USAID: Assistance for Iraq - Seaport & Airport Administration

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Transcript: Seaport & Airport Administration

May 13, 2003

MR. WHERRY: Good morning. My name is Ross Wherry. I'm the Senior Reconstruction Adviser for the Asia and Near East Bureau of USAID. And I'd like to welcome all of you to the consultation this morning on ports and seaports. Before we jump into what is really kind of an esoteric but highly interesting topic for me. I need to lay down a couple of ground rules so that we're all on the same page about what we're doing here today.

If there are members of press in the audience, please bear in mind this is not a press conference. You're welcome, but if you have press-related questions, I will be able to refer you to a press officer at the end of the consultation.

This is also not a policy debate. If you wish to raise questions about U.S. policy in Iraq, then we'll have to send you over to the State Department or the Defense Department to talk to the appropriate official. We're not going to respond to those questions here.

This is not a procurement event. If you are here looking for subcontracts, then you will probably go away unfulfilled because we're not going to deal with that today.

What we are here to do is to listen to you as people who have an interest either in how airports and seaports operate, what goes through seaports and airports, how those ports and transportation node contribute to economic growth, where they fit into governance and the national budget, and how this might happen in a country which is now coming out of many, many years of centralized control. We now already from only a few weeks working with the Iraq program that we certainly don't have all the answers, and that's part of what we are listening for today, is ideas that are perhaps better than the ones that we have come up with so far.

I'd also like to have you work over our website, take a look at it and make sure that you know what all is there. It's updated every day, so the latest and best should already be there.

I'd like to introduce the people who are up here with me today and who will actually be doing the bulk of the work. My deputy, Larry Sampler, is the man who does the heavy lifting on all the infrastructure parts. Larry is here with his staff engineer, Jim Guy. Wave to folks, Jim. Representing SkyLink, who is our airport management partner, is Mr. Fred Krednall [ph], and we hope to be joined shortly by Mr. Mark Johnson, who works for Stevedoring Services of America, and they are our private sector partner on management of the Umm Qasr port.

Folks, we are now on day 13 of the official reconstruction, as announced by the President of the United States. The combat has finished. The conflict has been announced as being over. We're 13 days into it, and what we're finding out is that it really is a hard job. We knew it was going to be hard. We're finding out just exactly how hard it is. And for those of you who read the paper, the papers are telling us how hard it is as well.

The thing that's important for us as a development agency, as a representative of U.S. foreign policy, is that what's going to be done on the ground in Iraq is going to be not so much determined by us as USAID as it will be determined in collaboration with Iraqi experts who are already there. One of the things that makes the Iraqi reconstruction most interesting to us is the fact that it's a highly-educated country. There are a lot of technical people who were not necessarily political in their background, and they're coming back to work. I'm given to understand that the reason that the electricity is coming back to the extent that it has, has much less to do with what the Americans are doing, and has much to do with the fact that Iraqi technical people are coming back on their own. They have responded to their own goodwill and to the requests of their supervisors, and they're coming back and making things work.

We understand that that's happening in other parts of the nation as well, and that's why we think that this thing has to be done by the Iraqis. If we the Americans think we're going to do it to the Iraqis, I believe we are mistaken. So this is something that will be very collaborative.

I'm assuming that you've all looked at our website, so I'm going to touch just the tips of reconstruction to set the stage for today. USAID is working in four areas of a much larger reconstruction program that is actually coordinated by the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, and that's a Defense Department agency. We are a piece of that. We are with them, lending our expertise on the things that AID believes it can do well.

The first activity that we're into is primarily the restoration of essential infrastructure. That's electricity and water. It also includes ports and roads. Ports are interesting because they are transportation nodes, where you get off the water and onto the land, you get out of the air and onto the land. It may be rail. It may be highway. It may be some mixture of all of these. It's very complex. We've seen that there's not a lot of investment been made in the last 20 years, so there's some work that could be done now.

The second major area of reconstruction is social services. Social services for us is health and education, standing up to public health service, trying to get all the schools open again as quickly as we can, and then also we'll be looking at university partnerships later on.

The third main area is economic institutions. Iraq, as it was, was a very centralized operation, reminding me of things that I had seen prior to 1991 behind the Iron Curtain. The importance of economic institutions to ports is the sense that port authorities have to be given authority by someone and financed in some way. So we're looking at how should a port authority, whether it's airport or seaport, gain its income? How is that managed within the national budget?

In addition, we're looking at agriculture, government institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank, and we're looking at how can you bring the Iraqi private sector up to competitive world standards as quickly as possible.

The fourth area that we're dealing with is local governance. Local in this sense means that we're looking at how do you decentralize away from a very statused approach to everything? How much of ports could be run by port authority supervised by the government but not necessarily a part of the government? And for those of you who are familiar with the way that it's done in the United States and Europe, there are a variety of models that could be looked at.

