[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 41, Number 26 (Monday, July 4, 2005)]
[Pages 1103-1107]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks on the Upcoming Group of Eight Summit
June 30, 2005
Thank you all. Thanks a lot. Please be seated. Thanks for the warm
welcome. It's a pleasure for Laura and me to join you here at the
Smithsonian, where America's heritage is kept and where the achievements
of all cultures are celebrated.
I thank Wally Stern for your kind introduction and for his
leadership of the Hudson Institute. I appreciate all the Hudson
Institute members who are here. Thank you for your service to our
country.
I want to thank the members of the diplomatic corps who have joined
us. I appreciate your coming. I particularly want to say thanks to the
Ambassadors from the African nations who are here. I have visited your
beautiful and hopeful continent, and next month, Laura will travel to
South Africa, Tanzania, and Rwanda to highlight the partnership we're
building on education, the empowerment of women, and the fight against
HIV/AIDS. She's a really good ambassador for our country.
I want to--I appreciate our Secretary of State who has joined us
today. Condoleezza Rice, I'm proud you're here. Thanks for joining us.
You're doing a fabulous job, by the way.
Ambassador Rob Portman, the U.S. Trade Representative is with us.
Ambassador, thanks for joining us. Andrew Natsios, Administrator of
USAID, is with us. Good to see you, Andrew. Thanks for coming. Randy
Tobias, who is the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator--Ambassador Randy
Tobias--thank you for joining us, Mr. Ambassador. I appreciate your
noble work.
I want to thank Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Jim Kolbe and
Congresswoman Nita Lowey for joining for us. We're honored you're here.
Thanks for coming.
Secretary Ann Veneman, the UNICEF executive director, is with us.
It's great to see you, Ann. Thanks for being here. I want to thank Larry
Small, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute.
I want to thank Dr. Julian Raby, the director of the Freer and
Sackler Galleries of Art. I appreciate Herb London, the president, Ken
Weinstein, the executive officer of the Hudson Institute. And thank you
all for being here.
Next week, I'm going to head to the G-8 summit in Scotland. Out
there, I'll meet with leaders of the industrialized nations. As in
earlier meetings, we will discuss the great political and economic
progress being made in Africa and the next steps we can take with
African leaders to build on that progress. The whole world will benefit
from prosperity and stability on the African continent. And the peoples
of Africa deserve the peace and freedom and opportunity that are the
natural rights of all mankind.
We seek progress in Africa and throughout the developing world
because our interests are directly at stake. September the 11th, 2001,
Americans found that instability and lawlessness in a distant country
can bring danger to our own. In this new century, we are less threatened
by fleets and armies than by small cells of men who operate in the
shadows and exploit weakness and despair. The ultimate answer to those
threats is to encourage prosperous, democratic, and lawful societies
that join us in overcoming the forces of terror, allies that we're
finding across the continent of Africa. We fight the war on terror with
our power. We will win the war on terror with freedom and justice and
hope.
We seek progress in Africa and throughout the developing world
because conscience demands it. Americans believe that human rights and
the worth of human lives are not determined by race or nationality or
diminished by distance. We believe that every life matters and every
person counts. And so we are moved when thousands of young lives are
ended every day by the treatable disease of malaria. We're moved when
children watch their parents slowly die of AIDS, leaving young boys and
girls traumatized, frightened, and alone. Peoples of Africa are opposing
these challenges with courage and determination, and we will stand
beside them.
Yet the continent of Africa is so much more than the sum of its
problems. After years of colonization and Marxism and racism, Africa is
on the threshold of great advances. Economic growth is at the highest
level in 8 years. Leaders have emerged from
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South Africa to Nigeria to Kenya to broker an end to old conflicts. Last
year alone five nations south of the Sahara held successful democratic
elections. All who live in Africa can be certain, as you seize this
moment of opportunity, America will be your partner and your friend.
In a developing world, we have an unprecedented opportunity to help
other nations achieve historic victories over extreme poverty, with
policies and approaches that are tested and proven. These victories will
require new resources. The United States has tripled overseas
development aid to Africa during my Presidency, and we're making a
strong commitment for the future. Between 2004 and 2010, I proposed to
double aid to Africa once again, with a primary focus on helping
reforming countries.
