a shining example of what a significant bipartisan effort
can--the impact it can make in the real world on Ebola.
I mean, you know, people really stepped up in this country
and, of course, the Congress providing the resources that we
needed and drawing attention to the crisis, President Obama
sending nearly 3,000 troops as well as a couple thousand
civilians and then the American people.
I mean, ultimately, this effort was staffed by sanitization
workers, health workers, doctors who left their families and
took tremendous risks, recognizing, again, a kind of core axiom
of the international system, which is, ``It won't come here if
we can neutralize it there.''
And just on that score, where we are right now, you know,
when that meeting at the Security Council that you mentioned
occurred and when President Obama made his announcement, which
we then used to leverage to get commitments from other
countries, you had the CDC and others projecting as many as 1
million infections by January 2015.
We are now down to around 25 cases a week----
Ms. Bass. Incredible.
Ambassador Power [continuing]. In Sierra Leone and Guinea,
and in Liberia, of course, we have been down to zero since May.
It is tricky, the last stage, and as long as there is one case,
it is a case that can quickly exponentially multiply.
The systems are now in place. So again, the risk of a
massive spike has been mitigated substantially by the
investments that we have already made. But, you know, sort of
kicking it and not just bending the curve, but ending the
curve, it is a very, very challenging last phase.
The World Food Programme is there, you know, providing food
to people who go to clinics. Because part of the challenge has
been ensuring that individuals will step up and allow
themselves to be isolated. They were often worried initially
that, if they left their families, there would be nobody to
take care of their kids or their families. So it really has had
to be a comprehensive effort.
And I would say the biggest challenge outstanding is in
Guinea still. The level of community resistance to outsiders
and to messages from the center has been an impediment, but
that is what we have to overcome here in the next phase and get
this down to zero and then concentrate on building back better
so that these societies are not only less vulnerable to an
Ebola outbreak, but, also, to other forms of infectious disease
and other health crises.
Very briefly, if I may, just on Burundi, you are right. I
think, when we look back at the last year, we can, on the one
hand, take some satisfaction that we really did go all in on
preventive diplomacy.
We recognized that a decision to choose to seek a third
term by the President of Burundi would be a violation of the
letter and the spirit of the Arusha Agreement because the
Arusha Agreement had been the social compact on which so many
of the ethnic and political tensions had been, if not laid to
rest, at least neutralized.
Violating that agreement was bound to have severe
destabilizing effects, and we got ahead of it. The message was
sent. The Security Council also traveled in the wake of our
visit, a huge and sustained high-level engagement by the United
States.
But at a certain point, you can deliver that message. You
can say, ``Put your country first. Please, Mr. President, be
your country's George Washington. Be prepared to walk away.''
And certain leaders will put their own self-interests above the
risk of severe destabilization.
Right now there is a U.N. envoy who is attempting to broker
a way forward between the opposition and the leadership. But
the third-term issue remains the central sticking point, and it
has now been compounded by the fact that, in the wake of an
attempted coup, which we condemned, the government has now
attempted to shut down almost all of the independent media,
deny freedom of association.
So once people's rights are violated, then, again, you
know, it is a further destabilizing phenomenon.
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. We will go now to Mr. Michael McCaul,
chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
Mr. McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Ambassador, for being here.
Let me first--I led a delegation to the Middle East and
Europe. Let me commend you--and, also, working in concert with
Lisa Monaco, we met the Turkish officials. And the information-
sharing on travel and watch lists is a huge breakthrough, and I
commend you for that. I also encourage you to keep the pressure
up on the foreign fighter issue.
As you know, the EU--if you are a citizen of the European
Union and coming out of the region through Turkey, you are not
going to be screened past a watch list, which I thought was a
sort of glaring security gap. I know the EU Parliament is
getting ready to address this issue. Many of the countries we
met with, they understand the threat that that poses. And I
hope that you can continue to apply that pressure.
Let me turn to foreign aid. We give a lot of money to
countries that vote against us in the United Nations. And
President Reagan's Ambassador, your predecessor, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, testified before Congress and said we need to
communicate to nations that their attitudes and actions inside
the U.N. must have consequences for their relations with the
United States outside of the U.N. system.
And in response to her testimony, Congress passed
legislation that would tie their voting patterns at the U.N. to
the amount of foreign assistance provided. However,
unfortunately, in 1990, this provision was repealed.