Incidentally, to these four activities we're looking at the development of civil society organizations. Those were anathema to the previous regime. They're starting to come up spontaneously now. But most importantly, when we deal with the future of Iraq, we're actually dealing with the future of Iraqi people, the people who will live there long after the foreigners are gone, the people whose flag needs to be on the programs, because if you put a foreign flag on a program, that flag will be taken down as soon as the foreigners leave. So we want Iraqi participation and iraqi ownership of all of this. We're trying to get Iraq into the wider world as quickly as we can.

I'd like to go immediately to the person who's doing the heaviest lifting on all of these activities, and introduce Larry Sampler, and Larry will be the moderator for the rest of the session.

MR. SAMPLER: Thank you, Ross. I have a couple of additions that I'll make or further clarifications. The planning for what we're doing now was begun late last year, so as you hear today and as we discuss--and I hope there will be a lot of discussion--as we talk about how USAID and U.S. Government and the international community are dealing with ports and airports, keep in mind that this was a--there were long-standing plans made from late last year just on the--as a contingency planning or on a contingency basis. At the time we all hoped that war would have been avoided, but it would have been foolish for us to have been caught flat-footed without some kind of thought being given, for example, to how do you sustain the massive amounts of food import that is required in a place like Iraq?

There's also, however, a truism in terms of military planning at least that no plan survives first contact. So a lot of what you're going to hear today is not necessarily what would have been heard in DOD briefings back in January and February. That doesn't mean that it's not been well thought out. It just means that the thinking is evolving even today as we go forward.

The other thing that I want to highlight is that USAID works through what we call public partnerships or also contractors. The work that's done on the ground is being done by the partnerships that we have with Skylink and with Stevedoring Services of America in the ports, and if there are unsung heroes in this 13-day post-conflict period, I would like to suggest now, early in the game, that it is the public partners with whom we work in the field. They endure the same conditions on the ground, the same circumstances as our troops and as our U.S. direct hire employees do, and they do it a lot of time in an atmosphere of tremendous uncertainty, and they do a wonderful job. You'll hear today I hope that the situation at the port and the situation in several different airports are improving very quickly.

Last I want to touch on the paradigm that we have to use as we go forward with these plans, and I'm going to mention some dualities that almost sound like dichotomies, but they're not. And it's one of the first lessons that we're learning and relearning in terms of reconstruction. Relief and reconstruction are not oxymoronic and they are not dichotomies. Relief and reconstruction go hand in hand. They're both synergistic in the sense that things that we do for reconstruction provide immediate relief. They're also simultaneous. It's no longer acceptable to talk about providing relief now and reconstruction will follow.

The notion of short-term and long-term objectives can no longer be separated. Actions that we take have to be focused on improvement of the quality of life for the Iraqi people. Some have stronger long-term payoff, but we have to concentrate on both the short-term and the long-term effects of our actions.

And then finally, the notion of international engagement versus indigenous Iraqi engagement. Again, it's no longer acceptable to talk about the international community without including the Iraqi population in that international community because they are a part of it. So things like indigenous capacity building have to be part of what we do, not just in ports and airports, but across the spectrum of engagement. Evolving indigenous leadership. And what I mean by that is increasingly we will see the Iraqi population themselves managing their ports and managing their airports.

And the finally, management for the Iraqi population. In each of the projects that we're executing through our public partners, the focus is on a stewardship to make sure that the project we're executing now is something that can be handed over at the first appropriate opportunity for Iraqi leadership.

I think what I'll do is stop now and invite you to the microphone, and ask questions off-mike. We'll have to pause so that we can repeat them for the web audience, but I would like, since we have the folks here from Skylink, maybe issues on airport first, and we'll wait for Mark Johnson from Stevedore Services to get here, or if you have questions on ports, we'll be happy to take those as well.

And if there's no questions, I'll just talk for the remaining 50 minutes. Please. Yes, please. If you don't mind.

MR.: This relates to one of the four points that Mr. Wherry mentioned, reconstruction of essential infrastructure, and I think it also touches on the synergy that you mentioned.

Excuse me. My name is Jim Jantrice [ph]. I'm from the Venable law firm.

And this is in relation to Umm Qasr and the ship channel there. My question relates to how broadly we're defining any part of the projects here, whether--if you look at the RFP, it could be read more narrowly in terms of what the scope of the work to be done there is, or more narrowly, whether it should just apply to the relief of the delivery of humanitarian supplies, or whether it should be read more broadly to include a longer term reconstruction? My question is one of oversight by the agency. I understand the primary responsibility that it would be to the prime contractor, in this case, Bechtel, but what is the oversight mechanism that's being applied to those decisions to ensure that the administration's policy goals are going to be met in that process?

MR. SAMPLER: Good question. The oversight's never been delegated to a prime contractor, just to be clear. Contractors don't set policy, make policy or enforce it. They execute for us. The oversight and the litmus test of whether something meets or does not meet U.S. Government policy, is executed by the mission director, Lou Luck. I mean Louis Luck is the USAID senior representative on the ground in Iraq, working for Jay Garner and Mr. Bremer now at ORHA. So that's where the litmus test or the policy test is executed. But in terms of the port and how broadly or narrowly things are defined, there is specific language in the RFP which talks about the preparation of the port for the receipt and onward transmission of humanitarian assistance. That work is done--it's also cumulative work that counts towards reconstruction, so in a sense we get extra credit for doing relief and reconstruction simultaneously, and you're right, that is an example of the synergism I was speaking about.

