Humanitarian Assistance to the Afghan People

   3:08 P.M. EDT

     MR. NATSIOS: Thank you very much. What I'd like to do is to describe the U.S. government strategy for dealing with the humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan. I might add that the plan we put together predates the events of September 11th. There was a humanitarian emergency well before the disaster in the United States.

     The United States was the major donor to the Afghan emergency of the last several years; 85 percent of all the 300,000 tons of food that was ordered last year in Afghanistan came from the United States, and a large portion of the cash assistance, which goes through NGOs, also came from the United States.

     When I became administrator of AID at the beginning of May of this year, the first thing I did was to review all of the humanitarian emergencies in the world, and I chose three. You can go in my office and see the poster board that lists the 12 major objectives of AID the first six months of my tenureship there, and number 10 is the three major emergencies that were most severe in terms of the loss of human life. One was the Congo, second was Sudan and third was Afghanistan.

     We sent a humanitarian assessment team from the State Department and AID, from the Refugee Office of the State Department and our office, into, with U.N. officials, in May of this year, to assess the situation because it did appear that pre-famine indicators were appearing in a number of areas in Afghanistan. And after three years of drought, my concern was that we would begin to see famine developing, and indeed, that is precisely what is happening.

     There has been 22 years of civil war off and on in Afghanistan. When you add that to famine -- I'm sorry -- to drought, you almost always have a large-scale loss of life anywhere in the world. In fact, civil war and drought almost always inevitably result in large- scale loss of life unless there is international assistance and an organized plan to prevent this from happening.

     In June we sent a Disaster Assistance Response Team, which has been there since then, to drive forward the American strategy for reducing the death rates in this famine.

     Secretary Powell announced an additional $43 million worth of assistance to Afghanistan several months ago based on a recommendation we made to increase the food distributions by 100,000 tons last year.

     Now, famines move in stages. And right now the famine in Afghanistan is at the beginning stage. Death rates are rising in certain areas, but they have by no means peaked. And what we are concerned about is that we are coming, and particularly in the Hindu Kush, into areas of the country that will be inaccessible once the snows start. And so one of our major strategies is now to get as much food into the highland areas, which will be inaccessible after the November-December time period.

     So, we have five strategies for dealing with this famine based on the $320 million package of additional assistance that President Bush announced last week.

     The first is to drive the death rates down. That is the first objective in all famines. This is essentially a moral imperative. The purpose of famine response is to avoid people dying of starvation or malnutrition-related disease.

     The second thing we want to do is to minimize population movements. And there have been lots of debates as to why that is, but -- and there are countries in the regions and the Taliban themselves who have their own motives for reducing population movements, or increasing them. Our motive is from the famine theory. The experience we've had over the last several decades shows that when people leave their homes in a famine, they die at much higher rates. In fact, in many famines, 50 percent of the population that goes on the move looking for food will never make it. They will either die on the way, or they will die in the camps that form of famine-affected people. Most of the people who die, the million people who died in the Ethiopian famine of 1985 died in internally displaced and refugee camps, because they were malnourished when they got there, their system, their immune systems had collapsed from malnutrition, and then there were disease epidemics that spread through the camps. So we do not want to have large populations to the extent that we can encourage people voluntarily to stay in their villages and then try to move food into their villages rather than have them move.

     There are two reasons people move. One is for food reasons, and the other is for insecurity. If there -- there was fighting in the civil war earlier this year, and there were large camps that formed;

     170,000 people were in a camp outside Herat that were escaping fighting. That's a different matter.

     I mean, that's not famine-induced, that's security-induced movement. But in terms of getting people who are acutely malnourished and having nutritional problems, we want them to the extent possible to stay in their own villages so that we can bring food to them there.