But the State Department continued this practice of
reporting to Congress on voting included in its report voting
at the U.N. and listed foreign assistance alongside countries
voting both with, for and against, the United States.
The Obama administration ended this practice in 2010, and I
wanted to see if you could explain to me why the administration
ended that practice.
Ambassador Power. Well, I am actually not aware that we
ended that practice because we still retain very, very careful
records of voting coincidence with the United States. It is
extremely important.
I study these, pore over these, look at ebbs and flows, you
know, try to explain why a country goes from a yes vote to a no
vote or an abstain to a yes.
So it is extremely important. And we believe very much in
transparency, and I am sure that this is something we can look
at and maybe we can take offline.
If I could get, though, at the--I think the harder issue
that you raise is not can we share our assessment of how
countries are aligning with us on a range of issues. It is this
question of then what do you do about it.
So my view is that we should call countries out. We should
press them publicly and privately. It needs to be raised in
capital.
One of the advantages of being a member of the President's
Cabinet is the close working relationship I get to have with
Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Rice, and it puts us in a
position, again, to elevate what often their Ambassadors are
doing sometimes without even capitals knowing and making sure
that there is an accountability chain back to the capital.
Depending on the vote, I mean, it is conceivable that you
could look at more robust steps along the lines you describe.
But let's recall, I think, that often countries that may vote
against us, let's say, on a resolution in the General
Assembly--or I shouldn't say against us, but against a
resolution that we vote for--those same countries may be
providing peacekeepers to northern Mali, preventing a
resurgence of extremism--or seeking to.
They may be countries that we are providing very generous
contributions, thanks to the American people and Congress, on
PEPFAR and on combating HIV/AIDS. We are all part of now trying
to ensure that girls get educated around the world. A lot of
that foreign aid can be dedicated to that. Ebola we have
described, you know, the investments in the global health
security architecture we have to make that is in our interest
over time.
So, usually, the decisions around who we provide assistance
to are overdetermined by a set of factors and a set of
interests that are also very, very important to us. And so I
just think----
Mr. McCaul. And I know my time is----
Ambassador Power. Yes.
Mr. McCaul. And it is very complex, ordinarily complex, but
I do think Congress has to look at this issue. And I know you
are required to submit an annual report on the voting practices
in the U.N.
It was due on March 31, and it is June. Are you planning to
submit this report?
Ambassador Power. We meet our obligations to Congress.
Mr. McCaul. Okay.
Ambassador Power. So, yes, I will again look into where it
is.
Mr. McCaul. Okay.
Ambassador Power. It may be on my desk.
Mr. McCaul. All right. Well, I would like to see that. And
I recognize the complexity, but it is important to us. So thank
you very much.
Chairman Royce. Mr. David Cicilline of Rhode Island.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Ambassador Power, for being here today and for
offering your expert testimony on many of the issues before
this committee.
I want to begin by commending you for your tremendous work
and your leadership at the U.N. as Congresswoman Bass said, in
a very complicated world, you have provided some extraordinary
leadership and have been able to lead an effort to accomplish
quite a lot at the U.N. So I want to thank you for your
service.
I am going to first turn to the efforts being made to stem
the flow of foreign fighters. You mentioned in your written
testimony in a little more detail the President convened a
summit of leaders at the U.N. in September, where a Security
Council resolution was adopted requiring countries to have laws
to prosecute foreign terrorist fighters and those who fund them
and to prevent them from entering the country and crossing
territories.
What seems to be the greatest challenge in seeing those
measures implemented? And are there things that we could be
doing to support that effort?
Because we have heard so much testimony over the last
several months about this issue of foreign fighters and
stemming the flow of foreign fighters. And this seemed like a
positive step, but I would just like to hear your thoughts on
that.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
It is not often how the question is posed, which is why,
which I think is really important. And I think we have made
substantial headway by putting the issue on the agenda, by
identifying the kind of categories of action in which countries
needed to step up, and we are not where we should be. And by
``we'' I mean the international community.
And Secretary Johnson, our Secretary of Homeland Security,
just got to make this point. We held about a month ago the
first-ever U.N. Security Council meeting in which interior
ministers sat in the chairs. And this was our logic of saying,
you know, in the old days, if threats were one country crossing
another country's borders, it made sense for foreign ministry
people to be talking to one another.
But here, when the threats are deriving often from lapses
in internal security or from a community's failure to catch
that somebody was drifting off and potentially even about to
become a foreign terrorist fighter, we need to get people who
actually are presiding over those programs together.