If a project were proposed by Stevedoring Services of America, which couldn't show any direct impact on the onward transmission of humanitarian assistance, it would have to be evaluated pretty closely in terms of is it within the scope of the existing contract? They are limited contractually and legally by the scopes of the contracts they work on. Those contracts are broken down. Just to also clarify a little bit, when SSA went in, they went in literally days after the British Marines had liberated the port, and by days I mean less than a week. They were there as quickly as the military said, yes, you can put a couple of people in for a few hours to look around, and then we'll pull them back out. SSA began immediately doing assessments at the port with the British Marines and the U.S. Civil Affairs, and U.S. engineers as well, to determine what did they have to do.

The assessment that they produced for us--I'm from Georgia, so we measure academic work in terms of inches--it was a thick report. It was a weighty document. It was very well done, documented with pictures, of the kinds of things that had to be fixed before they could receive humanitarian assistance. That report was reviewed here in Washington and by the staff in Kuwait City at the time, and specific elements of their assessments were pulled out and said, "Start work on this one. Hold off on that one." So we have now a review process where the things that they assessed as being essential are being reviewed and approved individually for further work.

Some of that work does go to Bechtel. Some of it's being done by SSA if it's not necessarily massive repair work but other kinds of work.

Jim, did I get that right?

MR. GUY: Yes.

MR.: [Inaudible]?

MR. SAMPLER: The follow-up question was that the RFP as written does not limit the work to just the relief effort, and is the same process--will it be undergone for reconstruction?

Yes. The answer is, as SSA or as our mission on the ground identify port-related work to be done, we'll evaluate the work that they're requesting against the contract that they have with the U.S. Government. If it's within the scope of the contract, regardless of whether it's relief or reconstruction or just nice to have, if it's within the contract scope and our policy team on the ground, ORHA, says that we need to do this, then I think it would probably be pursued. But that's something we'll review when that time comes. I'm not getting ahead of--John, have I exceeded the--

MR. : [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: Thank you. Yes, sir, please?

MR. : My name is Nick Storr [ph], formerly with the FAA, now an independent consultant. One of the issues relates to both airports and ports, but probably agriculture as well, is the condition of the Iraqi weather forecasting capability, their sensors for collecting data, their ability to do aviation forecasts, storm forecasts, that type of thing. And I'm told that the Iraqi infrastructure has deteriorated. They did not put a major emphasis on that, and I was wondering, as part of the plan, whether you intend to do an assessment, perhaps with our National Weather Service, of the condition of weather forecasting capabilities and weather data collecting activities in Iraq as part of the reconstruction?

MR. SAMPLER: Sure. I can say as a layman, we'll hold them to the high standards of our own weather forecasters here in the D.C. area.

[Laughter.]

MR. SAMPLER: Fred, do you know--do you have any comment on the weather system in Iraq or the weather forecasting?

MR. : [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: For the webcast, the response was basically that the only assessment we've received is a Basra, which is a point assessment, not systemic. And I will elaborate on Fred's comment, that what we are doing with regard to airports, it differs significantly from the ports in the sense that civil aviation is a system of systems, whereas the port is in this case a single port. We haven't done anything, an elaborate assessment of any of the systems that support multiple airports in Iraq. That will be done on a point-by-point basis, as we do each airport. So I have to say to your question, I don't know yet what the answer to that will be. If it turns out that having an effective weather forecasting and weather data collection system is essential to restarting civil aviation in Iraq, then I would presume that it will be addressed. I don't know if USAID will be the venue, or if it will be a coalition partner or how that will be done.

I do know that right now they're using--the U.S. military produces weather data for the U.S. military, and they're kind enough to declassify it and share it with the civilian aviation partners that are going in, and humanitarian support.

MR.: [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: One of the notes that I'll ask Patrick to capture from this is--and again, the reason we do these fora is not just so that we can stand up and talk, but we gather information as well, and I'm sure that our aviation political have thought of that, but to be honest, that's not been on my radar screen, so to speak, of things to track, but we will add weather collection, prediction and data to our list.

Yes, sir?

MR. : I'm Dennis Krupp [ph] from Northop Grumman Technical Services. You talked about an assessment by SSA for the ports. I assume there's also been an assessment conducted for the airports as well. Is that assessment available to us, or should we just read between the lines when we look at the RFP?

MR. SAMPLER: I would never encourage you to read between the lines of the RFP. I don't think that serves any purpose. The assessments are provided by our contractors, or our private sector partners, to USAID to support the work that's ongoing. There's not a systemic plan to share those assessments. If a particular person or organization has a reason that they think they would like to see an assessment because there's a value added or something that they would like to contribute, we can consider that, but that's not typically done, that we share those assessments.

Yes?

