Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. (Department of State photo)
Burma Aid Is About Saving Lives, Not About Politics, Rice Says
Assessment teams must act before relief supplies can be provided
By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Staff Writer
Washington -- The death and destruction in Burma is not a matter of politics, it's a matter of saving lives, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"And it should be a matter that the government of Burma wants to see its people receive the help that is available to them," she says.
The United States and other nations, the United Nations, international relief agencies and nongovernmental organizations are prepared to bring considerable resources to the victims of Burma's Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath, Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said May 8 at a Washington briefing.
"We are poised and ready to make a significant contribution, but we need a very large coordinated international assistance effort," she said. "It is a time when we need that directed by international relief coordinators who have experience in the field. There are many international tragedies and this one needs to be contained at this time."
To date, the Burmese regime has not permitted the United States or most agencies access to the country to conduct much needed assessments and to begin bringing supplies, aid and help to the areas hit hardest by Cyclone Nargis.
Ky Luu, director of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, said relief aid that is not directed specifically could be more harmful than helpful in a crisis of this kind. The reason is that disaster assistance has to be carefully orchestrated to reach the right people and their specific needs. Supplies could literally be air-dropped into Burma's most remote areas, but unless there is someone on the ground who can direct the aid to those who need it the most, it'll just sit there.
Briefing on the Latest Developments in the Iraqi Refugee Admissions Program
Ambassador James B. Foley, Senior Coordinator for Iraqi Refugee Issues
Department of Homeland Security, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Program Officer, Anne Chirazzi, Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, Director, Office of Admissions, Terry Rusch and Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration Acting Director, Office of Assistance to Asia and Near East, Jay Zimmerman
MR. CASEY: Thanks for being here this afternoon, everyone. I wanted to have an opportunity for Jim Foley to speak with you again, give you another update on the status of our efforts to deal with the situation of Iraqi refugees and other efforts to take on some of the concerns and issues that the Secretary named him to be able to address.
As you know, Jim’s been traveling fairly widely around the region, has had an opportunity also to be working very closely with our colleagues over at Department of Homeland Security and elsewhere on these issues. And again, we’ve tried to make him available to you on a fairly regular basis just to keep you updated on a subject that I know everyone’s interested in.
So, Jim, why don’t I just turn it over to you, why don’t you make some opening comments and see what kind of questions people have?
AMBASSADOR FOLEY: All right. Thank you, Tom. Thanks for coming, all of you. I see this briefing as an opportunity mostly to talk about my trip to the Middle East and to Europe, which was almost exclusively focused on the assistance side, the need to meet the needs of the roughly 2 million Iraqi refugees who are in place in the region, in the neighboring countries. But let me just mention, in passing, the resettlement issue. I think you are aware that in March, that we resettled 751 Iraqis and that means that thus far this fiscal year, we are in the neighborhood of about 2,700 arrivals. And together with the figures from last year, from ’07, we’re currently at a little over 4,300 total Iraqis who have been resettled in the United States as refugees. There has also been a number of special immigrant visa recipients and their family members. So I think the number of Iraqis who have been resettled in the U.S. certainly exceeds 5,000.
Now, if you add the SIVs and the refugee numbers, as you’ve heard me say on many occasions, though, the numbers that have arrived so far are way – well below the numbers we expect to arrive in the coming months. I would think that this month, in April, that we will probably be in the neighborhood of the arrival numbers we achieved in March. As you know, this is a question of the pipeline and what is coming through the pipeline. And we have, I can tell you, already about 5,000 Iraqis who have been approved for – as refugees, who have not yet arrived in the U.S. So, that, you can more or less take to the bank. We have, unfortunately, instances of refugees, approved refugees, who do not actually show up for their departure flights. And we have a certain amount of attrition, but still, that figure – about 5,000 approved -- we can expect to materialize in the U.S. So, the numbers are big, they’re getting bigger, and they’ll get bigger still.
We, as we’ve told you previously, are anticipating Homeland Security Citizenship and Immigration Service circuit riders to be interviewing over 8,000 Iraqis in this quarter of the fiscal year, this third quarter, meaning between the 1st of April and the 30th of June. And the challenge for us will be, frankly, getting down to the wire, of mobilizing these huge numbers of approved Iraqi refugees in the final stages of what we call outprocessing, which involves getting people medically cleared and getting them culturally oriented and getting their exit permits, which, in some countries, can take up to four weeks.