And so I think it is where the U.N. needs to go in the 21st
century, is have more of those technical discussions where
people who are dealing with threats inside their own borders
come together.
But to your question on why, I think it is, of course, a
combination. First, there are major issues of state capacity
and state weakness. Many of the countries from which foreign
terrorist fighters are coming are countries that have very poor
border security, very weak intelligence services, to actually
be able to track citizens and how they are moving.
And that gets to the President's West Point speech and,
basically, his direction to all of us that we need to invest
far more in partner capacity. Sometimes people focus on the
military aspect of that, but the border security, the
intelligence, you know, the kind of internal institution
building, is extremely important.
And then political will is an issue in some countries and,
in others, privacy concerns. And some of the European countries
have really held back the amount of information-sharing that
could be done.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you.
With respect to the efforts of the U.N. to protect LGBT
individuals around the world, I would like to speak a little
bit to that because, as you know, we have seen terrible
increases in violence against members of the LGBT community in
places all around the world.
And I know you have led some work at the U.N., and maybe it
gives you an opportunity to talk about some of the successes as
a result of our participation in the Human Rights Council,
recognizing it is a flawed entity with a lot of criticism that
you heard today at the hearing.
But I know that there has been some good that has come from
our participation. So maybe you could speak to that briefly.
Ambassador Power. Well, thank you. That is actually where I
was going before we were interrupted before in response to
Congressman Deutch's question. So I appreciate that.
You know, we have already discussed at length here some of
the flaws or the structural issues with the U.N. Security
Council. And time and again we find there or in the General
Assembly, which is comprised--more than half of the U.N. member
states are not democratic and are not necessarily rights-
respecting. So the Human Rights Council can be a venue in which
like-minded countries can come together to push the envelope on
norms.
And in the case of women's rights, we all remember back in
1993 the Beijing Conference on Women. Women rights are human
rights. The same shift has now happened on LGBT rights, where
the declarations have been made, where resolutions that ban
extrajudicial killings against various persecuted groups--now
we have managed to insert those killed on grounds of sexual
orientation or sexual orientation status--I think that is an
example, again, of finding the institution--forum shopping, in
a sense, within the U.N., finding the institution where you can
mobilize the votes and then pushing the envelope.
What we have now just this month is the second report ever
prepared by the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the
treatment of LGBT persons. So for the first time, again, you
have a norm that is important, but not everything.
Implementation is what matters.
Then you have accountability to that norm: How are
countries measuring up, actually documenting that for the first
time? So people who have felt invisible in their societies and
persecuted now know that the international community is
watching and that we have their back.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I know my time is expired, but I might just
submit a question and ask for a written response.
I am proud to be the co-chair of the Congressional
Peacekeeping Caucus, which we just recently formed along with
my colleague, Adam Kinzinger, so that members could discuss the
implication of regional peacekeeping operations and their
impact on U.S. foreign policy and national security.
So, if you could, Madam Ambassador, let us know what
reforms you think are needed, what role the U.S. has played in
supporting peacekeeping missions and what benefit do these
international forces have to American strategic goals and
national security and have U.N. peacekeeping missions been
successful in carrying out their missions, it would certainly
help guide the work of this new caucus and continue to
hopefully be a supportive entity within the Congress for the
work of the U.N. and its peacekeeping operations. And I thank
you again.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Royce. We are going to go to Mr. Ted Yoho of
Florida and then back to Mr. Ted Deutch of Florida.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ambassador Power, I appreciate you being here.
You were talking earlier today about these are the kinds of
conditions--we were talking about Syria and the Ukraine--kind
of conditions and situations we see conflict in that the U.N.
was created to prevent. You know, we look at Ukraine, Syria,
over 200,000 killed, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Africa.You
know, you can go on and on and on. Why has the U.N. not been
more effective in preventing these?
I read a report today talking about the peacekeepers in
Haiti, and there was over 220 examples of the peacekeepers
trading phones and aid for sex, and, you know, they are
supposed to be out there promoting this. Yet, this happens over
and over and over and over again. Yet, we do a study to study
it and there is no end in sight, it seems like. Why are they
not more effective?
Ambassador Power. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Yoho. And I think, more importantly, how to make them
more effective.
Ambassador Power. Right. Right. No. That is a question I
ask myself every day.
I mean, first, the ``they'' is also us. Right?
Mr. Yoho. Right.