MR. : Good morning, Larry. Kevin Gillan [ph] with Dominion Post. Question about the ports. Umm Qasr has the old port, the new port. What level of effort will be split? Will the majority of the effort be placed on the new port, and how about Basra, the port of Basra, will there be any effort at this point on Basra?

MR. SAMPLER: Yeah. I will yield the floor to Jim. Jim's got a better idea of the technical details of what we're doing.

MR. GUY: Thank you. Let me see if I can sort that question. The port of Basra is not under consideration for any assessment at this time. The RFP only deals with Umm Qasr. At some point we considered that and decided that Umm Qasr was a better port to import humanitarian assistance and have focused on that.

With regard to the old port and the new port, we're doing both of those. The ports are not--the berths have specialized functions. Some of the berths are for grain, some are for bulk cargo, so we're looking at what our needs are and going to those berths, whether they're the new port or the old port, work on those first. so it's not a matter of old or new. It's one port, and we're looking at what each berth can do in terms of what our needs are.

MR. SAMPLER: We've set a new record. Two questions and I have a clarification already. Your question, sir, with regard to making the assessments available. I'm told they will be available eventually, certainly through FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, but if you have a request for a specific assessment you'd like to see, if you'll submit a written request to the Contracts Officer for that particular contract, we'll address that request at that time.

Yes, sir?

MR.: Good morning. My name is (?) and I am basically an architect. I was IQ adviser to Government of Iraq between '83 and '90, and I was closely associated with the development of airports in Iraq. And even I was participating in the Oil for Food Program under the United Nations between '99 and 2001.

So I am fully aware about the airport situation. They were developed between 1978 to 1990, and this was a time when the country was at war with Iran, and the (?) Airport, it was built totally on a new site, and it was never operated to the capacity it was built for because of the situation at (?) like this. So there are a lot of people, I mean, lot of civil--start from civil aviation authority, from the airline. They were trained during the construction period, and--but they were not able to carry forward because this--it took lot of time for the construction period, almost about 12 years for the construction of the airports. So it so happened that when we were handing over the airports, that some of the systems which were installed, they were outdated. So you can imagine that at that time we were reporting them, five years spare parts for the future maintenance and operation of the airports. But even at that time the systems are outdated, most of them.

Now, the situation is that staff, I trained about 3 to 400 people, Iraqi staff, for the maintenance and operation of the airports, because I was in the capacity of the IQ expert, representing IQ and developing the airports [inaudible]. I worked on Baghdad Airport, as well as Basra International Airport.

Now, the situation is that staff who was trained, they were not able to run those airports. Even we had a problem at the completion of the time, we were not able to test the system because we were not able to use the airspace because of the war between Iran and Iraq. And airline, it is standstill since 1990. So it is not only the airports. We have to rehabilitate the airports, the infrastructure, as well as we will have to build the airline, because all the airplanes and Iraqi staff, they're not working any more. I'm in the [inaudible] and the aircraft engineers, and all these structures they're about maintained to the level they could have been maintained. Even there was no domestic flights during 1990 and 2000. They partly started the domestic flights between Basra and Baghdad, but on a very low level.

So if anybody is interested to know anything about airports, I have prepared a brief, and I can give any information on this.

MR. SAMPLER: What I would actually like, if you don't mind, at the end of the meeting, if you'd come forward, I'd like to swap business cards, and I think Fred with Skylink.

MR.: Yeah.

MR. SAMPLER: Another comment. I mean you've raised a really good issue which is the separation of airport reconstruction and management from civil aviation. Just building an airport's not enough. The issue of civil aviation at large is one where the intent is not necessarily to invest huge amounts of American money and put American flags, as Ross said, all over U.S. built equipment in Iraqi airports, but to create a situation where the commercial market and the commercial appetite for civil aviation will drive private investment to restart the airline for example.

I was fortunate enough to have been in Afghanistan to see the inaugural flight of Arianna [ph] Airlines out of Kabul in the post-conflict situation there. I think your interest and the role you played and the professional staff you've trained will be key to a quick resumption of civil aviation in Iraq, and will look forward to speaking with you after this session is over on those--

MR. : Yes. The situation is that when we were building, especially Basra International Airport, was all together built on a new site. It was not a development like Baghdad Airport was a development extension of the existing airport, but Basra Airport was totally on a new site. So when we were consulting, the problem was the construction authority, they were not the technical people to whom we will be advisers. They were from the Ministry of Housing, and they didn't have any airport background and experience, so they learned a lot while they were working with us, but unfortunately when the airports were constructed, since they were not operated to the level, they were kept on those projects.

But what happened was, during the process of construction, we involved the airport authority people, the (?) people, and we had a lot of coordination with the civil authority when we were building these airports. But these people, they were sent abroad where the systems are being manufactured in various companies during the manufacturing of the equipment. Then we involved during the (?) of (?), even during testing, and then finally we handed over the airports to the same staff.

Now, you see, once the airports were handed over, they were not operated from (?).