     The third strategy is to reduce food prices to normal levels. In the last month, food prices in several large cities -- I think Kandahar, Kabul, Herat -- have gone up between 30 and 50 percent, according to U.N. and NGO reports. Amartya Sen, one of the great famine economists of the world, an Indian economist, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, one of my heroes and widely read within my discipline in the humanitarian relief community, believes that famines are caused by dramatic increases -- in most cases, not all cases -- dramatic increases in food prices and then a collapse of people's access to food, either through the markets or growing it, through the selling of animals to buy food. He calls it entitlement theory.

     And what we have to do in this particular famine is make sure food prices are brought back to a normal level, and then we take measures through NGO programs to improve family incomes. Many families now that were herders, for example, have lost all their animals. They've either died of starvation because there's no fodder, or they've died of drought, there's no water for them. And as a result of that, these families have no way of feeding themselves. Our intention is to try to increase family incomes so that they can have access to markets.

     Famines are like an onion. The people who are most vulnerable are on the outside of the onion, and the people who are the wealthiest and the least vulnerable, who never get affected by the famine, and in fact might even make money on the famine, are in the middle of the onion. And what happens during a famine is the people on the outside of the onion, each of the layers of the onion, begin dying because they're the most vulnerable, and then you get further, further into the core of the onion. That's basically what happens, is there are different categories of people in the society, and our job is to minimize the spread of that famine to different economic classes.

     There are many Afghans who live off the remittances by their relatives from the Gulf states, from those who live in Western Europe and those who live in Canada and the United States. They live here, send their money back to their families, a very common practice all over the world; $30 billion worth of remittances leave America every year for all over world. It's a very large amount of money. If food prices go up too fast, they cannot feed their families even though the remittances continue, because food prices have gone up so dramatically that the purchasing power of these remittances collapse. And most people who are feeding their families through remittances are not feeding their immediate family, their extended family. They might have 2(00) or 300 members in their extended family.

     So it's very important that we adjust to the extent that we can, through market interventions, the prices on food markets.

     The fourth program is to protect the integrity of the humanitarian aid program. It's very important that the food goes to who it is destined for. The NGO structures through which our food is all distributed -- it is distributed on a wholesale level through the World Food Program and then retail directly to individuals through the NGOs. There are 10 major NGOs distributing food. They've been doing it, many of them, for 20 years, some of them 10 years. They have thousands of Afghan staffs, who are very dedicated, know the communities, know from elders in each community who should get the food and who should not get it, in terms of need. It is based on need alone.

     And fifth, finally, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has been postponed for too long. Half of the irrigation system of the country was destroyed during the civil war and never restored. In 1979 Afghanistan was self-sufficient in food. It produced 4 million tons of food a year. It produces 2.3 million tons. At least it did last year. It's going to produce even less this year. There's almost no seed left in the country.

     We need to begin the agricultural reconstruction of the country, reconstruction of wells, of roads, not huge projects. NGOs are not going to work with village elders to rebuild an airport or a university. That's for a large-scale reconstruction and will have to come later on. But they can do things at the community level, in terms of wells, local roads, irrigation systems, and improvement of farms, so that people can become self-sufficient.

     That is our strategy. That is our intention. We were pursuing it prior to September 11th. We will continue to pursue this strategy. We've been given instructions by the president and by the secretary of State, Colin Powell, to carry this program out with a high level of energy, and we are continuing to do that.

     I'd be glad to answer questions.

     MODERATOR: Okay. We'll start here in the middle. Please wait for the microphone and identify your name and organization.

     Q My name is Malcolm Brown. I work for Feature Story News. You just outlined five points which can all exacerbate famine. How does the military action play into that? I mean, isn't it totally antithetical to what you're trying to do to be dropping bombs at the same time, which would all run entirely counter, it would seem to me, to the five points that you've just outlined, in terms of building infrastructure, reducing food prices, preventing displacements, and so on?

     So would it not be better if the military action were to -- I mean, do you accept that the military action is a factor in exacerbating the famine, I guess, is my question.

     MR. NATSIOS: As a matter of fact, I don't, and the reason I say that is the military effort has been very targeted. It's been announced that way, and it's being carried out that way.