Ambassador Power. We are part of the international system.
So there are 193 countries, half of whom are not democratic. To
some extent, the organization is going to reflect some of the
dysfunction of member states who comprise the organization.
On the issue of sexual abuse, of course, there is no
justification. There is not one country that would raise its
hand and say they are anything but revolted by what happens.
But, then, as was said, I think, by--maybe it was Congressman
Smith earlier--when a peacekeeper from a particular member
state is found or is alleged to have committed crimes against
young people or against women or against men or boys, they go
back to their home State and the only punishment exacted upon
them is often just not getting to be part of that mission, not
getting to continue to carry out the practices that they were
carrying out.
So the reason I started my response to you by saying the
U.N. is the sum of the efforts of the member states who
comprise it is that, ultimately, our ability to change those
horrific practices and that horrific lack of accountability is
going to turn on what we achieve in the capital, in our
strengthening of those institutions, in ensuring that those
countries have the rule of law.
In a democracy, if somebody was accused of that, they would
come back and they would face--I think, if it was an European
or an American peacekeeper, they would go through a formal
justice system. That is not what happens in a lot of these
developing countries where those systems are underdeveloped.
So this is why investments, again, in the kind of
institutions that we were talking about, also, in the context
of foreign terrorist fighters is very important. But it is also
why using our platform to denounce this, to never tolerate it,
and to emphasize the one part of the U.N. that we fund, which
is the Secretariat, that, on the one hand, gets instruction
from the member states--so it suffers from the same issue that
I have described already--but has autonomy.
And for the Secretary General and his team to be
investigating these abuses, to be sending people home, to be
calling on those member states even publicly, if that is what
is required, to investigate and to build on some of the
internal--you mentioned studies. Nobody likes studies for their
own sake. But when you find that a country has not actually
prosecuted a person who has violated a child who has relied
upon that individual for protection----
Mr. Yoho. Right.
Ambassador Power [continuing]. You call that country out.
You visit that country----
Mr. Yoho. I want to come back to that, you know, because
that is where I think we need to go.
I want to switch over to Iran. You said the Obama
administration led unilateral, multinational sanctions against
Iran to bring them to the negotiating table on the Iran nuclear
agreement.
What was the purpose of that whole negotiation? What we
were trying to prevent?
Ambassador Power. The negotiation or the sanctions?
Mr. Yoho. Well, the sanctions. What was the whole point of
that? I know it was to bring them to the negotiation table. But
with the Iran nuclear negotiation now, in your mind, what are
we trying to accomplish?
Ambassador Power. We are trying to deny Iran a pathway to a
nuclear weapon.
Mr. Yoho. Okay. That is what everybody says, but, yet, we
are beyond that. Because, you know, I have had expert after
expert over 2 years sitting right where you are at saying that
Iran has enough material for nuclear bombs now.
Henry Kissinger came out and said that. George Shultz said
that. We had a retired general last week say they have enough
right now. And I think we are beyond that.
I just don't see, you know, in good faith how we can
support this agreement. I would think that sanctions should be
back in place. And you said that President Obama has snap-back
authority--with his pen is what you said.
Do you really have the expectation that a snap-back would
be effective? You know, I mean, they are not even coming clean
now. So why would we go forward?
And if we do find out, you know, and it is, you know, more
evident that they have not held up to their end of the
condition, do we really think that we are going to put these
sanctions back in place with snap-back?
Ambassador Power. First of all, again, there is no deal. We
are still negotiating a lot of the terms of the deal. And as
you can see from some of the public commentary, there are
significant differences that remain.
And our red lines are red. And we are not going to take a
deal where we can't come to the American people and say that we
have achieved the objective that those sanctions----
Mr. Yoho. I am out of time.
But a red line is they can't have nuclear weapons, but they
already have.
Ambassador Power. They don't have a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Yoho. Well, the experts disagree with you.
Ambassador Power. I don't think there is an expert who says
Iran has a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Yoho. No. They have the capacity right now to have
that. So I think we are beyond that point, trying to prevent
that which we can't instead of preparing for that which will
be. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Mr. Ted Deutch of Florida for
his remaining 2 minutes.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Ambassador Power, thank you again for being here.
Thank you for staying to give all the members the opportunity
to discuss these important issues with you.
I just had two final points in my remaining time.
