MODERATOR: Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. Today we have Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes. She's going to give us an update on recent efforts in public diplomacy and then take your questions.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, thank you, Eric. And thank you all so much for being here and thank you for your interest in public diplomacy. The word "public diplomacy," the words -- two words -- are frequently thrown about, but the actual work of public diplomacy is often not covered as widely as I might hope because I like to say that we do a lot of programs that I think try to reach out to the world in the spirit of respect and friendship. And while that's very important, it's not always as newsworthy. I say that the opening of a school is not always as newsworthy as the bombing of a building, but in the long run, over ten or twenty years, the opening of a school may prove to be far more important. So I think we're about that work that we think is both long term and also very important. So I thought I'd just fill you in kind of quickly about some of the activities.
I really view my job, America's diplomacy, is what I call waging peace. And I use the word "waging" very intentionally, because I think we have to be intentional about it. As many of you may know, my position was created back in 1999 when Congress abolished the old United States Information Agency and merged that into the State Department, thinking that, well, we've prevailed in the Cold War and there really wasn't that much of a need for America to reach out to the rest of the world anymore and the Cold War was behind us.
I think that the years since have proven that that was -- that our need to reach out to the rest of the world, to engage with the rest of the world, to listen to the rest of the world, to respect the rest of the world and to exchange ideas and information has proven to be more important than ever before. So I view my job as putting an American face on our values and policies and also listening to the opinions of others and bringing what I hear home to our policymakers to inform their thinking and to let them know what people across the world are saying about America's actions or words or work in the world.
There are three major areas where I've really focused a lot of my work. The first is a much more aggressive communications effort to engage with publics through international media. And that involves -- I like to say there's only one Secretary of State, yet we have more than 200 ambassadors and chiefs of mission. And so I've really worked to get our ambassadors and chiefs of mission and other U.S. Government officials out engaging with international media across the world.
When I arrived at the State Department there was sort of an unwritten policy that an ambassador couldn't speak to a journalist if one of you called the ambassador without pre-clearance from Washington. Well, that meant the call didn't get returned, right, or it was two days too late. And so I did away with that and I said, we want you to engage as our ambassadors, we want you to be the face and the voice and the representation of America.
We also recognize that in today's increasingly regional media climate we didn't really have spokespeople who were engaging with the regional media. And so we set up hubs where we put language-qualified spokesmen in regional hubs, two of which are in Europe -- one in London, one in Brussels. The other which is in Dubai, where we have two full-time now Arabic speakers in Dubai, and their job is to get on television and engage with the media, answer your questions, explain America's policies and actions and values.
The hub in London, Adam Ereli -- some of you may have known Adam -- he was there. He has now become the Ambassador to Bahrain. And so Dan Tribni (ph), who is serving in Turkey right now is headed to the hub in London, he's an Arabic speaker, because there is so much Pan-Arab media there. And then in Brussels we have some people who speak -- I think we have one French speaker, one German speaker. And again, the idea is not only are they getting out on the airwaves and more aggressively engaging, but they're also booking visiting U.S. Government officials to engage with the media. And I recently was very proud to get an e-mail from a BBC producer who said that she'd had more success in booking U.S. Government officials than any time she could remember and that we were appearing more across the spectrum of the media.
We also created a -- something that was called for in many of the reports about public diplomacy -- media monitoring and rapid response center where we watch the media of the world. And we produce a very honest morning report every day that informs everyone from our cabinet secretaries to our ambassadors, to our military commanders, what the media is saying about America's actions. And so it's very honest. It could be that, you know, a European newspaper's headline complained about America's latest X-policy or in the Middle East they viewed the President's speech with skepticism or -- it gives a very honest assessment of the way that international publics are hearing the news from America. And I hope that informs policymakers and lets them think about how their decisions are impacting audiences across the world. And then it gives our government officials, our policy points in response to those issues. So it's my way of literally getting the very complex U.S. Government on the same page.
