[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2005, Book I)]
[May 23, 2005]
[Pages 847-853]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's News Conference With President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan
May 23, 2005

    President Bush. Thank you. Welcome. Mr. President, welcome back to 
the White House. I am honored to stand by the first democratically 
elected leader in the 5,000-year history of Afghanistan. 
Congratulations.
    President Karzai. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
    President Bush. I want to thank you for your friendship and your 
commitment to freedom. I especially want to thank you for being such a 
wonderful host to my wife, Laura. She came back 
overwhelmed by the experience, touched by the people she met, and 
optimistic about the future for your country. So thanks for being a good 
host, and thanks for being such a fine inspiration to not only the 
people of your country but showing the countries in your neighborhood 
what's possible.
    Your leadership has been strong, and it's in our interests that 
Afghanistan be free. Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for 
terrorists. Afghanistan is a key partner in the global war on terror. 
Our troops have fought and will continue to fight side by side to defeat 
the few who want to stop the ambitions of the many.

[[Page 848]]

    President Karzai. Exactly.
    President Bush. Increasing numbers of low-level Taliban are getting 
the message that Afghanistan's society is peaceful and optimistic, and I 
appreciate your efforts to reach out to the low-level members of the 
Taliban. I am impressed by the progress that you're making toward a 
market economy and a full-fledged democracy.
    One of the things that's very important, that is--a shift of opinion 
is taking place where now women are equal partners in society. Over 40 
percent of the voters in that October day were women voters. Girls are 
now going to school. Women entrepreneurs are opening businesses. The 
President was telling me that there's quite a number of candidates 
who've filed for the upcoming legislative elections who are women. The 
model, the example being set by Afghanistan in that part of the world is 
an important message, because you can't have a free and hopeful society 
unless women are full participants in the society.
    And so Mr. President, thank you for your leadership. We're looking 
forward to watching and helping make sure these elections go forward in 
a peaceful manner. It's a--the number of candidates that--who have filed 
are--is quite impressive. I think you maybe told me over 5,000?
    President Karzai. Over 5,000.
    President Bush. Yes, 5,000 people have filed for office. It's a--
democracy is flourishing.
    We spent a lot of time talking about the challenges we continue to 
face. Our objective is to continue to train the Afghan army so that 
they're capable of defeating the terrorists. However, today, it's 
important for the Afghan people to understand that we have a strategic 
vision about our relationship with Afghanistan.
    I've signed a strategic partnership with the President. It's a 
partnership that we've been working on for quite awhile. It's a 
partnership that establishes regular high-level exchanges on political 
security and economic interests of--economic issues of mutual interests. 
We will consult with Afghanistan if it perceives its territorial 
integrity, independence, or security is at risk. We will help the Afghan 
people build strong, lasting government and civic institutions. We'll 
continue to support reconstruction, economic development, and 
investments that will help educate and build the skills of the Afghan 
people.
    I've got great faith in the future in Afghanistan. First, I've got 
great faith in the ability of democracy to provide hope. And I've got 
faith in this man as a leader. He has shown tremendous courage in the 
face of difficult odds. He's been a strong leader. He's a good friend to 
our country. And Mr. President, it's my honor to welcome you back here. 
Congratulations.
    President Karzai. Thank you very much. My turn?
    President Bush. Your turn. [Laughter]
    President Karzai. Mr. President----
    President Bush. Don't give these an opening; they'll jump in there 
at a moment's notice. [Laughter]
    President Karzai. Mr. President, it's a great pleasure and privilege 
to be visiting the United States again, to be visiting you in the White 
House with the usual warmth and hospitality. I was in Boston yesterday, 
meeting with all the students on their commencement day. I was given an 
honorary degree, which was a great honor for me, and received tremendous 
warmth there as well.
    The United States has been the country with whose help we have 
rebuilt our country--are in the process of rebuilding our country. And 
you have been at the forefront of that effort with us in Afghanistan and 
in the rest of the world. I'm here today to thank you, Mr. President, 
once again for your leadership in providing Afghanistan the security, 
the reconstruction, and the freedoms that the Afghan people have today.
    You cannot imagine, Mr. President, and I cannot tell you that in a 
few words--there are so many words, it has to take