First, you had said earlier in response to a question about
the specifics of snap-back that Congress will be briefed if a
deal is done. And I would just make the request of you and the
administration that, rather than waiting until there is a deal
that is done, that this is the time, over the next couple of
weeks especially, when it is so important for the
administration to brief Congress, to let us know what is
happening, so that, one, we are aware of what is happening,
two, we can chime in, we can have our questions answered and,
most importantly, so that no one is surprised with the idea
that a deal will simply be dropped upon us at some date on or
after June 30. That is just a request.
And, finally, I wanted to thank you for your efforts in
working with the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations to
put together the first General Assembly special session on
anti-Semitism. I am grateful for your invitation to allow me to
participate.
Some of the important topics that we covered that day were
the anti-Israel bias in some parts of the United Nations, the
growing BDS movement, and thinly veiled anti-Semitism there,
and the other forms of anti-Semitism that in recent months have
manifested themselves in violent and deadly attacks in Brussels
and Paris and Copenhagen and elsewhere.
And my question is: After that special session on anti-
Semitism, after that conference, when there were more than 60
countries who participated, what has been done? What have you
done? What has the U.S. delegation done in order to move
forward with some of those important discussions that took
place then: How to combat anti-Semitism, how to help nations
around the world understand that anti-Semitism in their
countries isn't just an issue as it affects the Jewish
community, but, ultimately, when there is hatred, anti-Semitism
in the Jewish community is often just the canary in the coal
mine? And if you could talk about what has happened since.
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Congressman. And thank you for
coming to that session.
On that issue--and I will come back to your point about the
Iran deal in just a second--it was truly a historic session.
I mean, when you think about what the General Assembly not
only has done historically in terms of its resolution equating
Zionism and racism, but, also, what it does annually--this last
year with 18 anti-Israel resolutions, all of which were voted
against--to be in that chamber I think was extremely important
not only for the Government of Israel, but for the United
States and for many of the countries that helped shepherd that
session forward. It wasn't easy.
In terms of follow-through, I think we have to be careful
not to confine discussions of anti-Semitism to meetings on
anti-Semitism.
So what we are doing at the Human Rights Council, in the
General Assembly, when we talk about other human rights
challenges that we are facing in the world, we are always,
again, coming back to anti-Semitism, documenting what has been
done, who has done what.
We are still doing a lot of advocacy, including by our
anti-Semitism envoy, Mr. Forman, in capitals to try to get
governments to do what we have done, which is to appoint a
special envoy also dedicated to this effort and somebody
preferably very plugged in in the center and not somebody,
again, you kind of throw off to the side and keep marginalized
from the mainstream of decisionmaking because there are issues
of prosecution, of education, again, of community outreach and
so forth that are central to this and require real political
will from the top.
So a lot of our outreach has been in capital and at the
United Nations. Again, we are seeking to mainstream this issue
so people know you don't get a clean bill of health on human
rights when you are simultaneously encouraging anti-Semitism.
On the Iran deal--and I know we are both out of time here--
I would just note that what I really meant was that
fundamentally this deal is going to come. Back here people are
going to be studying it. They are going to be asking questions.
But, as you know, we have been briefing this deal at every
turn. And I believe specifically on the snap-back mechanism, if
members have not received adequate, you know, insight into how
we are looking at that and what the range of options are--and,
again, any one of them I think would achieve the shared
objective we have, which is to keep that within our authority--
this is the one at the U.N. I am referring to--but, again, if
there is any shortage of insight in terms of how we are looking
at this, that is something I am eager to provide. I know Under
Secretary Sherman or the Secretary would be as well.
But absolutely I take your point. We have sought to engage
Congress throughout this process. I think there have been more
briefings on this issue than any other on Planet Earth. But,
again, if there is more information that we need to provide at
this delicate stage, we would be happy to do so. Just in an
open hearing may be not ideal.
Chairman Royce. Well, I might take some exception,
Ambassador. I mean, from the standpoint of Congress, we do not
feel we have received the details on these negotiations, as you
know. But we have a conflict of visions, I guess, on on that.
We will go now to Mr. Curt Clawson of Florida.
Mr. Clawson. You don't have an easy job.
Ambassador Power. I love my job.
Mr. Clawson. Thank you for coming, and thank you for your
service to our country.
It sounds to me sometimes after listening today, which I
did attentively both when I was in the room and when I was not,
that the rest of the world gets a great deal here.
The oil companies get to run great surpluses with us. We
fund their economies. The manufacturing outsource in countries
of the world, China being the top of the line, run great trade
surpluses with us.
