Transcript
HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER STENY HOYER: The Democratic leadership of the House and Senate over the past six months has called on the President to carry out not a military surge but a diplomatic surge. In our letters in July, September and October, we recommended that the President convene an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq to help Iraq protect its sovereignty and borders and to revitalize fundraising for the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding efforts.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)
> Watch (wmv) | |
In December, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State Baker and former Congressman Hamilton, recommended that the President establish an International Support Group intended to stabilize Iraq and ease tensions with neighboring countries. Their view which I share is that this group would include all of the countries bordering Iraq, including Iran and Syria as well as key Middle East nations like Egypt and the Gulf States, the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council, the European Union and the U.N. Secretary General. I also support the call for the President to immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to get other countries involved in securing Iraq's borders through joint patrols and other cooperative efforts, promote trade and commerce with other Muslim nations, energize the stabilization effort and re-establish diplomatic ties.
Finally, the Iraq Study Group made the critical point that the President needs to work with Prime Minister Maliki to ask for help from key regional bodies, such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, in Iraq's reconciliation process. The members of these bodies have high stakes in a stable Iraq. We should call on these organizations to establish a regional security framework that focuses on confidence-building measures and security cooperation.
We also should ask these countries to invest some small percentage of their hundreds of billions of dollars made in oil profits to help bolster security and reconstruction efforts. These countries contributed significant amounts in 1990 and 1991, and they should again. For example, in the first Gulf War, the United States contributed less than $10 billion of the total war costs, as most of you know, of the $61 billion of costs, while Saudi Arabia and Kuwait contributed $36 billion and Germany and Japan gave $16 billion. At the very minimum, we ought to push these countries to come through on donations already pledged as well as critical debt forgiveness. The donors' conference in Madrid in 2005 raised pledges of $13.5 billion, but to date only $3.5 billion, less than a third of those pledges, has been paid.
Many scholars have called for a Dayton-like peace conference, an idea I support. Frankly, it is time for the President to accept that we are no longer involved in a nation-building exercise. We are involved in a conflict resolution, and there is no better means for resolving such conflicts, especially escalating civil wars that run the risk of becoming genocide, than to convene an international conference to achieve a cessation of violence and advance reconciliation. In my view, it would only help the United States' reputation abroad if we were to step up and announce such an effort. I urge the President to do this. I would propose that the conference be carried out under U.N. auspices with robust involvement from various Iraqi factions, neighboring countries, key Middle East nations, the European Union and others with the hope of brokering deals on securing Iraq's borders, disbanding militias, finalizing the constitution, establishing divisions of power and oil resources and other outstanding issues.
View Full Transcript »