     The great bulk of Afghans are not affected by the military operation. The great bulk of Afghans live in rural areas. The rural areas are relatively unaffected by what is happening. The World Food Program began food deliveries again from all four borders, from Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. Thirty -- three thousand, two hundred, and eight-five tons of food were on the move yesterday.

     Those are moving just as they were before. The NGOs, while many of the expatriate staff had withdrawn, I might add, prior to September 11th, if you look carefully at the statistics of expatriate NGO workers doing relief work in Afghanistan prior to September 11th, there was a dramatic drop since the arrest of those eight NGO workers. I personally think there was a deliberate effort by Taliban, knowing what was about to happen -- this is just a supposition on my part -- to begin harassing the NGOs because they did not want them in the country. And they succeeded in moving them out.

     So, to answer your question, our programs continue. Are there areas along -- in certain areas of the country -- yes -- that are more insecure now than they were before. But frankly, there was a civil war going on prior to September 11th that was there and has been there for a couple of decades.

     So the great bulk of our program is still functioning. The Afghan staff, who are very devoted, are continuing to distribute aid and do their programming. And the aid grants that we made are continuing in effect and, in fact, they're expanding.

     MODERATOR: I think you had a question there? Lower, in the middle.

     Q Debra Barker (sp) with Newsday. Can you particularly -- or, specify how you plan to implement strategy two, particularly with the air strikes? How could you actually minimize the population movements under these conditions?

     MR. NATSIOS: Most people move because they've run out of alternatives. There are about 10 coping mechanisms, maybe a dozen coping mechanisms people use, without going into all of them, because it'll take a half hour for me to do that. When they end and there's no other alternatives and they realize death is around the corner, then they leave. Now, that's the worst time to leave because you're usually debilitated. People are acutely malnourished. They shouldn't be leaving anyway in those conditions.

     We're seeing a phenomenon in Afghanistan we haven't seen in many countries. It's -- we call them the permanent stuck people. That's the term the NGOs have made up for them. They're people who are -- there's a very large number of amputees, from the number of land mines in the ground. There are a lot of people who are disabled. There are a lot of widows in the country. Many of them are elderly, and they are unable to move. They have no way of, in a safe manner, leaving. So many of them are stuck anyway. They're not going to leave. And that's why we're not seeing the large-scale populations movements across the borders that we had anticipated.

     And so the best way for us to encourage people -- it's their decision -- is to move the food into their villages. And so there has been an effort to double the amount of food going into the country. We have been distributing monthly between 20,000-30,000 tons of food. We're hoping to double that to 50,000 tons in the next few months. And there is -- that's why we've opened up what we call pipelines from neighboring countries. Most of the food had been moved from Pakistan in the last few years. The Iranian government has been contacted by WFP, and we have agreed to have our food moved through Iran then into the western part of Afghanistan. That is happening as we speak. And pipelines have moved for Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as well. The Pakistan route continues. Food moves (through) this today. But by keeping more spigots open, more food will move in.

     We're also pursuing this market intervention, where we will sell food to move prices down. The food can't all be food aid. Some of it will be food aid. Some of it will be food aid, some of it will be market food, for commercial purposes. We need to make sure both amounts, kinds of foods are maximized.

     MODERATOR: Did you have a question?

     Q Charlene Porter with Washington File. You just mentioned Iran. It seems to me over the last week, as this whole effort has been explained and such, I've heard more positive comments about Iran and its efforts in this effort than I think I've heard about Iran from U.S. officials in several decades. Can you comment on how the cooperation in this particular effort may be shifting the tides in that relationship?

     MR. NATSIOS: Well, whether the tide is shifting in that relationship, I will leave to Colin Powell and the president. That is not my job to comment on the state of relations between Iran and the United States. I can only comment on the state of their emergency preparedness --

     Q And their cooperation --

     MR. NATSIOS: -- and their cooperation on the humanitarian -- has been excellent. People have told us, in fact -- many of the NGOs are relocating their headquarters into Iran from the Pakistan border area, and they're finding the Iranians are facilitating the movement of those headquarters. And there's a self-interest in it, to be very frank with you. The Iranians do not want large-scale population movements and millions of refuges. They already host a million and a half Afghan refugees. And they have a vested interest in seeing to it that people do stay in their villages and get served there. We have an interest in that from a famine point of view and from a humanitarian point of view. Having the NGOs active in Iran across the border into Afghanistan will, in fact, minimize those population movements because if people are being served in their villages, they're less likely to move.