Then they all go to the U.N. and they pound on us. They
pound on Israel. As I heard earlier from Congressman Deutch and
others, not objective with respect to Israel, not objective
with respect to slavery, not objective with respect to Cuba,
just overall not objective.
And then, on top of all of that, we get to pay for it. So,
in nominal terms, we are over 20 percent of the world's GDP.
But, as understand it, we are paying over 20 percent of the
cost to the U.N.
There is something wrong with this picture. It seems that
we are not using our money at the U.N. to create leverage and
nor are we using our markets to create leverage. So we fund
everyone else's economy. In the global economy, we are the
engine, and then we turn around and tolerate the kind of things
that you have been talking about today.
Being Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guy doesn't seem to be working
here. It feels like, from an economic perspective, people only
understand leverage. And so, therefore, I am not clear why we
don't use our economic and monetary leverage both at the U.N.
and with respect to the global marketplace.
Am I missing something here in my synopsis? I am sure you
are going to tell me I am.
Ambassador Power. I would say a few things in response.
First, I understand the frustration. And one of the
priorities that we have had at the U.N. is to get more
countries to pay their fair share.
And I think you are going to see--you have seen over the
last 3 to 5 years China's share, for instance, of U.N.
peacekeeping, where the United States is the lead funder--but
its share has gone up by more than 50 percent. And soon, in
this next round of negotiations around the peacekeeping skills,
you are going to see it go up another 50 percent, commensurate
with its share of the global economy.
And that is the kind of distribution of resource provision
that we need to see at the U.N. and as people graduate from
being underdeveloped countries, they need to step up and take
their share of the burden. And that is something, again, that
is constantly being reassessed.
Mr. Clawson. Can I follow up on just that point?
With respect to China, I mean, the American consumer, via
Walmart, is funding the building of their military and their
economic prowess.
Do we ever talk not only about having them increase what
they pay for at the U.N., but, also, do we ever want to use our
marketplace to kind of level things out here?
Ambassador Power. Well, just to stick to what I know best,
which is the place I work and how we engage the countries that
you have expressed concerns about, you know, the fact of the
matter is we, as a Nation, as we saw with the Ebola crisis,
have an interest in global health security, in part, because of
the globalized economy, in part, because goods and people are
crossing borders in the way that they are.
And so the notion that we can kind of take our marbles and
go home and wish everybody the best and say, ``Well, good luck
with that'' I think doesn't really get at the core national
security linkages and human security linkages that exist in
2015.
I also would note on peacekeeping, which is the place
where, again, it is fair to ask shouldn't other countries be
stepping up more, that peacekeeping, while we are a major
contribution, it is not our forces who are going into South
Sudan and, you know, being on those bases and protecting
civilians. It is not our forces in Northern Mali, more of whom
have been killed this year than in any peacekeeping mission by
IEDs and other things.
We are taking advantage of the global system as well in
order to ensure that issues of shared security are being
patrolled and manned by individuals, other than Americans and
American families, because we have done more than our fair
share over this last decade.
Indeed, the peacekeeping share that we pay still leaves the
rest of the shares, even put to one side the fact that it is
other countries' troops and police that are going to those
dangerous places. Other countries are also paying 72 percent of
the burden.
And if you look at NATO defense expenditures where
Europeans really have not stepped up to allocate as much of
their GDPs to defense as they should be, the figure is
reversed. We are 80 percent of NATO's defense expenditures.
So I actually think, even though U.N. peacekeeping suffers
from all of the flaws that we have described and that is why
President Obama has launched this very aggressive initiative to
try to enhance accountability and ensure that those missions
have better capabilities to protect civilians and prevent
sexual abuse and so forth, in terms of our interest and
actually seeing atrocities be prevented, global epidemics
stemmed at their source, radicalization prevented by virtue of
actually having some stability, the rule of law advanced not
least also because of corruption and some other things that we
see, which don't help American companies seeking to operate in
these environments, there are a set of investments there that
are good for us.
And the United Nations helps us make them, but also helps
us force multiply because what we invest we are able to
leverage. It is still 72 percent on peacekeeping provided by
others. In our regular budget, it is 78 percent provided by
others.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Dr. Ami Bera of California.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Chairman Royce.
And thank you, Ambassador Power, for both your service to
our country, but your service over the years as a leading
advocate on global human rights.