[[Page 849]]

a much longer time for me to describe to you what Afghanistan was going 
through 3 years ago. So it's difficult to say, and I'm sometimes--rather 
often--neither our press nor your press nor the press in the rest of the 
world pick up the miseries of the Afghans 3 years ago and what has been 
achieved since then, until today. We have a constitution. We had a 
Presidential election, and I'm glad it turned out to be good for me. 
[Laughter]
    President Bush. I know how you feel. [Laughter]
    President Karzai. Yes, well--[laughter]--I believe we share that 
feeling, yes. And we are going to have a parliamentary election in 3 
months' time. And I just informed the President that we have, as of 
yesterday--as of the day before yesterday, over 5,000 candidates for the 
National Assembly and for the provincial assemblies. There are women 
from all the provinces of the country will be coming to the Parliament. 
So the country is moving forward.
    We have been talking with your officials in Afghanistan and have 
conveyed to you through your Embassy and Government the desire of the 
Afghan people to have a strategic partnership with America, because 
after the completion of the parliamentary elections, the Bonn process 
will come to an end. From that point onward, we would like the world to 
recognize that with the completion of the Bonn process and the arrival 
of the Afghan Parliament, Afghanistan will not suddenly stand on its own 
feet. Politically, we will have done the process--politically, we will 
have completed the process, but in terms of the institutional strength, 
Afghanistan will continue to need a lot of support.
    And I'm glad that you signed with me today a memorandum of 
understanding on the long-term partnership between Afghanistan and the 
United States of America, which will make sure that Afghanistan 
continues to receive reconstruction assistance, which will make sure 
that Afghanistan continues to receive training from the U.S. for its 
military and the police, and which will enable Afghanistan to stand on 
its own feet eventually and be a good, active member of the region, 
contributing to peace and stability in the region, and be a bridge 
between various parts of that part of the world for trade and values.
    Mr. President, I'm here today to thank you for all that you have 
done for Afghanistan. And we are very, very happy. We are grateful. You 
sent the Vice President of the United States to come and attend the 
Inauguration in Afghanistan. It was a tremendous honor for us to receive 
him there, to have him there. It was the manifestation of the commitment 
of the United States and yourself to the Afghan people to have that day 
attended by the Vice President. And we are very, very happy, more 
importantly, to have had the First Lady to visit us in Afghanistan. We 
were thrilled. The Afghan women were thrilled. The Afghan society was 
thrilled. And now you guess whose turn it is now to come to Afghanistan. 
[Laughter] So we'll be hoping to receive you there very soon.
    President Bush. Thank you for the invitation. [Laughter]
    President Karzai. The country is much greener than it was in the 
past few years. I thank you once again for receiving us here and for the 
support you've given to us all along and will continue to do so. Thank 
you.
    President Bush. Thank you, Mr. President. Of course, I don't want to 
correct my friend, but I must. In thanking me, you're really thanking 
the American people.
    President Karzai. Of course.
    President Bush. And the American people are most impressed by the 
progress you've made, Mr. President, and it's progress that we look 
forward to working with you so that you can continue to make progress.
    And in the spirit of free press, we'll answer a couple of questions.
    President Karzai. Yes, we all know that, yes. [Laughter]

[[Page 850]]

    President Bush. Hunt [Terence Hunt, Associated Press].