MR. SAMPLER: What I would like to ask you if we could, is maybe have a, certainly at the end of this session, a sidebar meeting between you and Fred and our staff, but then we may sit down at a future date and do a more formal debrief to talk about the way forward.

Yes, sir, if you don't mind?

MR. : My name is Dale McLaughlin [ph]. I'm with Genesis Aviation. But I'm here this morning representing a group called Wings of Democracy, and we are a volunteer organization of aviation companies. And we're not here today or through this process to look for contracts, but what we have done is gotten together a number of airlines, U.S. airlines, UK airlines, and other related aviation companies to philanthropically go and help get the first or this first and second Iraqi free airliners up and flying again. So my question would be, is there a mechanism in this process for philanthropic efforts for organizations such as me? We have 23 aviation companies, as of this morning in this organization. So is there a mechanism for a philanthropic effort?

MR. SAMPLER: Well, I would certainly offer Fred as a point of contact. Since you're here and he's here, we'll at least make that lash-up between the two of you. There may very soon be an interagency point of contact. I can't announce that yet because it hasn't been formalize. But what we're working on is identifying an individual in several of these different sectors who will be the single point of contact for external engagement as well as for interagency engagement and coordination of things like that. We don't ever want to be in the position of neglecting philanthropic offers of that type. That doesn't mean that we can always accept them because it--at one point, not on the philanthropic side, but just to capture from one of our last sessions here, Bechtel, within days of opening their subcontract web page, had 30,000 applications, and was in the position of having to say, "We can't even respond to all of these and acknowledge them." Unfortunately, there's not quite as many people that come forward to do things for free, but we do want to at least acknowledge them and discuss in a little bit of detail what they're offering, so that we know what's on the table and what's being discussed.

So Fred is the first point of contact, and then we'll go from there.

Yes, sir?

MR. : Good morning. My name is Cato [ph] Sublov [ph] from Iraqi National Fund. I'm Iraqi. While I'm here, I'm not going to talk about technical issues and contracts. The most important issue I'm asking, it's when--Iraqi need to be involved. And we do have, that's true, that we do have many technical people and engineers, that they have experts that have been graduated from universities, American universities, and because the situation in Iraq has been spreaded outside country, most of them in Europe, the United States. And now I'll ask Mr. Fred how we can get those people together and to work with Skylink to get back and help to expedite the process of running the airports back together?

MR. KREDNALL: The simple answer is, once we are actually tasked to operate the airports in Iraq, we will insert upper level management airport directors, certain airport managers in different positions, and the plan all the workers, if you will, and personnel under those particular people initially, almost immediately will be local Iraqis, or nationalists. And then at some point, as it evolves, 2 years maybe, a year and a half, two years, we'll completely turn the project over to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Government.

So we can exchange information and you can give us your--

MR.: [Off microphone].

MR. KREDNALL: That's coming very quickly. We're in the very early stages of the assessments right now, and we're going to be writing the plans for implementation of safety standards and so forth, and not too far in the future we're going to be needing your assistance.

MR. SAMPLER: An interesting, again, anecdote from our meeting two weeks ago when we talked about power and infrastructure, a gentleman came forward who represents a technical head-hunting firm, and he's been in Iraq since post-conflict days, hiring all of the engineers that he can find, and he spoke specifically about airports. He said there are a number of very talented electrical, mechanical and civil engineers, who are still available and are interested in engaging in this work. So it was not mere government-speak when we said that we're focused on engaging the Iraqi population whenever and wherever possible at the appropriate point.

I will point out we are at Day 13 of the post-conflict situation in Iraq and we're still assessing which of our plans did and did not survive first contact, and having to change and modify those as we go.

I have another clarification. I got a phone number for the Wings of Freedom--or Wings of Democracy. There's a USAID hotline where philanthropic offers can be offered. The number is area code 202-712-4810.

Yes, sir?

MR. KREDNALL: Just as a follow-up, I might want to add it was not the situation in Basra, but apparently--we get the SIT reports, the situation reports daily, and about 8 or 9 local Iraqis have come forward in Baghdad to assist with our assessment team. So they are participating as we speak.

MR. SAMPLER: Yes, sir?

MR. WESTON: I'm Jeff Weston [ph] of Cooper T. Smith. Back to the ports. The cargo's going to come in, all the food, all the--that's got to get to the people. What plan is in place to get it from the port, distributed to the hand and mouth, and is that within some of the scope of SSA?

MR. SAMPLER: The plan involves at this point trucks, a significant number of trucks. We're speaking for the most part about grains, and in going from the port right now to the milling facilities. I believe Al Nasiriyah is the most significant milling facility.

You're asking a question, the WFP, World Food Program and others are addressing, so I can't speak with any authority on what they're doing, but I do know that they have put out a call to collect the trucks that are required to move the tonnage of grain from the port to the milling facility. I can't recall what the numbers were right now, but they think that they have a line on or have access to an adequate number of trucks to move the grain from the port to the milling facilities.