We've also in the communications area, created a new counterterrorism communications center where we have assembled experts from across the government, several different agencies, who have an understanding and are culturally sensitive to Muslim audiences and Middle Eastern audiences. It's led by a career Foreign Service officer who has extensive experience in the Arab and wider Muslim world. And the number two in command is a Department of Defense colonel and then it also has representation across the spectrum of the agency and that -- the point of that is to try to provide the intellectual framework for how the U.S. Government will respond when terrorist attacks occur, when terrorist tapes surface, when -- to engage in that to help counter -- again, provide the intellectual framework and the messaging. And we won't always be the ones who should deliver the message.
In some cases, for example, it might be more appropriate for a Muslim leader to deliver a message. And so we would perhaps develop the message and our embassies would share it with the governments in the countries where they served. So that's sort of the communications spectrum.
The second area is our education and exchange programs where we have both greatly expanded and created new programs specifically, especially to reach out to young people and to women and to strategic audiences across the world. And then also a very aggressive ramp-up of our traditional exchange programs, the Fulbright, for example, which many people have heard of, but not many people know that the Fulbright is currently at an all-time record high in the history of the program after a number of years where it was -- had substantial declines. We currently have a record high number of both U.S. students receiving Fulbright grants and foreign students receiving grants to come to America to study under the Fulbright program.
This summer we created a brand new youth engagement program for young people, ages 8-14, where we did summer programs. In Pakistan we had one. I know -- is there somebody from Turkey here? I -- yeah, we had one in Turkey, a girls camp there. We had -- let's see, we had several other. Let's see what other countries. We had one in Turkey. Egypt's not here, but we do have one there. And in these camps, we were -- in these summer programs, sometimes there were like a summer camp where we'd partner with the host governments and they were putting on activities for kids, sometimes they were after school, sometimes they were just, you know, daily programs. And we tried to partner fun activities like sports and music and art with English language instruction in some cases, which is a very popular draw. We find that young people across the world are interested in learning English because they view it as an international language. It also provides them a marketable skill. I'll never forget, we tried to focus these programs in areas of disadvantaged youth, that are both vulnerable to radical recruitment, but also where they don't typically have these kinds of opportunities. So I was meeting with a group of young people in a camp in Morocco, the summer program that we had an English language class. And I asked this young man, I said, "Tell me what difference it's made in your life, that you speak English." And he said, "Well, I have a job and none of my friends do." Now, this was a young man who came from the same neighborhood that produced the Casablanca suicide bombers. And so I will submit that he not only has a job, but he has a hope and I hope a reason to live, rather than kill himself and others in a suicide bombing. And so we've done these youth programs. We've done a lot of a work to empower women.
I'll be traveling to Europe this weekend to -- for a big women's health initiative in the area of breast cancer work. And we've done a lot of different work in the areas of empowering women across the world through health initiatives, through education initiatives, through, again, literacy initiatives. I believe women are very influential in societies. Women tend to when they gain knowledge, share it. They share it with their children. They share it with their husbands. They share it with their families, with their sisters, with their grandmothers, with their -- they have a wide network. And so I think that's a very important part of our outreach. The number of participants in our education and exchange programs is up dramatically and I fought very hard for that.
When I started, we had about 27,000 people that we brought to America or educated through our education programs across the world. This year we will have more than 40,000. And I'm working on a budget that I hope will take it to well over 50,000. So we will almost virtually double the participation in these education and exchange programs, again, which I think are -- you know, they're the kind of people-to-people programs that result in positive and lasting differences in people's impressions. I meet with a lot of the people who come to America on our programs or the young people in America who travel abroad, to study abroad, and they all said the same thing. They say, "It changed my life." And they talk about how it expanded their horizons. And so I think these people-to-people programs are absolutely vital.
In the third area, which is an area that the President's addressed at the United Nations the other day really highlighted is what I call our diplomacy of deeds and that is we're working to expand the concrete ways in which we are working to improve people's lives across the world in areas that people across the world tend to care most about and that is their education, their health, their economic opportunities. And the President in his speech the other day put really his -- I think the big agenda items of his presidency from promoting freedom to fighting tyranny and terror, to advancing education and health and economic opportunity, in the umbrella framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and really urged the United Nations and the international community to live up to its own noble vision of the human rights and human dignity of every person in the world.