Afghanistan-U.S. Cooperation

    Q. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, will you give the Karzai 
Government custody of Afghan citizens detained by the United States? And 
are you willing to give Afghanistan more say in U.S. military matters in 
their country?
    And to President Karzai, did you discuss the prisoner abuse at 
Bagram issue with the President?
    President Bush. First, in terms of more say over our military, our 
relationship is one of cooperate and consult. Of course our troops will 
respond to U.S. commanders, but our U.S. commanders and our diplomatic 
mission there is in a consultative relationship with the Government. 
It's a free society. There is a democratically elected Government. 
They've invited us in, and we'll consult with them in terms of how to 
achieve mutual goals, and that is to rout out the remnants of Al Qaida, 
to deal with those folks who would come and like to create harm to U.S. 
citizens and/or Afghan citizens.
    I must say the Afghan military is making great progress. It hasn't 
been all that long ago that we started a training mission. Now there's 
over 25,000 troops who are trained and ready to fight, and they take the 
fight to these thugs that are coming across the border to create havoc. 
And we've got another, I think, 22,000 to train to get this army fully 
stood up. Our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq is the same. I mean, we 
want these new democracies to be able to defend themselves. And so we 
will continue to work with the Afghans to train them and to cooperate 
and consult with the Government.
    The other aspect of the question?

Afghan Detainees in Guantanamo/Prisoner Abuse

    Q. The prisoners who----
    President Bush. Oh, the prisoners, yes. Our policy, as you know, has 
been to work our way through those who are being held in Guantanamo and 
send them back to the host countries, and we will do so over time, with 
the Afghan Government. Part of the issue is to make sure there is a 
place where the prisoners can be held. As I explained to the President, 
that our policy is, one, where we want the people to be sent home, but, 
two, we've got to make sure the facilities are there--facilities where 
these people can be housed and fed and guarded.
    Now, you asked about the prison--yes, he did bring up the prison 
abuse.
    President Karzai. On the question of the prisoner abuse, we are, of 
course, sad about that. But let me make sure that you all know that that 
does not reflect on the American people.
    Right now in Afghanistan there is an Italian lady that has been 
kidnaped by an Afghan man, while there are hundreds of Afghan women 
demonstrating outside in the streets of Kabul demanding the release of 
that woman, the Italian lady. So the prisoner abuse thing is not at all 
a thing that we attribute to anybody else but those individuals.
    The Afghan people are grateful, very, very much to the American 
people. They recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on 
governments or on societies. These things happen everywhere. As we are 
sad, we recognize that the American people, kind as they are to 
Afghanistan, have nothing to do with that.
    And I'm glad to tell you that I was reading today somewhere that one 
of those persons has been given a sentence of prison for 3 months and 
removed from his job, and that's a good thing. We, I must repeat 
strongly, are fully aware of the tremendously good values of the 
American people and of their kind attitude toward us and others in this 
world.
    Thank you.
    President Bush. Somebody from the Afghan press?

[[Page 851]]

    President Karzai. Anybody from the Afghan press? Do we have an 
Afghan press? Oh, here he is. [Laughter]

[At this point, a question was asked in Dari and was translated as 
follows.]