MR.: [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: The question was, will they, WFP, contract with the trucking companies or the individuals with trucks? And again, I can't answer that. World Food Program, on their website, probably has a point of contact where that could be addressed. But onward transportation from the port is not part of the SSA contract. SSA, their focus is limited to the port itself, to include some warehousing, but not onward transportation.

Yes, sir?

MR.: Are you doing an assessment of the condition of [inaudible]?

MR. SAMPLER: The question for the web participants was, are we doing an assessment of the Iraqi railroad service, the signalling and switching systems? The Bechtel contract is the one that the rail would fall under in terms of infrastructure reconstruction.

Ross, are you aware? I haven't seen anything in the assessments that have come in yet, but again, we are just at Day 13. I know that the rail from Mosul to Baghdad is functional. The issue there was, again drawing--Basra to Baghdad, my mistake--is functional. The issue was drawing the professional staff back to the railway to get them to fill their jobs and make the system work. So the railbed, at least for that part, is functional and the locomotives and the carriages are functional.

I don't know the answer to that. If you'll leave me a card at the end, I will e-mail you back a response to that specific question.

Yes, sir?

MR. : My name is John Riddlin [ph] with the Port of Houston Authority. I'm trying to get in my mind here--you've talked about self governance and you've talked about trying to get public and private combination for the ports. Is deciding where to go in this direction with the public and private balance, is that part of SSA's contract? And if not, where would an organization like the Port Authority come to to discuss this?

MR. GUY: The future of the Port Authority in Iraq is not part of the SSA's scope of work. It will be a policy decision reached by the U.S. Government with Iraqi participation as to how that unfolds.

MR. SAMPLER: I'll follow up. Just to clarify, when I talked about public/private partnerships, that was USAID in partnership with this public and this set of private corporations to execute the work of the U.S. Government. Jim is quite right, SSA is responsible for managing the port during an interim period of time, at which point it will be turned over to whomever is deemed to be the appropriate authorities, and I have no idea how those decisions are taken.

Yes, sir?

MR. : I'm Wally Miller with Arinc. A couple of questions regarding the airport assessment. During the process and the conduct of the airport assessment, will you be looking at the air traffic control, air traffic management, communication requirements that would satisfy ICAO? And secondly, as things unfold in terms of opening up the airspace to overflights, is there an authority or is that part of the assessment process in terms of identifying a civil aviation authority point of contact? And thirdly, there's been a fair amount of interest on the part of the international airlines to obtain landing rights in Baghdad. Would this be part of the assessment as well?

Thank you.

MR. SAMPLER: I'm going to yield to Fred in just a second. Let me put a little bit of context on this. A lot of the questions you ask far exceed really far outside the scope of what Skylink has been tasked to do, specifically in terms of landing rights, airspace control, air traffic control. Again, that goes back to the question of a system of systems. It is the intent of the U.S. Government to assist in restarting civil aviation which includes all those, but right now the governing body is CFACC, Coalition Forces Air Component Commander. Again, we benefit from the knowledge and the experience of Afghanistan in the sense that CFACC controlled the airspace and the slot times and all of those things for an appreciable period of time. And in part, what that did was allow the prioritization of humanitarian assistance flights into specific airports, once the airports are deemed safe and all the other ICAO checkmarks are marked. ICAO is certainly the standard that we're all focusing on, but I will yield to Fred if he's got something he'd like to add, but you're asking policy questions, which on Day 13 is really difficult to address with any authority right now.

MR.: In response to your question on landing rights, sir, there are a number of inherently governmental sorts of regulation issues that are coming up, landing rights being a good example, overflight rights and who grants them and that sort of thing because it is a national territory. One of the things that the coalition partners are working on as quickly as they can is to find some sort of an interim Iraqi authority which will be acceptable as a counterpart, as a represent counterpart in the international community, but also as a representative government that would have standing enough to be able to grant someone an overflight right. If they were to assign landing rights and bill someone for them, in the name of whom would those bills be collected?

So there are a number of governmental functions that we just can't answer today until the Iraqis themselves have a body that can be held responsible to the citizenry. We have to defer on that one for a bit.

MR. MILLER: Understood. Thank you.

MR. SAMPLER: Yes, sir, in the back?

MR. : Good morning. My name's Tom Robison [ph], SAIC. I have a quick question. It goes back to those 30,000 hits that Bechtel got post award, and I'm sure Fred's probably feeling similar pain. The efficiency of the website is great, but from someone who's--and a company who's very interested in this, and is as deeply involved as SAIC is right now, is there consideration, or could we ask for USAID consideration for maybe a prequalification system within your website, so that Fred at Skylink could go onto that--in other words, an awardee can go onto it and look at companies who have qualifications that would pertain to the four realms which were previously described.

MR. SAMPLER: I'm going to yield to Ann Quinlan [ph] of our OP Department.

MS. QUINLAN: With regard to all the individuals and firms that have applied with our website, via our website, the person in Public Affairs is going to be making a CD of all the interested parties who did leave their firms' names and addresses and whatsoever, and we're going to give a copy of each of the CDs to all 8 contractors that we're awarding these contracts to. Did that pretty much answer the question?

MR. : Yes, it does. [Off microphone].