Yet new resources are not enough. We need new thinking by all
nations. Our greatest challenge is to get beyond empty symbolism and
discredited policies and match our good intentions with good results.
First, overcoming extreme poverty requires partnership, not
paternalism. Economic development is not something we do for countries;
it is something they achieve with us. Their leaders, by definition, must
play the main role as agents of reform and progress, instead of passive
recipients of money.
Over the decades, we've learned that without economic and social
freedom, without the rule of law and effective, honest government,
international aid has little impact or value. But where there's freedom
and the rule of law, every dollar of aid, trade, charitable giving, and
foreign and local investment can rapidly improve people's lives.
Economic aid that expects little will achieve little. Economic aid
that expects much can help to change the world. Through the Millennium
Challenge Corporation, established a year-and-a-half ago, America has
begun awarding generous financial aid to countries that fight
corruption, embrace democratic government, encourage free markets, and
invest in the health and education of their people.
Eight nations in Africa are now moving toward grants. In April,
Madagascar became the first country to sign a Compact that begins aid to
vital development projects. In the last 6 weeks, the MCC board has
approved three Compacts, one with an African nation, and I expect the
MCC to move quickly in the future. Governments making the hard choices
deserve our strong support. I call upon the United States Congress to
fully support this initiative for new hope and progress across the
developing world.
Second, overcoming extreme poverty goes hand in hand with improving
the environment. Stagnant economies are one of the greatest
environmental threats in our world. People who lack food and shelter and
sanitation cannot be expected to preserve the environment at the expense
of their own survival. Poor societies cannot afford to invest in
cleaner, more efficient technologies. Indira Gandhi spoke of poverty and
need as the greatest polluters. The long-term answer to environmental
challenges is the rapid, sustained economic progress of poor nations.
The best way to help nations develop while limiting pollution and
improving public health is to promote technologies for generating energy
that are clean, affordable, and secure. Some have suggested the best
solution to environmental challenges and climate change is to oppose
development and put the world on an energy diet. But at this moment,
about two billion people have no access to any form of modern energy.
Blocking that access would condemn them to permanent poverty, disease,
high infant mortality, polluted water, and polluted air.
We're taking a better approach. In the last 3 years, the United
States has launched a series of initiatives to help developing countries
adopt new energy sources, from cleaner use of coal to hydrogen vehicles
to solar and wind power to the production of clean-burning methane to
less-polluting powerplants. And we continue to look for more
opportunities to deepen our partnerships with developing nations. The
whole world benefits when developing nations have the best and latest
energy technologies.
Third, overcoming extreme poverty will require lifting a burden of
debt that we know poor nations cannot repay. Unending debt payments have
fewer resources for governments to spend on the needs of their people
and make it impossible to join the global
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economy as a full participant. Zambia, for example, is spending more on
debt service than the Government's entire budget for health and
education. Last year, poor nations owed $7 billion in debt payments to
creditors. This burden is hurting people in desperate need, and this
burden must be lifted.
In 2001, I challenged the World Bank to give 50 percent of its aid
to poor countries in grants instead of loans. And the bank has moved
steadily closer to that goal. With the leadership of Great Britain and
the United States, the G-8 countries are urging cancellation of $40
billion in debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations, including 14
nations in Africa. Twenty more countries can qualify for this debt
forgiveness in the future, with good government and sound economic
policies. We're determined not only to relieve debt but to erase it, so
nations in need can face the future with a clean slate.
Fourth, overcoming extreme poverty will require greater trade. While
aid and debt relief can create better conditions for development, it is
trade that provides the engine for development. Only 30 years ago, South
Korea's per capita GDP was equal to that of many African countries.
Thanks to export-led growth, South Korea is as rich as many European
countries. This example can be multiplied throughout the world and lift
great numbers of people out of poverty.
The developing world stands to gain the most from an open trading
system. Historically, developing nations that open themselves to trade
grow at a rate several times higher than countries that practice
protectionism. The poor of the world do not experience trade as
globalization. They experience trade as running water and electric power
and decent housing, broader education, and better health care for their
families.