And so with that, I'll stop and those are just a few of the things that we're working on around the world. Sometimes these are very intangible, so I thought I'd pass around just a little bit. We show you that this is from our -- I know many of you are from Europe. We put out a monthly newsletter that highlights all the varied programs that we're doing. This was a girl's basketball program in Turkey where we brought U.S. basketball players and coaches to put on clinics for rural girls. We think sports is a great -- sports is a universal language. It's a great way also to build teamwork and leadership skills and participation skills. In France, we had -- we worked with visiting NBA players who went into an underserved suburb, which was a scene of some of the unrest in the fall of 2005 and conducted basketball clinics, talked with young people about their lives, tried to engage in a conversation with them.
In Turkey we had a swimming coach that did sports camps and it was very, very popular and very well received. So you're welcome to look through any of these. They kind of give an on-the-ground perspective of some of the many different programs that we do across the world.
MODERATOR: Please remember to identify yourselves also.
QUESTION: Dogan Uluc, Hurriyet Turkish Daily. You talked about the (inaudible) of the communication center. Would you give some details about before I ask my question?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Sure. This is -- it's -- I guess the way I describe it is it's a small group of people who come to work every day with the mindset of how can I advance the ideological struggle against extremism and terrorism across the world today and how can I counter? For example, they put out -- whenever there's a terrorist attack, they will put out messages to remind the world that most of the victims were, unfortunately, innocent civilians because most of the victims in terrorist attacks are innocent civilians, including many innocent Muslims.
QUESTION: Where is the center?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: It's a -- literally, there's a center in the State Department. It's a -- small groups of rooms in -- right, but that --
QUESTION: It's a new center.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: It's new. Right. I created it this summer in the State Department and it's comprised of career professionals whose specialty is understanding the Muslim and Arab and wider Muslim world in sort of having the cultural sensitivity to understand how words and messages might resonate in that part of the world. So --
QUESTION: I'll ask my question. You are talking about the -- reaching the world's people to help them in education, health and finding opportunities for them and to get sort of interaction between your country and the rest of the world. In regarding to ask all these people -- the three centers in London, Brussels and Dubai, they're all getting in touch with the writers every Tuesday and everything to put your views into the Arab communication system through the press. When the public see all these efforts of yours, saying that they're good and (inaudible). But at the same time -- I'm talking about my country now -- Turkey is fighting with the Kurdish Workers Party, which is the -- listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department as well as all the European countries. Turkey having trouble with these separatist terrorists which are based in the northern Iraq --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Right. And they've carried out terrible terrorist attacks against your country.
QUESTION: And then recently about two weeks ago, when the Turkish forces see some of the PKK terrorists, there were American weapons on them -- brand new weapons. How do you reconcile then? Turkey is a very friendly country and a brutal ally of the United States and you have all these efforts. But at the same time, we cannot see any effort to fight with terrorists. Is it something like your terrorist is good, mine is better. Mine is bad, but yours is good?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: No. We don't think any terrorists are good. The -- when I was in Turkey, I discussed this issue with --
QUESTION: When were you in Turkey?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: I was in Turkey in 2005. I discussed the issue at the time with the Prime Minister who -- Prime Minister Gul who, I guess, was the Foreign Minister at the time. He's now the president.
QUESTION: He was the foreign minister.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: He was the foreign minister. Now, he's the president. That's right. And I know that our National Security Advisor Steve Hadley has been to Turkey and discussed this issue. I heard about this issue when I met with women in Turkey who are very concerned about obviously the threat of terrorism. And we want to work with Turkey to confront the common threat of terrorism that affects both of our countries and all of our citizens. We want to work for a world where there is no threat of international threat of terrorism. And we -- obviously, Turkey is a friend and a partner. And I'll never forget, I landed in Afghanistan once and was greeted by a Turkish general who was there at the -- with our NATO -- with the NATO force there, who was responsible for the airport at the time. I think it's a different sector now. But -- and it was wonderful to land there and be greeted by this Turkish general who welcomed me to the airport there. And so we want to work with Turkey to address the threat of the PKK and the common threat that civilized and decent people across the world face from terrorism.