MS. QUINLAN: No. Well, actually, if you go to the website right now, what we've done is--given the volume of the requests we've already received or the interested parties we've received, we actually now have links up to each of the individual contractor websites for registering, but at this point we thought there was so much information right now that we have to give, from this point on we are going to have people go directly to the websites, and they can get to that through our website.

MR.: Okay, thank you very much.

MR. SAMPLER: A follow on to that, if you haven't heard and are interested, Bechtel is having a subcontracting conference. They're having two of them. The date I am not clear on. They are here this month, one here in Washington, one in London, and one to be determined in Kuwait, but you can find that on the Bechtel web page or you can visit the USAID web page, and there's a link there as well as the information.

Yes, sir?

MR. : [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: I'm sorry?

MR.: [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: There are two scheduled, one in Washington and one in London, and there's one to be determined in Kuwait City. No dates were associated with that one at all.

MR. : My name is Mike Sherwin [ph]. I spent half my government career in aviation at the CAB and in the FAA and finished it up here at AID as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Management, then went into the technology business in the private sector. And I spent a fair amount of the last 7 years talking with airport directors in former Soviet Union countries and in Africa, and one of the things I find them focusing naturally on is concrete and steel as they go about airport improvements. And one of the things that always seems to be the afterthought is building the management system's infrastructure to manage these complex airport operations, and I would just encourage you to not make it an afterthought as you go about improving the airport environments. They need good management systems to run effectively, and I hope you'll address that. Thank you.

MR.: I'm Peter (?), ex-AID, and I was here for 100 years, and a consultant now. We spent--have increasing concern over corruption and transparency, and really we're only getting into that well into the '90s before I think we treated it as seriously as maybe we should have. Could you give us a little bit on what you're doing about monitoring AID contracts for corruption? But perhaps more important than that, when the port starts functioning and the customs starts running, will AID have a role in what systems would be put in place to try to protect or ensure against that?

MR. SAMPLER: Sure. I'll take the first part of your question first. In terms of AID contract, I am repeatedly amazed at the level of openness and the level of oversight and introspection that's associated with the AID contracting process. As an executor, as someone who uses these contracts to get things done, it's educational to see the level and the numbers. We have inspectors general. We have congressional oversight. We have an awful lot of internal peer review, as you're well aware from your time at USAID. Things do not go unscrutinized within USAID. I think our contracting process has been discussed ad infinitum in the press and in other fora.

In terms of what will be done as AID begins to hand over and transition from an AID centric reconstruction program to an Iraqi centric or one that's owned and operated by the Iraqis, (a), it's a policy question; I don't know what the policy answers would be; but I think there are precedents both good and bad, and I would suggest that we will do what we can to capitalize on the situations where the international community has done well in that regard and avoid some of the pitfalls that you may have seen in the Balkans and other places where maybe we didn't do as well as we could have. But those are policy issues. And they're also something for consideration beyond the first 13 days of engagement.

One further answer. I know, and I wish SSA were here to talk about this in detail, as part of the port management they are required to exercise a tremendous level of fiduciary oversight and responsibility in terms of how the port is being managed. For example, payment of worker salaries, reception of port fees. All of those kinds of things, if they are part of the SSA contract, the responsibility for transparency and accountability and oversight is very significant.

MR. : With SSA. Now, does the existing AID procurement mechanisms provide you with a way to beef yourself up in this regard if you wanted somebody else to check what SSA is doing, or if you wanted somebody else to check on what the Iraqis are doing? Can you get that from your current contracting mechanisms or would you need a new procurement?

MR. SAMPLER: During the life of the contracts we have now, we've got a cross-cutting contract that's called monitoring and evaluation, which will--is an independent contractor. It's on an IQC of previous existing contract that AID has with a firm that does external monitoring and evaluation. The existing contracts are also subject to all of the AID Office of Procurement requirements and regulations in terms of transparency and oversight.

John, is there something that I'm leaving out?

MR. : [Off microphone]..

MR. SAMPLER: Thank you. That's right. We actually have a very robust Inspector General presence here in Washington now, which will be transitioning to the field as the activity moves to the field.

MR. : [Off microphone] -- programs which calls for future of Iraq. One of them is anticorruption working group. And this is for the future after you said you hand it to Iraqis. We have a group of Iraqis being well trained. They are experts, and they are trained for anticorruption, and one of them of course is going to be the entries, you know, import, export and monitoring the government.

MR. SAMPLER: Thank you.

Yes, sir?

MR. : [Inaudible] from the Centennial Group. A follow up to Mr. Kim's point, customs. You know, tax and customs are two areas a lot of developing countries, there's leakages, corruption. What are you planning to do about customs?

MR. SAMPLER: I don't have an answer to that actually. USAID is involved in an awful lot of reconstruction work, but at Day 13 I have to say customs is not--I hate to do the interagency punt down the field, but U.S. Customs Service is already part of ORHA, and I'm sure that U.S. Customs Service has some responses, and then Ann--

MS. : [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: Before Ross steps up, I didn't mean to be glib in the initial response. I agree that customs will be important to revenue generation and the prevention of corruption and criminality, but we do have a customs department that will be part and is part of ORHA, and we're working on those plans.