Too many nations have been cut off from the economic progress of our
time, and we must expand the circle of trade to include them. Under the
African Growth and Opportunity Act, which has reduced barriers to trade,
U.S. exports to sub-Sahara Africa increased 25 percent last year. And
America's imports from AGOA countries rose 88 percent. Now we must take
the next large step, expanding the entire global trading system through
the Doha negotiations. The World Bank estimates that completing these
negotiations could add $350 billion annually to developing countries'
incomes and lift 140 million people out of poverty. The Doha
negotiations are the most practical and important antipoverty initiative
in the world, and we must bring them to a prompt and successful
conclusion.
Fifth, overcoming extreme poverty will require an atmosphere of
peace, achieved in some cases by effective African military forces that
can end terrible conflicts. Recent wars--recent history shows how wars
and internal conflicts can stop the development of whole nations. But
we're seeing progress. Tens of thousands of refugees who fled war are
returning home in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone and Burundi.
We can add to this progress. Over the next 5 years, America will provide
training for more than 40,000 African peacekeepers as part of a broader
initiative by the G-8 countries. We will help African forces to preserve
justice and order on the African continent.
We're strongly committed to peace for all the peoples of Sudan.
American mediation was critical to ending a 20-year civil war between
north and south, and we're working to fully implement the comprehensive
peace agreement signed last January. Yet the violence in Darfur region
is clearly genocide. The human cost is beyond calculation. In the short
term, more troops are needed to protect the innocent, and nations of the
African Union are stepping forward to provide them.
By September, the African Union mission in Sudan will grow from
2,700 to 7,700 personnel. In a NATO operation next month, the United
States military will airlift more than 1,000 Rwandan troops. We will
support the construction of additional 16 base camps over the next 2
months, and we will provide communications and vehicle maintenance for
the entire force.
In the long run, the tragedy in western Sudan requires a settlement
between the Government and the rebels. And our message is clear: All
sides must control their forces, end the killing, and negotiate the
peace of a suffering land.
Finally, overcoming extreme poverty will require humanitarian aid
that focuses on results, not merely on inputs and other flawed
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measures of compassion. True compassion is measured by real improvements
in the lives of men, women, and children. And that is the goal and that
is the focus of American policy.
Aid from America will help avert a famine this year in the Horn of
Africa. All told, nearly 60 percent of global food aid to the continent
of Africa comes from the United States, and Americans are proud to give
that aid.
And since 2003, our country has undertaken a major effort against
HIV/AIDS, the largest health initiative in history to combat a specific
disease. Across Africa, we're working with local health officials to
expand AIDS testing facilities, to train and support doctors and nurses
and counselors, to upgrade clinics and hospitals, to care for children
orphaned by AIDS, and to support pastors and priests and others who are
teaching young people the values of respect and responsibility and
prevention. We're making life-giving treatment possible for more than
230,000 adults and children in Africa. We're determined to reach our 5-
year goal of treating 2 million.
This effort is succeeding because America is providing resources and
Africans are providing leadership. Local health officials set the
strategy, and we're supporting them. We're also respecting the values
and traditions of Africa. Uganda and other nations are applying a
prevention strategy called ABC, Abstinence, Be faithful in marriage, and
Condoms. ABC is balanced, effective, and reflects the moral teachings of
African cultures. And no one is helped when outsiders try to impose a
lower standard of responsibility.
Today, in Africa, the United States is engaged as never before.
We're seeing great progress, and great needs remain. So this morning, I
announced three additional initiatives to help Africans address urgent
challenges. Across the continent, there is a deep need for the
empowerment of women, and that begins with education. Educated young
women have lower rates of HIV/AIDS, healthier families, and higher rates
of education for their own children. Yet only half of the children
complete primary education in Africa.
Together with African leaders, we must work for the education of
every African child. And to move closer to that goal, today, I proposed
a double funding for America's African Education Initiative. In the next
4 years, we should provide $400 million to train half-a-million teachers
and provided scholarships for 300,000 young people, mostly girls. We
hope other nations will join us. We must give more girls in Africa a
real chance to avoid exploitation and to chart their own future.
Another important aspect of empowerment and the fight against AIDS
is the legal protection of women and girls against sexual violence and
abuse. Many African nations have already taken steps to improve legal
rights for women. South Africa, for example, has an innovative model to
fight rape and domestic violence, special units in hospitals where
victims can report crime and receive counseling and care, and special
judges and prosecutors and police units to ensure that criminals are
punished.