QUESTION: As far as the -- my experience since 2001, I have also since then talked to several American officials including the Secretary of Defense -- at that point, Mr. Wolfowitz (inaudible). The attacked happened in the United States 2000. The United States had such overwhelming support, outpouring of support from all over the world and it was just phenomenal, and I myself have not seen. In Pakistan there were people saying to me -- I mean, I've got -- I mean, I have nothing to do with it, okay. But please make sure that the Americans don't go -- don't go back from this country without taking care of the terrorists. But as soon as that was happening, when you had Usama bin Ladin in sight, you decided to take your attention elsewhere to Iraq. And then the whole thing went down from there -- from there. And one of the reasons why -- I mean, that's what in my assessment -- in the Islamic world, in the Muslim world, the United States suddenly the -- all the goodwill suddenly started to dissipate. And that was really damaging. But now we think -- as we see as things aren't going -- there is still -- that in the Muslim world, they still are nagged by the fact that one big problem in the Middle East for some reason, it's a rallying call for all the (inaudible) world is the Palestinian issue.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Right.
QUESTION: And the Palestinian issue, unless that is resolved, I mean, justly, not only that this -- that in terms you should also -- if the Palestinians are being killed by Israel. Israelis have also been killed. And so on and so forth, that we should (inaudible) to that. That's not it -- it just seems as unjust that if there are two Israelis killed, there are a hundred Palestinians killed, that's how, at least (inaudible). And if -- and the United States is still considered to be the only arbiter acceptable at least to Israel. And now people say that probably the United States is the only one who can resolve this. So that is what is --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Which is why we're working so hard to try to resolve this.
QUESTION: But that's where -- the whole thing is why is there a feeling in the Muslim world that the United States is always on the side of Israel, as against the side of the --
MODERATOR: Beyond a few minutes, so --
QUESTION: Yeah. I'm sorry. Will you take this question?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, let me -- right. I hear what you're saying. Let me first respectfully disagree with one thing you said and that is we have never -- we've persistently kept our focus on trying to capture Usama bin Ladin. The President made a decision to go into Iraq and it changed security circumstances in the world in the aftermath of September 11th. And I recognize that that decision has been debated around the world and also here at home in America. But let me speak to the larger issue. The issue of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. And you're right. And one of the things people ask me -- what surprised me in my job.
And one of the things is the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the first issue that is raised around the world. I can be as far away as Malaysia and I meet with government officials there. And rather than raise Malaysian -- issues about Malaysia, they will raise with me, the Palestinian issue. And so I think clearly, I came back from my very first trip to the Middle East and talked with the President and the Secretary of State and made that statement to both of them that I felt from what I had heard and from the listening I did on that trip that the number one thing we could do to improve our relations with the Muslim world was to succeed in the vision of two states living side by side in peace and security, the state of Palestine and the state of Israel and I've been a very consistent advocate of that.
I have traveled to the Palestinian territories a number of times, including most recently to announce a new small business loan program that is designed to give grants and loans to small businesses that otherwise could not afford to access that financial capital because we recognize that one of the conditions for peace is to develop economic opportunities and to help build the civil society institutions in the Palestinian territories that will help create the groundwork for peace.
I'm currently -- Secretary Rice has asked me to work with our private sector and to look at what other things we might do to assist the Palestinian people, to particularly address the young people there who in many cases have grown up under a sense of occupation. Well, in all cases, have grown up under a sense of being occupied, rather than being able to be active citizens and participants in determining the future of -- you know, of Palestine. And so I'm looking at ways that we can work with the private sector, work with the government of Prime Minister Fayyad to try to support that government and help build the institutions that will be instrumental for achieving a peace.
We -- as you know, the Secretary has engaged very extensively. And I've lost count, but I think it's six, maybe, trips that she's made to the region, thus far this year. And we are working toward an international meeting here in America. Well, I don't know that they've announced actually the location. I think the thinking is here in America sometime later this fall where we would be here to try to support the parties and support the -- and involve the region in supporting the parties in trying to make progress toward that two-state solution. And so that is an issue that we recognize that the critical importance of that issue and we're very engaged in trying to make progress toward peace.