I am going to turn my questioning a little bit to internal
politics within the U.N. as a body, it certainly has served us
well throughout its history. But if we look at the makeup of
the U.N. Security Council, you know, it does seem like it is
time to revamp the permanent membership of the U.N. Security
Council, certainly to include the G4 countries, you know,
India, Brazil, Japan, and Germany.
If we take India, specifically, you know, soon to be the
most populous nation on the planet, one of the fastest growing
economies, certainly a critical ally of the United States, my
understanding is President Obama has also publicly stated that
he would be supportive of including India as a permanent member
of the U.N. Security Council.
Can you give us a sense of how this body working with the
administration might be able to work within the political
structure of the United Nations to move forward, including more
nations as permanent members, again, and recognizing the world
that we are in in the 21st century?
Ambassador Power. It is an excellent question. And because
it is the 70th anniversary of the U.N., it is a question that
many of my counterparts from around the world are asking this
year specifically.
And there is no question that, when you have a body whose
permanent membership hasn't changed in 70 years, you know,
there are people on the outside who ask, ``Well, is this the
alignment of power and influence in 2015?'' and it is hard to
say that it is a perfect calibration.
I think the challenge is, while almost everybody is
supportive of Security Council reform in the abstract, there
are quite bitter divisions within the U.N. membership about
just who should get those seats.
And while India has the support, the United States has made
clear, President Obama made clear, as you know, on his trip
that we can't imagine a reformed Security Council that wouldn't
include India, there are other countries who are throwing
everything they have at preventing that outcome.
And so what has not happened is you have not seen one
version of Security Council reform that has gathered a majority
of countries. And even this year, when there has been more
action on this issue, you really haven't seen momentum, again,
gather around any particular reform scenario.
The U.S. position is very clear. We, again, recognize some
of the legitimacy challenges that the current Council poses
particularly in terms of its permanent membership. We recognize
the growth and the influence of countries like India, who,
incidentally, also are one of the leading contributors to
peacekeeping, so do a huge amount within the U.N. family and
have a huge amount to offer as the world's largest democracy.
But we also are very focused on the effectiveness of the
U.N. and efficiencies. And so we are also looking beyond that
case at how countries would likely perform on the Security
Council. We are looking at issues related to voting
coincidence, which was discussed earlier, because, of course,
we are looking for countries that share our approach to
promoting international peace and security, to promoting human
rights, to seeing the linkages between the humanitarian and the
human rights, on the one hand, and the peace and security, on
the other. It is not clear that this is going to move forward
quickly.
Mr. Bera. As these discussions take place and the U.N.
debates how to expand the Security Council, are there things
that this body, Congress, can do that would be productive in
helping move this along?
Ambassador Power. Well, I probably should have noted that,
in order for Security Council reform to take hold, this
Congress would also have to ratify any reform package. So in
the past, while the permanent membership has not changed since
1945, the size of the Council has. And that has to come before
this Congress.
Maybe one thing that could be done as an intermediary step
is to actually pass IMF reform because one of the things that
these emerging powers look to is the Congress' ability to
ensure that international--to support measures that would
ensure that international institutions actually reflect 2015
measures of influence, including economic influence, as
distinct from those from a decade or more ago.
And that has been stuck here, as you know, for some time,
and I think would be a very important show of our attention to
the rise of these countries, to the need for their voices to be
exercised and, also, for the need for these countries to
dedicate more resources to the comments because, just as they
want more representation and more authority, we would also like
to see them, per our last exchange, contribute more, you know,
to everything from peacekeeping, to development, to
humanitarian assistance, et cetera.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you, Ambassador.
Ambassador Power. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador
Power. We thank you for being with us this morning, and we also
thank you for returning and for our brief interruption.
I look forward to continuing to work with you on the
pressing issues raised here today, including the plight of the
Rohingya refugees, on issues like peacekeeping reforms and the
ongoing crisis in Syria and, of course, with you and the
administration on Iran's sanctions.
The committee trusts the administration will be in close
touch with us on these negotiations. We don't want to be
surprised in the final agreement, given the position that
Congress has taken on this, and especially the suggestion that
the administration may be backing off its original demand that
Iran submit to inspections of its nuclear sites at any time.
This is important to us, as is this question of the lifting of
sanctions not being on the front end as a signing bonus, but,
instead, being over the long haul of what was supposed to be a
20-year agreement.
But we thank you again, Ambassador. And see you soon in New
York.
Ambassador Power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 12:58 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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