     So it is in their interest to do it. However, they are facilitating it, and when we contacted the Iranian government through WFP to get their approval on this movement of food across the border, they readily approved it. So I can only say from a purely humanitarian point of view, the cooperation has been quite good.

     MODERATOR: We'll go here.

     And let me just say I know we have some visiting journalists from the Middle East. If any of you would like to make questions in Arabic through your translator, please feel free.

     Q (Inaudible) -- Kim (sp) with the AP. You mentioned you plan to double the amount of food into these pipelines. It was reported, I think before you started striking, that there was a strategy to flood the markets to help reduce the prices. Does that kind of fall in line with that? And also --

     MR. NATSIOS: That's the third strategy that I mentioned, these commercial counter-famine market interventions. That's what I was talking about.

     Q Okay. And what's your time line for that, too?

     MR. NATSIOS: There are teams talking with merchants on all borders right now about how we organize that. We have to monitor that. We don't just sell the food. (Laughs.) We've got to make sure the food is sold, and then go then to certain markets, and the prices are monitored to make sure they come down.

     We've done this before. We did it in Somalia. We did it in Ethiopia during the civil war. We did it in Sudan. Fred Cuny (sp) did it in Sri Lanka during the civil war there, very successfully. We tend to only focus on the aid agencies, and that is not sufficient to deal with famine.

     MODERATOR: We'll go up front next.

     Q My name is Oichi Shira (sp). I'm the Japanese correspondent based in Washington. Could you kindly give us the latest about the air drop, and how effective do you think it has been so far?

     MR. NATSIOS: The air drops have been -- started, I believe, on Sunday, if I'm not mistaken. And they've continued each day. They continued today. As of yesterday -- as of today we had dropped 145,000 of these packs, these humanitarian meals ready to eat. The meals ready to eat are specially designed for refugee and internally displaced populations in the developing world in these kinds of emergencies. They are not military rations. They are civilian rations. They are relatively low in fat compared to military ratios, which are very high in fat, which are inappropriate. There's also no meat in them, because there are dietary reasons in some populations you do not want to drop meat.

     The packs are being dropped in areas that we have suggested to the military based on two standards. The first standard is certain areas of the country are very difficult to get through from the ground and will become impossible to get through in the next month or two, when the snows come. In some areas of the Hindu Kush the snows are 20-30 feet deep. I think people think of the Hindu Kush as sort of some nice mountains. They are not little mountains. They are comparable to the Himalayan mountains in Tibet. These are among the highest mountains in the world. They are virtually impassible in the wintertime. And what we are concerned about is that we get as much food into those areas as possible before the winter months or people may not survive the winter, because many people are nomads in those areas, or they grow barley way up in the mountains in the high plateaus. And the crops in that area all failed. Those people are in very bad shape right now. They don't have food stocks. So -- we've also -- we're targeting areas that are already showing signs of acute malnutrition.

     So it's acute malnutrition and extreme inaccessibility, the standards that we use to target. There are also very few land mines in the areas that we're going to, deliberately, because we don't want people running after -- kids running after these packages when they arrive in a way that would endanger them.

     Is it the majority of the relief effort? No. Is it very visible? Yes. People see it. We support it. It will be a life- saver for a relatively small population of people, maybe in the hundreds of thousands, in these remote areas. But in terms of the total amount of food needed in the country, we need -- we're going to put in about 400,000 -- almost 400,000 tons of food in the next year. This is a quarter or a half a percent of that. But in the areas it's being dropped in, it's being concentrated in just a few areas. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, it will be life-saving.