QUESTION: I have a couple of sort of very practical questions and then a more general one. First of all, I think you have a lot of interesting programs and about these youths you're bringing to America, you hope to bring about 50,000 within the next year or so or --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, we -- this year we'll bring total in all of our programs, and that's both exchanges and our English language and education programs that we do around the world. This year, I think it will be around 42,000. I'm working on a budget that we hope will lead it to beyond 50 and then close to 60.
QUESTION: How long on average are these exchanges?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: It's hard to say on average because we have a variety of different programs. We have a program for high school students where they come and live for a year with an American family and actually go to high school in America. And they live for a year with a host family and really get to know us.
We also have short-term programs where they come for two or three weeks.
QUESTION: Okay.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: So it really covers the gamut. It's a wide range. And then we, of course, have study programs where they come and go for a school year or a school semester, so it's a very wide range of programs.
But I think one of the really interesting relatively new programs is this high school yearlong exchange and I've met with some of those students. You know, when you go live for a year in another country, it really expands your understanding of that country. I think it's just as important, and one of the things I say to American students, and my own son who's in college, is that I want my fellow Americans to go spend a year abroad and study in France or go to Turkey and learn the languages of the world.
We have a new national -- I didn't mention we have a new National Security Language Initiative, where we are funding scholarships for young people to go abroad and study Arabic, Chinese, other languages.
QUESTION: My second -- sort of a technical question was about the budget for all these initiatives. Do you have your own budget?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: I do and it's separate -- when I started, it was about $670 million a year. It's now up to about $840 million a year, plus I won initial -- additional funding of $50 million by making the argument in our supplemental budget process that these kind of programs ought to be a national security priority. Because I really believe that winning over populations and winning over the ideological struggle is as important as the military side of -- particularly when we're trying to combat terrorism and extremism. And so I succeeded in getting this additional $50 million, which was a one time -- and we are also asking for more next time to fund some of these summer youth engagement programs. So now that is just for my public diplomacy and education and exchanges.
The public diplomacy budget used to include our broadcasting, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty; that's now handled by a separate agency and so that doesn't count that money. There's separate funding for that. I am involved somewhat in that. I'm sort on the board of that. But it used to the old U.S. Information Agency ran all of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; that's not the case anymore. It was separated out.
QUESTION: Okay, so your post was created and a budget for it was created at the same time?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: In 1999, when the old -- there was a -- USIA it was called, the U.S. Information Agency, and you probably knew of it because it ran -- had libraries.
QUESTION: Right.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: And the libraries were very popular places, and I wish we could still have libraries. Unfortunately, the security situation in the world makes people worry that they could be targets for attack. And that's one of the challenges we have today is that security environment.
So in 1999, on a bipartisan basis, it was during the Clinton Administration but there was also a Republican member of Congress who was very involved and very against the USIA, this agency was abolished and folded into the State Department. And I actually think in today's world that increasingly public diplomacy is a vital part of diplomacy. So now that we're at the State Department, I think we are actually a very important part of the State Department. Because in today's world as we have more and more democratically elected governments, it's no longer enough for a diplomat to quietly go and make a government to government -- you know, persuade the government official to do something. That government official has to be able to win support from his or her republic in order to engage or to take that policy. And so I think public diplomacy is very much a vital part of diplomacy in today's world.
QUESTION: If I may, I have a general question now. What you're doing is very commendable and I think it's going to be very useful. But the image of America as it is perceived throughout the world is much more directly affected by incidents like the Blackwater shootings or, you know, the persistence of Guantanamo and so forth. It must be frustrating for you to see that all the good you're doing can be undone in just, you know, just overnight by something that happens -- shootings, killings or whatever, even if the U.S. military is not directly involved in that. But it does have an impact on the image.
And the other part of my question is: How much influence, and I think that's the very important part of the job, the fact that you can report on what's, you know, on the perception of America abroad back to your own colleagues, and how much influence do you think you could have in perhaps shaping policy? Because after all, even if you're not involved in diplomacy per se, comes an issue like Iran, if we have another war there, all the good you're doing is going to be undone by that. So how much influence do you have on actually --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, first, I'm very involved in policy and I agree with the premise that public diplomacy does have to be involved in policy. One of my predecessors, who ran the old agency before it was merged, Ed Murrow, once said that public diplomacy had to be in on the takeoff rather than the crash landing. And I would argue that if you have public diplomacy in the takeoff, you might not have so many crash landings, I would hope. That would be the hope that you would think about issues of perception and how foreign publics would react to certain policy decisions.