Afghan Economic Development/Opium

    Interpreter. This question is for President Bush. Question was, 
besides security and military assistance, Afghanistan needs more 
economic assistance. How can the U.S. assist more in building the 
economic infrastructure of Afghanistan?
    President Bush. Right. As you know, we cooperated early with Japan 
and Saudi Arabia in helping them build a very important highway. I can 
remember when then-Secretary of State Powell 
came in and asked whether or not I thought this made sense, and I did. 
And I talked--I think I talked to you about it in our first visit.
    President Karzai. Yes, yes.
    President Bush. I hope that highway is complete--if not, being 
completed.
    President Karzai. It is.
    President Bush. We talked today about electricity. Interestingly 
enough, Afghanistan has got natural gas resources, and that those gas 
resources can be used to fire electricity plants which will be helpful 
for the infrastructure. And as a matter of fact, thanks to the United 
States Congress, there is reconstruction money in the supplemental and 
the budget, and that's good. And so those are ways we can help.
    The truth of the matter--another way we can help is to diversify the 
agricultural sector, which leads to a subject that we spent some time 
on, and that is opium and poppies. As you know, there are--there's too 
much poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. And I made it very clear to the 
President that this is--that we have got to work together to eradicate 
poppy crop. And the President, not only in this meeting but in other 
meetings, has been very forthcoming about the desire to eradicate poppy. 
And as a matter of fact, according to a United Nations' report, there is 
less poppy today than the previous year.
    President Karzai. Exactly.
    President Bush. The President can give you some statistics on that 
if you're interested. One of the interesting issues, however, besides 
poppy crop eradication and, frankly, bringing people to justice who are 
running drugs is to--is for crop substitution. And the--President Karzai 
was talking about how the quality of the pomegranate that used to be 
grown in Afghanistan--evidently it's quite famous for--the country is 
quite famous for growing pomegranates.
    President Karzai. Yes, yes.
    President Bush. Or honeydew melons. In other words, there are some 
specialty crops, along with wheat and corn, that can and should be grown 
in Afghanistan. We look forward to working--the President brought his 
Agricultural Minister with him, and we look 
forward to working on this aspect of economic development. After all, 
Afghanistan has had a long history of farming. And we can do a lot to 
help the farmers get back on their feet and diversify away from poppies.
    And so there are some areas where we discussed help. The truth of 
the matter is, though, that it's very important for your Government to 
make--continue to make--and I'm confident the President will--but 
continue to make the right decisions about rule of law and transparency 
and decisions that will encourage an open marketplace so that people 
will feel comfortable investing in your country.
    I don't know if you want to comment on that--on the poppy issue.
    President Karzai. On the drugs issue, yes, yes. Mr. President, 
indeed, Afghanistan is suffering from the cultivation of poppies, which 
is undermining our economy. It's giving us a bad name, worst of all. 
Just after the Inauguration, a day after the Vice President and 
Secretary Rumsfeld left Afghanistan for the U.S., we called a meeting of 
the Afghan elders and representatives

[[Page 852]]

and spoke to them about the curse of poppies in Afghanistan. Their 
response to that was very positive. A lot of provinces that were the 
biggest producers of poppy refrained from producing poppies. Three years 
ago, I saw a report in the press that the province of Nangarhar, which 
used to produce poppies, has now reduced poppies by 80 percent, the same 
as in Helmand, the same as in Badakhshan, the same as in other areas 
where poppies were grown.
    So we are hoping that Afghanistan this year will have something 
between 20 to 30 percent reduction in poppies all over the country, and 
that is a lot. When I was addressing the Afghan people a few months ago, 
I was not expecting the response to be so positive or that we will have 
poppy reduction by so many percentages in a year. Now if this trend 
continues, we'll have no poppies, hopefully, in Afghanistan in another 5 
or 6 years.
    But equally important is the provision of alternative livelihoods to 
the Afghan people. The President mentioned pomegranates, honeydew 
melon--lots of other things in Afghanistan that people destroyed in 
order to replace with poppies have to be now brought back to the lives 
of the Afghan farmers' alternative livelihood. And our adjudication to 
the arrest of drug dealers, mafia, the producers of the labs, is going 
on. With this trend and with proper alternative livelihood, hopefully in 
5 to 6 years, Afghanistan should be free of poppies. That's a promise we 
have given to the world and to the Afghan people, and that's a promise 
that we will deliver on. Hold us accountable on that.
    President Bush. Thank you, sir.
    Steve [Steve Holland, Reuters].