     MODERATOR: I think we have a question in the back, and we'll go back -- (off mike).

     Q Sorry. The question is from -- is (name inaudible) -- from Tunis. The question is regarding your personal feelings and personal position about these noble and humanitarian efforts that are being done, and how it is made to look not so well through the military operations and the air attacks, the daily air attacks.

     MR. NATSIOS: Well, my job is not to -- even though I'm talking to all of you today, my primary job is to run the relief efforts. I have to leave to other people the dissemination of information on a daily basis to show the effort that we are undertaking in many of these -- in Afghanistan and other countries as well.

     I take this very personally. I have worked on famines for 12 years now. I've written several books on the subject. And a member of my family died of starvation during the Greek famine, during the German occupation in World War II. A half a million Greeks died in that famine. I take this very seriously. The president does as well.

     Long before September 11th he gave me instructions that we were not going to have famines in his presidency that got out of control. We were going to avoid this from happening. And I had the same instruction from President George Bush, his father. I served in the first Bush administration at a lower level doing exactly the same work, and the instruction was exactly the same: we will avoid famines wherever they are, anywhere in the world, even if they're in a country that is not friendly to us.

     And I might add, the great bulk -- the great bulk -- of the Afghan people are friendly to the United States and are certainly not friendly to the Taliban. If you look at the structure of the tribes and the political system, Taliban is not very popular. If they ever had an election, they would lose by a huge margin. So the Afghan people have never been our enemies, are certainly not our enemies now, and I think we are showing that long before September 11th by coming to them in their time of need in these terrible droughts. And we will continue to do that into the future with the president's and the secretary's leadership.

     MODERATOR: Question all the way in the back.

     Q Thank you. Mohamed Shekar Abdullah (sp) from -- (word inaudible) -- newspaper, the West Bank. Do you think this human aid could reach the Taliban, for example? And are the ways or the means used to drop this humanitarian aid sufficient to reach the real people in urgent need for such humanitarian aid?

     MR. NATSIOS: A very good question. But you have to separate the questions here. One is about the airdrop. When you drop things from the sky, you're not distributing it carefully by a list. But the areas that we chose are areas which are not under Taliban control -- they may be on a map, but there are not Taliban officials -- they're not important areas in terms of power or -- political power or military strategy. They're remote areas and, frankly, people forgetting about -- the political figures on all sides are forgetting about the people in these areas because they're in remote areas.

     And so when we drop food in those areas, we have a fairly -- from the sky, from the planes, we have a reasonably good estimate that the food will get where it's going. However, it's a small percentage of what's needed. Most of the food will go through on the ground in trucks and by donkeys. In fact, 4,000 donkeys left last week from Tajikistan with medical supplies on them, into the Hindu Kush, because these areas they're going to could not be reached even by truck, they were so remote.

     In terms of the food supply, the way in which the NGOs distribute the food is they go to the elders of a village and they say, "We want to know who the widows are, what children are orphaned and live at home but do not have adults at home to care for them, who are handicapped, who have lost limbs from land mines, who are ill, chronically ill, who are unemployed and may be very destitute and very poor." That list has been in existence for some time; it's not a new list. That's the list that we provide assistance to. It's done by the NGOs village to village, neighborhood to neighborhood, and is done by the elders, the traditional elders, they're not political figures. You know how the structure is of many countries' traditional societies; there are elders who enrich local life, and who people rely on. We work with them to develop these lists through the NGOs, and then food is distributed to those people on a regular basis.

     We are reasonably confident that the food that is going into Afghanistan, since it's going to recognized NGOs that are respected and been doing this for many years, using very qualified Afghan staff, is not going to any soldiers on any side of the conflict. We do not feed soldiers. And it's not because we're discriminating. It's one of our rules. We provide people assistance based on need. Soldiers who have guns never starve in a famine -- any famine, anywhere in the world. If you have a gun, you always eat. I don't have to explain why that's true.