I sit on Secretary Rice's most senior policy meetings. Members of my staff are engaged throughout the State Department. We're engaged much more than we'd ever been in the past in policy making.
You mentioned Iran. I was involved in the decision for us to announce that we would engage in talks with Iran if Iran makes the decision to suspend its reprocessing and enrichment activities and I think that was very significant. That was a difficult decision for America to make. I think it was the absolutely right decision and, again, I was involved in that.
I traveled last year to Latin America, and I don't think we have anyone here from Latin America, but I come from the state of Texas as the President does, and so our neighbors in our own hemisphere are important to us. And I heard everywhere in Latin America the same refrain, that because of the media focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, Latin America was feeling very ignored and the -- even though we had nearly doubled our development assistance to Latin America. And so I came back and told the President and he asked me to put together a Latin America initiative to help really engage and expand our engagement with Latin America. As a result, we just deployed one of our naval ships, the Comfort -- the hospital ship -- to 12 Latin American countries to deliver health care to thousands of people who otherwise wouldn't have it, to some of the poorest people in the region. And so I feel that I have been involved in helping to shape policy and will continue to be involved in helping shape policy. And I think it's important that public diplomacy be involved. And I think, me, personally because of my background and working for the President at the White House, I'm able to do that as well.
QUESTION: Because you have access.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: I've worked with him for a number of years. Well, and I -- you mentioned the Palestinian issue, I remember I was -- had met with a group of Palestinians and they had some very interesting things to say. And I was over at the White House later and I was telling the President about it and he said, well, are they still here. And I said what do you mean? And he said, well, I'd like to talk to them. Go find them and bring them over. And so I did and people were amazed. They said normally that would take three months to get through the bureaucracy, all the paperwork of setting a meeting like that.
So again, because of my longtime friendship and work for him, I do have that. But again, it's not -- what I'm trying to do is make it not for me but for public diplomacy in general. And that's why we've tried to build in at the State Department access for our senior public diplomacy officials. And actually I've been very gratified that now in the morning meetings, people will talk about all their public diplomacy activities. So Nick Burns, who I know you know, for example, will come back from a trip and say, I did a lot of public diplomacy when I was in Europe. The other day he said that and our deputy said, well, I did a bunch of public diplomacy on my trip to Pakistan. (Laughter.) So I think it's become very much more of a high profile activity at the State Department than it used to be and I think that's good.
You asked about frustration. I started my work in 2005, shortly after sort of the pictures from Abu Ghraib. And as a communicator, I know there's a reason the old statement -- a picture's worth a thousand words -- is an old statement because it's true. And some of these pictures have been very harmful and they're very hard to counter, and so that is frustrating because when you think about what happened at Abu Ghraib, those were crimes. And the lead individual that you see pictured in a lot of those pictures is now serving a federal prison sentence of, I believe, ten years. But that didn't get near as much play as those pictures. And so that is a challenge and it's a real -- I acknowledge it's a challenge in today's communications world.
QUESTION: Excuse -- just following on what you're saying about Abu Ghraib, I wonder if you feel a certain standard in the Arab world and that these photographs came out because of the U.S. investigation into these things. We don't have similar investigations coming out in Europe or publishing their own photographs. I wonder what you think of that -- about the double standard in the Arab world. And just on a separate point, when we have various officials come here to speak to us, I always notice -- this is a totally separate point, the cars outside are always huge, big, you know, gas guzzling massive big things, SUVs. And I've often noticed that in State Department officials. And I wonder would it not set a better -- because in Europe, you know, we see opinion polls that one of the major problems people have with the United States is global warming. I wonder what do you think of that. Could there not be more symbolic use of transportation that we've kind of --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: That's an interesting point. I'll raise that with our -- I think our security personnel are the ones who --
QUESTION: Having said that, now you want to tell the people in the State Department, so I know you're probably --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Right. (Laughter.) That's right.