Judicial Nominees

    Q. Mr. President, on judicial nominees, are you willing to risk a 
stalling of your domestic agenda in order to get votes on judicial 
nominees? And what do you say to critics who said the Republicans did 
basically the same thing to some of President Clinton's nominees?
    President Bush. Steve, I have made my position very clear, and that 
is my job is to pick people who will interpret the Constitution, not use 
the bench from which to write law. That's what I campaigned on. I said, 
``If I'm the President, I will pick people who do that.'' I said, ``I'll 
pick people who are--will bring great credit to the bench.'' And that's 
exactly what I've done, consistent with judicial philosophy in my picks 
as well as the character of the people I pick. And I expect them to get 
an up-or-down vote. That's what I expect. And I think the American 
people expect that as well. People ought to have a fair hearing, and 
they ought to get an up-or-down vote on the floor.
    Why don't you go with one final question. We've got this lady 
reporter here. Yes.
    President Karzai. All right. Lady.

Demonstrations in Afghanistan/Prison Abuse

    Q. Just to follow up on the treatment of the prisoners. Mr. 
President, you know, anti-American feeling is running high in the Muslim 
world. We've seen it in Afghanistan after the alleged disintegration of 
the Koran in Guantanamo. After meeting with the President, how do you 
assure the Muslim world and Afghan people that have seen death as a 
result of the article, that this incident in Bagram and other treatment 
of prisoners is isolated incident, and it's not systemic?
    And if I may ask you, Mr. President, as you know, the casualties of 
Iraq is again high today, 50 more people dying. Do you think that 
insurgence is getting harder now to defeat militarily? Thank you.
    President Bush. No, I don't think so. I think they're being 
defeated, and that's why they continue to fight. The worst thing for 
them is to see democracy. The President can speak to that firsthand. The 
worst problem that an ideologue that uses terror to try to get their way 
is to see a free society

[[Page 853]]

emerge. And I'm confident we're making great progress in Iraq.
    And clearly, it's dangerous, and we mourn the loss of life. On the 
other hand, the 8\1/2\ million Iraqis who went to the polls sent a very 
clear message to the world that they want to be free.
    President Karzai. Ma'am, yes, we discussed those questions on the 
demonstrations, or the so-called demonstrations in part of the--parts of 
Afghanistan. You saw that Government buildings were burned and private 
property was damaged, broken. Those demonstrations were, in reality, not 
related to the Newsweek story. They were more against the elections in 
Afghanistan. They were more against the progress in Afghanistan. They 
were more against the strategic partnership with the United States.
    We know who did it. We know the guys. We know the people behind 
those demonstrations. And if--unfortunately, you don't hear--follow the 
Afghan press, but if you listen to the Voice of America, the Radio 
Liberty, and the BBC, the Afghan population condemned that--those acts 
of arson in Afghanistan.
    Of course, we are as Muslims very much unhappy with Newsweek 
bringing a matter so serious in the gossip column. It's really something 
that one shouldn't do, that responsible journalism shouldn't do at all. 
But Newsweek's story is not America's story. That's what--that's what we 
understand in Afghanistan. America has over a thousand mosques. I have 
gone and prayed in mosques here in America. I've prayed in Virginia. 
I've gone and prayed in Maryland. I've been to a mosque in Washington. 
And thousands of Afghans have been to mosques here in town, and as a 
matter of fact, tens of thousands of Muslims are going on a daily basis 
to mosques in America and praying.
    So--and this is what was also reflected in Afghanistan. People spoke 
in the mosques, the clergy, and said, ``What the hell are you doing?'' 
There is a respect, there is this freedom in America for religion, and 
there are Muslims on a daily basis praying in mosques in America. And 
there are Korans, Holy Korans, all over America in homes and mosques. So 
it was a political act, a political act against Afghanistan's stability, 
which we have condemned, which the Afghan people have condemned.
    On the issue of prisoners, I spoke earlier, it does not reflect at 
all on American people. On the contrary, it's an individual act just 
like that bad Afghan kidnaped an Italian lady. And it's not the work of 
the Afghan people. In the same way, we treat this case.
    President Bush. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

Note: The President's news conference began at 11:03 a.m. in the East 
Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Minister of 
Agriculture and Food Obaidullah Ramin of Afghanistan. President Karzai 
referred to Italian aid worker Clementina Cantoni, who was kidnaped in 
Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 16.