     It should be self-evident. And so our concern is not for them, it's for the people who don't have guns, who are powerless and who have no way of supporting themselves.

     MODERATOR: We'll go back for a follow-up here and then take your next question.

     Q Do you see it as part of USAID's job to spread propaganda and to bring a good message about America? And if not, why do you print what you print on the side of these MREs that are dropped?

     MR. NATSIOS: Well, I think "propaganda" implies distortion. It implies that you somehow are distorting the truth or reality for political purposes. It was a term used during the 1930s and during the Cold War to talk about distortion of truth. The stuff we're printing is very simple. It says this food comes from the United States and it is a gift of the American people. That is absolutely true. And it is. And so if people regard that as somehow untruthful or distorted, I have to say I would have difficulty understanding how anybody could make that argument.

     Does humanitarian assistance send political messages? Yes, it does. In every conflict anywhere in the world, in any famine, it sends a message. Obviously, if you're feeding people who starving to death, you are sending them a message: "You're not my enemy. I don't have an enemy in a small child or handicapped person or elderly person. You're not our enemy." I don't think that's a bad message. If that's the message that people take, we don't object to it. That is not the reason we're doing the program, but it's not a bad message to be sent.

     We are not sending propaganda in from a political purpose or making any political statements other than doing our work. And our work in and of itself, it seems to me, by -- for millions of Afghans and people all over the world, whether they be in Sudan, whether they be in the Congo or other countries who will benefit from our assistance, do take a message from it. There's nothing wrong with that, in my view.

     MODERATOR: There's another question back here.

     Q Mr. Mahmoud Manawi (sp) from Al Ahram, Cairo. How will the U.S. achieve its military objectives when the location of Osama bin Laden is still unknown? As you well know, we have learned that some innocent people were killed in the air attack, among them people work for the U.N.

     MR. NATSIOS: I have to say that I leave to the Defense Department all military questions, or political questions to Colin Powell. It's not appropriate for me to comment on that. I can talk about the relief effort, the development assistance effort, humanitarian conditions, agricultural conditions, but in terms of the politics and the military, I have to leave that to other people who are more qualified. I don't even know the answer to your question, because I'm not briefed on that every day.

     MODERATOR: We'll take this question up there, and then we'll go back to you.

     Q Mr. Natsios, you mentioned early on in your remarks that the priority areas of the world long before September 11th also included Congo and Sudan.

     We're getting some reports that there's some feeling in Africa at this stage of the game that this intense focus on Afghanistan, in addition to the September 11th events and all of the other surrounding happenings, may diminish concerns about Africa. Can you comment on what is the status of that ongoing aid effort in view of all of these events?

     MR. NATSIOS: First, there will be no reduction of aid to any other areas of the world, and the reason for that very simply is that the president added $320 million to our budgets to run this program from the $40 billion supplemental appropriation that was approved by Congress. This is not taken from any existing AID accounts. And so it is additive to our budget; it does not require us to reallocate resources.

     Secondly, we couldn't reallocate the resources anyway from Africa because by statute we have to spend that money that's appropriated for Africa.

     I met with 10 African ambassadors from sub-Sahara Africa yesterday for lunch to talk about the USAID HIV/AIDS program in that continent, which is a horrendous pandemic that is devastating that area of the world, where AID's got a huge program to try to prevent the spread of the disease. We continue to be committed. There will be no cutback of any kind, not only in Africa, but in Latin America, other parts of Asia or the Middle East. This is additive money; it is not reallocation of resources.

     MODERATOR: Do you have another question?

     Q Yes, thank you. You talked about using ground transportation to deliver the 400,000 tons of food. How do you plan to do that and get over the hurdles that even relief organizations say they're facing, whether it be the scared drivers, whether it be the routes, the military strikes -- how do you plan to do that?