QUESTION: -- a bigger car than anyone else.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: But there is a pretty big car that brought me over here, although I personally drive a Toyota, so I'm -- my car in Washington is a Toyota Highlander and so I drive myself. And in fact, even better -- I'll do you even better. I walk to work, which is what I do. So yeah, I do. I walk to work. So I have a car, but I walk to work mostly. I live about a mile from the State Department and so I have a little condo and I walk to work a lot. So that's pretty environmentally friendly. But I take your point. That's interesting point and I will raise that. You mention about the other -- well, I will share again one of the frustrations that in -- you know, in our free societies, we can debate these issues and we can talk about, for example, when you mentioned Guantanamo, there's a great deal of debate about that. There's a great deal of debate about that within the Administration. I was involved in debates. Before I left the White House in 2002, about a very difficult issue of what do you do with people who say they're going to kill you, if you release them. And what do you do when they're not represented by any state, when they aren't in any traditional -- combatants that wear a uniform. It's a very different and difficult issue. Here in America we're able to debate that issue. We're able to have the Congress look at that issue. It's not just, you know, the Executive Branch makes the decision, but the Congress raises questions, the courts take a look at that issue and the courts have weighed in on many occasions on that issue. And when you look at the people we're up against in this struggle, what do they do with the people that they capture? Well, in many cases, they've beheaded them. There has been no prison to which they're taken and which their healthcare is provided and meals are provided and they're given an opportunity to worship, as is the case in Guantanamo. And so I do think it's been difficult that there's not always been a balance in covering the difference between the way our opponents have treated innocents, and not only prisoners, in terms of beheading people like journalists like Daniel Pearl. But also in some of the horrific tactics of, you know, blowing up a wedding, and targeting children who are in line trying to get candy. And when I think back, I don't think I see as many of those kind of images as I do some of the others. And so that again is a challenge.
QUESTION: On the state level in the Arab world, what do you feel? I mean, you're often condemned for human rights violations, even yesterday by the Iranian President. I wonder what you think of Arab states denouncing the United States for human rights violations.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, it's very interesting to see the Iranian President come to the United States and use our free media and use our right to assemble and use the forum of the United Nations General Assembly to criticize our government in a way that would not be allowed in his own country, for which he would arrest people in his own country if -- you know, if someone -- if students were to gather and make some of the statements that were made by students at the university here in America, they would be arrested. We've had academics arrested in Iran. So I think it exposes some of the hypocrisy of the Iranian President's position when he comes here and uses the forum and uses our free society to criticize our society in a way that would not be allowed in his own country.
MODERATOR: We have time for only two more.
QUESTION: I'm Lalit Jha, a free-lance journalist from South Asia, writing for publications in Afghanistan, India and Burma. I'd like to know from you about the ways of these activities in Afghanistan. And my second question is about India. Last year there were a (inaudible) by Indian Express newspaper about Fulbright scholars from USA having difficulties in going to India and getting their visas delayed for one or two years. Is that issue still there? What are you doing to resolve that?
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, we raised that issue and I -- in fact, I raised that issue with the Indian Government when I traveled there. Prime Minister Singh and I had a wonderful meeting and he's very supportive of our efforts to increase exchanges between India and the United States and India is already our number one source of international students in America and we want to increase that even further and we want more American students to travel to India to engage and to build the relationship between our two countries. My understanding is the Fulbright situation has improved this year. We are -- I had a meeting earlier this week with a group of educators and with a member of the Indian Planning Commission, where we talked about our desire to update the Fulbright agreement to make India a full partner in the Fulbright program. The initial agreement was negotiated back in the 1950s. And obviously, the situation in India has changed dramatically since then. And so we would like to update our Fulbright agreement to allow more private sector involvement to make the Government of India a full partner, again, to allow an expansion of that program even further because we think it has enormous potential.
In terms of Afghanistan, we have a number of different programs in Afghanistan and I have personally been to Afghanistan a number of times. We have a -- we engage in all kinds of diplomacy of deeds from helping with construction in schools to healthcare -- providing healthcare and we've seen actually some great success in Afghanistan which had one of the worst rates of infant mortality, for example, in the world. There have been some dramatic progress; still not enough. Still a long way to go. But we've seen some great strides in improving the health of babies who are born in Afghanistan and improving the survival rates of babies who are born there.