MR. WHERRY: One of the things that we confronted early on as we began to look at entry into the country, which is essentially what the airports and the seaports, and then land crossings as well. We looked at it as it's likely that there will be customs duties that someone will wish to collect because it's the easiest and fastest tax to pick up. It's immensely complicated. We decided that we'd better take it very carefully in part because of the tremendous requirement for transparency, and the fact that ethics in some parts of the world are different than they are here, and some of the ability to enforce is not quite as strong. So one of the things that we looked carefully at was what to do for customs.

ORHA is handling that for the moment, and I believe that the policy direction they're taking is that there will probably be a customs holiday for a little while, since there's nothing that you can do to collect it, and keep that money from going somewhere else. We know that U.S. Customs, U.S. Treasury, and here shortly I think USAID, will all be looking at government revenues, how to collect them in an organized and transparent manner, and then be able to pass those on through the treasury into programs. But we're not able to succinctly address that today.

The government finances, because they up to now have been central government finances, have been particularly difficult. Again, you come to whose money is it? It's not the United States' money. This is not an occupation. The money and all of those resources, oil being the largest, belong to the Iraqi people, so there is a responsibility to take good care of the resources for the moment, but again, we come back to this inherently government function, what would they like to do with it? How should it be done and what's the best way to administer it in a fashion that importers will be able to handle, and at the same time you won't have people being suborned as a matter of getting preferential treatment.

So we do have to ask you to wait a little bit on there. The Treasury people have not reported back. The U.S. Customs people haven't come back yet. And AID hasn't become fully engaged on the customs issue or the government revenue issue. We can tell you that, as Larry was saying, where SSA and Skylink have fiduciary responsibilities for the collection of fees related to the operation of the port facilities, there are special accounts and all of the standard U.S. Government transparency requirements in place so that those contractors will be able to meet the scrutiny of whoever it is that wants to look and see what happened to revenues that would have come to those ports.

It also allows us to begin looking at what kind of budget support is necessary to run those activities? Iraqi central budgeting is opaque at best during the Saddam regime. And one of the things we're looking at now is how much does it really cost to run things? How would you set the fees? Do the fees actually cover the services that they're supposed to be on, and what's the right mix of access to land transport, access to other modes of transport, and then central government subsidy if it were to come to that?

MR. SAMPLER: Are there other questions? yes, sir.

MR. : Jim Jantrice from Venable again. As events in Riyadh over the last 24 hours have illustrated, there are ongoing security needs in the region. I don't think it would be giving anybody ideas to indicate that some of these activities might attract attention of the wrong kind of people. Either on Skylink with airports or SSA with the port contract or on the reconstruction activities, in the absence of a functioning national government in Iraq, where is the interface between the obligations to provide security for these operations with the contractors and with the coalition military forces? I'm not reading between the lines I don't think of the RFP, but maybe it's sort of a number of an emanation of the RFP to--what exactly is the security responsibility either of the contractor or subcontractors on these projects, and where does that interface right now with the coalition military?

MR. SAMPLER: The principal requirement for security is incumbent on the coalition military forces in theater. The point of contact for that is ORHA, but the ultimate authority is Tommy Franks and his Coalition Forces Land Component Commander, CFLCC.

To provide a little context, none of our partners go anywhere in theater without the express permission of the military, of the coalition military forces. And for example, moving contractor personnel from Kuwait City into Iraq is done only in close coordination and with the beforehand permission of the coalition forces. The contracts are written in such a way, the language there requires a permissive environment. So I said early on that SSA had people moving into the port at Umm Qasr very shortly after the coalition forces had secured the port. The language that was used was from the coalition to USAID and then onward to SSA, is that the port at Umm Qasr is considered a permissive environment for you to send a 2-person team in for "N" number of hours to do an assessment in the company of British Royal Marines. The same was done for assessments at several of the airports. We got some great pictures back in fact of the assessment operation going forward with Skylink embedded in troop movement or a military convoy to and assess the airports.

So prior to any of our private sector partners going forward, a permissive environment is determined and they work within that environment.

Now, you ask what responsibilities do the contractors and subs have for security. I will use SSA as an example. Their assessment has determined an area, a physical space in and around the port that they will determine to be the port operations facility. The military will be responsible for providing security up to the perimeter of their port area, and then they, in terms of their port operations, will determine what internal security they have. If they have someone guarding a door of a warehouse inside their port, that won't be a U.S. Marine or a British Royal Marine. That will be security that they arrange. But again, those decisions and determinations haven't been made yet.

But there will on the ground internal security that is not the U.S. or the coalition force's responsibility.

MR.: [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: Right. To my knowledge that discussion is not as robust, but Fred, do you want to comment on what you--

MR. KREDNALL: [Off microphone].

MR. SAMPLER: Right. The answer for the web participants is that Skylink will provide the security on the inside of their perimeter.