     MR. NATSIOS: Well, there are two means by which we get trucks. One is we use U.N. trucks, or we use commercial trucks, and we pay them -- you get paid when you deliver the food. We were having trouble on Monday getting some commercial trucks on Tuesday, but by Wednesday there was no problem with that. The routes were clear; they had not been bombed or anything. And food is moving. The truckers now are signing their contracts, and there's no trouble. No one has interfered with any relief shipments this year by anybody. So we haven't had any trouble with security.

     Now, could it change? It could change, but it has not happened yet. I think, you know, people know that if they leave us alone, we'll get the food in where it belongs. I think most people know that. So if they just leave the convoys alone, let us distribute our food, the people will be fed. I think enough Afghans know that, that they will pressure their leaders if people start interfering with the relief effort.

     Q One other thing -- weren't there some U.N. workers who were beaten -- (off mike)?

     MR. NATSIOS: The problem we had was the arrest of eight relief workers. I think it was in July -- June or July. That really was a political matter by Taliban.

     Those people are still under arrest, as you know, and there was a trial going on. I think, you know, that was a political question. It wasn't meant to intimidate the NGO organizations. However, we haven't had a problem of that kind.

     And the other thing is, the only workers now left are the Afghans themselves, who are running -- many of these organizations, the international NGOs, have 50 expatriate staff and 2,000 Afghan staff -- many of whom, by the way, are doctors, Ph.D. agronomists; they're technocrats, and they're very respected people in Afghan society. So they have a lot of influence, the people who work for these NGOs, and they continue to do their work.

     I've asked the NGOs -- I met with them the other day, and we went over what their programs were and how they were functioning. There were a couple that said there was some disruption for a while. The great bulk of the NGOs said they have been unaffected -- unaffected -- by any of the political and military events that are going on. And believe me, they would have told me. I used to work for an NGO for five years. They would have had no hesitancy telling me if they were upset.

     MODERATOR: We do have time for a couple more. Any more questions?

     MR. NATSIOS: Yes, sir.

     MODERATOR: Yes?

     Q What is your prediction for the winter season, with the snows a month or so away?

     MR. NATSIOS: I am very worried, but we are working overtime -- Catherine Bertini and I -- the executive director of the World Food Program is an old friend of mine from 12 years ago. We've worked together on these emergencies all over the world. We talk every two days. And I have my staff in the field. She has her staff. They're all working together with the NGOs to make sure we maximize the amount of food going through all these pipelines.

     So there is huge focus on this now, and that is one unintended consequence of what has happened since September 11th. No one was focusing on the Afghan famine. I have to tell you -- no offense to anybody here, but the only articles that appeared about Afghanistan were on women's rights issues. And while I'm very sympathetic to women's rights and very much disagree with the Taliban's treatment of women, there was another thing going on here that no one reported on, and that is, this is a famine. The malnutrition rates in some villages are -- people are dying at huge rates -- not all over the country; it was just beginning. That was lost on the international community, because the media's focus was on this larger, more politically interesting issue of the relationship between women and Taliban and the Western community and those sorts of issues, not that they're not important. But to me, you don't have any political rights if you're dead. And if your kids have starved to death and you've died, you don't have any political rights. And we should have been focusing on this famine publicly.

     I wrote an op-ed piece -- and I won't tell you which newspapers we submitted it to; I don't want to embarrass anybody -- but it was written with the minister of development in Sweden, my counterpart in the Swedish government, who at the time was the chairman of the European Union -- the Swedes were.

     And we talked about Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Congo. No one would publish the editorial. They said it was too boring and not interesting. And I have to say I --

     Q (Off mike.)

     MR. NATSIOS: Pardon me?

     Q When was that?

     MR. NATSIOS: That was at the end of June, the last day of June. They would not publish it, because they said it was too boring. And I have to say I was appalled. But I will not embarrass the newspapers by telling you which ones they were.

     MODERATOR: Is there another question? Then, with that, thank you very much.

     MR. NATSIOS: Thank you very much.

     Q Thank you.

END.

Copyright (c)2001 by Federal News Service, Inc., 620 National Press Building, Washington, DC 20045 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service, please email Jack Graeme at info@fnsg.com or call (202)824-0520.