We've created women's centers. We've done work in economic development to try to create job opportunities. I've personally been involved in with the First Lady Laura Bush in teacher training programs to try to train teachers. There's a great need for teachers, particularly for girls because the Taliban would not allow girls to be educated. And so -- and it would not allow women to work outside their home. And so you have a society there when in the '70s women were very engaged in Afghan life, yet they were brutally repressed in the years of the Taliban, were not allowed to be engaged in public life. And so we are working to try to rebuild opportunities in Afghanistan, economic opportunities, health opportunities, educational opportunities, particularly for girls and women.
QUESTION: Azim Mian from Geo TV of Pakistan. Just while you were talking -- listed all those, you know, what you are doing in Afghanistan, but still the public perception around the globe and in that area is no controls, no water in Afghanistan. Well, anything you see either on CNN or any local television is still all that destruction and (inaudible) is short. So the public perception about Afghanistan has not changed within Afghanistan and even outside Afghanistan.
Number two is about Pakistan. In Pakistan, the public perception has been and the White House (inaudible) has supported that President Musharraf is the greatest ally of the front line against terrorism and has been doing side by side there has been an impression that he's not doing enough. So there are two views coming out of the State Department, out of the (inaudible) and out of the U.S. media. One is President Musharraf is a frontline ally against terrorism and he's an indispensable leader for Pakistan. On the other hand, he is not doing enough, he's compromising, he's going to stamp out terrorists. And because of this perception among the public, martyrs who are very educated, my view is that, you know, they are at lost -- they don't have any very good perception about this because this is for seven and eight years, President Musharraf who have also (inaudible) region and as a matter of fact. And he overthrew the (inaudible) government, democratic government and that he took over, has been supported for several years by the United States. And now and it's still at the end -- well, if he has done anything, that is not being recognized, Pakistan --
MODERATOR: (Inaudible.)
QUESTION: So how do you deal with this kind of a dilemma in Pakistan and public perception is still you can see what the election -- you know, what the election --
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, I think you are outlining the complicated nature of the challenge in today's world. As you know, our Deputy Secretary John Negroponte was just in Pakistan. Richard Boucher, our assistant Secretary has been very engaged there. President Musharraf has been an important partner and an ally in the war against terror. That does not mean that we don't speak out when we see things, for example, like the arrest within the last week that concern us. We support democracy. We support movement toward a democratic Pakistan. We believe the people there should have the right to have free elections and to choose their leaders. We seek a modern and moderate Pakistan that is democratic and whose people have a choice of leaders.
You know, I think part of what the world hears -- and again, one of the challenges of my job is that there are many voices in America. And so sometimes the Administration will say one thing and a member of Congress will say another thing or a different party or a presidential candidate, and so you do hear a lot of voices and that's the nature of a free society and that's the nature of a free debate. But that does make it a complicated communications challenge. And so that's why I appreciate this opportunity talk with you all about kind of what we're doing.
And you mentioned Afghanistan. I wanted to make one more point that Afghanistan is a country that has endured thirty years basically at war. And so Afghanistan is a country that has many, many challenges. And I just met last week with a group of women, entrepreneurs, who are visiting from Afghanistan, who -- their message to me was that, yes, things are getting better. In some cases progress is too slow. They'd like everything to change overnight. That's not the real world.
But we have made significant investments in helping Afghanistan. The international community is engaged in Afghanistan. We've urged the international community, one of our messages this week was to urge the international community to increase its assistance and its efforts in helping in both Afghanistan and Iraq because it's in all of our efforts, regardless of how anyone felt about the decision in Iraq four years ago or regardless of how anyone felt about overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think the common interest of the world today is that both those countries succeed and have the support of the world to succeed, as unified and in stable countries that become allies in the war against terror, rather than breeding grounds for terror.
One of the points somebody asked me today about the fact that there were a lot of terrorists in the world, well, one of the reasons there are many terrorists is because they had a haven in Afghanistan where they were able to train for a number of years in the '80s and '90s. And we don't want to -- none of us want to see that situation happen again.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Thank you all so much for your time and your interest in public diplomacy. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