Today I announce a new effort to spread this approach more broadly
on the continent. I ask Congress to provide $55 million over 3 years to
promote women's justice and empowerment in four African nations, nations
that can stand as examples of reform for others. I'll urge other G-8
nations to join us in protecting the lives and the rights of women in
Africa.
African health officials have also told us of their continuing
battle with malaria, which in some countries can cause more death than
AIDS. Approximately 1 million last year alone died on the African
continent because of malaria. And in the overwhelming majority of cases,
the victims are less than 5 years old, their lives suddenly ended by
nothing more than a mosquito bite. The toll of malaria is even more
tragic because the disease, itself, is highly treatable and preventable.
Yet this is also our opportunity, because we know that large-scale
action can defeat this disease in whole regions. And the world must take
action.
Next week at the G-8, I will urge developed countries and private
foundations to join in a broad, aggressive campaign to cut the mortality
rate for malaria across Africa in half. And our Nation is prepared to
lead. Next year, we will take comprehensive action in three countries,
Tanzania, Uganda, and
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Angola, to provide indoor spraying, long-lasting insecticide-treated
nets, and effective new combination drugs to treat malaria. In addition,
the Gates Foundation of Seattle is supporting a major effort to control
malaria in Zambia. We've had a long tradition of public-private action.
I'm grateful to have this strong partner in a good cause.
America will bring this antimalaria effort to at least four more
highly endemic African countries in 2007 and at least five more in 2008.
In the next 5 years, with the approval of Congress, we'll spend more
than $1.2 billion on this campaign.
An effort on this scale must be phased in to avoid shortages of
supplies. Yet we intend this effort to eventually cover more than 175
million people in 15 or more nations. We want to reduce malaria
mortality in target countries by half and save hundreds of thousands of
lives.
I urge other wealthy nations and foundations to participate and
expand this initiative to additional countries where the need is
pressing. Together, we can lift this threat and defeat this fear across
the African continent.
Over the last 4 years, the United States has stood squarely with
reformers in Africa on the side of prosperity and progress. We've
tripled our aid to Africa; we plan to double it once again. But more
than this, we're standing for good government and energy development and
debt relief and expanded trade, all of which will help African peoples
live better lives and eventually overcome the need for aid.
America is acting in these areas because we share with Africans,
themselves, a vision of what the continent can become, a model of
reform, a home to prosperous democracies, and a tribute to the strong
spirit of the African peoples. This vision is necessary, realistic, and
already on its way to achievement.
By standing with the hopes of Africa, America is also showing the
kind of country we want to be. This weekend, we mark the anniversary of
our founding. We celebrate our Declaration of Independence and the
universal appeal of liberty it proclaims. We celebrate our men and women
in uniform who protect and defend our freedom on missions far from home.
And Americans on this Fourth of July can also celebrate a great
tradition of generosity, a tradition of relief after World War I, the
Marshall plan and the Peace Corps, a tradition that is strong in our own
time.
Two years ago, a little girl in Namibia was born to a mother and
father who both had HIV. She had the disease as well. The name her
parents gave her translates as the phrase, ``There is no good in the
world.'' Months ago, the girl was very sick and losing weight and close
to death. But today, she and her entire family are receiving lifesaving
medicine. Now she's a beautiful, shy, thriving 6-year-old, with a new
life ahead of her, and there's a little more good in the world.
Across Africa, people who were preparing to die are now preparing to
live. And America is playing a role in so many of those miracles. We're
a nation that repays our blessings with generosity to others. When we
work with Africans to bring food to starving regions and malaria
treatments to remote villages and miracle drugs that restore the dying
to strength, this is part of our calling in the world. And as we answer
that call, it makes us proud to be Americans.
Thanks for coming. May God bless you. Thank you all.
Note: The President spoke at 9:40 a.m. in the Meyer Auditorium at the
Freer Gallery. In his remarks, he referred to Walter P. Stern, chairman
of the board of trustees, Hudson Institute. The Office of the Press
Secretary also released a Spanish language transcript of these remarks.