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MONROVIA, Liberia - Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, explains the command's mission to a capacity crowd of Liberian diplomats in training, assistant and deputy ministers, and journalists during a special presentation at the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute. Holmes was the featured speaker during the MFA's third ambassadorial lecture series as part of his three-day visit to Liberia October 24-27, 2010. (U.S. Africa Command photo by Kenneth Fidler)

MONROVIA, Liberia - Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, explains the command's mission to a capacity crowd of Liberian diplomats in training, assistant and deputy ministers, and journalists during a special presentation at the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute. Holmes was the featured speaker during the MFA's third ambassadorial lecture series as part of his three-day visit to Liberia October 24-27, 2010. (U.S. Africa Command photo by Kenneth Fidler)

3. MONROVIA, Liberia - Liberia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Her Excellency Olubanke King-Akerele introduces Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, before he speaks October 26, 2010, at the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute. Holmes explains the command's mission to an audience of Liberian diplomats in training, assistant and deputy ministers, and Liberian journalists as part of his three-day visit to Liberia October 24-27, 2010. (U.S. Africa Command photo by Kenneth Fidler)

MONROVIA, Liberia, 

Oct 26, 2010 — MONROVIA, Liberia, November 1, 2010 -- U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) remains focused on its primary mandate to provide security force assistance activities to African militaries, has no plans to seek basing in Africa, and will remain in Stuttgart for the foreseeable future, AFRICOM's civilian deputy told a Liberian audience October 26, 2010.

Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, AFRICOM's deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, explained the mission of Africa Command to Liberian diplomats in training, assistant and deputy ministers, and journalists during a special presentation at the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute.

Holmes told the audience: "I found that it's particular useful to give people who are aware of AFRICOM, but don't work with AFRICOM, and have impressions, often dated impressions, from when AFRICOM was first announced in (2007) that are very far from the reality of AFRICOM today. So I think it's useful to try to disabuse some false notions and to try to tell you a little bit about our origins, what we're here to do, and how we go about doing it, and in the process to develop some true understanding of our efforts to create partnerships with Africa ... "

Holmes' presentation was the third ambassadorial lecture forum as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' new foreign service training program.

A transcript of the event follows:

(in progress)

HER EXCELLENCY OLUBANKE KING-AKERELE, LIBERIAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS : Thank you very much. Excellencies, representatives and members of the diplomatic corps, and members of government, the official presence here, our guest speaker, Ambassador Holmes and members of the high table. Let me begin by apologizing for keeping you all a little late. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Basically, we would really like to express our appreciation for the extraordinary response to this invitation, which has taken place on a very short notice, for which I want to express my appreciation to the U.S. government, the embassy of the United States here that has facilitated and put this offer on the table -- and also to the Foreign Service Institute for this, our deputy director, in particular, who is not too well.

The whole concept of the ambassadorial lecture series is a part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' new approach to what we call development-diplomacy. We have a six-month training, certificate-level training, that is then followed by a six-month field assignment of our people, on the ground level, supported by the UNDP.

The products of that -- and I hope the members of the Foreign Service Institute plan -- I hope you are all here. (response). Very good, very good. This is followed by a six-month training in the field, where our young diplomats spend six months in a particular country field office -- in particular -- (inaudible) -- countries, Ghana and Senegal. They spend three days a week at the embassy and two days a week with a development partner.

That development partner, so far, has tended to be one of the development institutions -- UNDP, UNHCR, ILO, ECOWAS, World Bank. And the net result is basically that we are producing a new breed of diplomats for the Liberian foreign service that will be replacing people like myself. We believe in succession planning.

So as part of that, the other dimension of this training and development diplomacy is to introduce this concept of Ambassadorial Lecture Series, where we are reaching out beyond the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the larger public, and to make it possible for others to participate in this whole new trust, in terms of development diplomacy.

It is, therefore, against that background that we are very, very pleased to welcome Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes to basically participate in the Third Ambassadorial Lecture Forum of the Gabriel L. Dennis Foreign Service Institute. For this initiative, I want to give such an appreciation to Her Excellency, Ambassador [Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to Liberia] who was not able to be here today, but who is well represented. We want to thank you.

This third lecture, focusing on the presentation on AFRICOM, is intended to discuss the U.S. Africa Command, its relations with Africa, its three D's -- development, diplomacy and defense -- as well as partnership with sub-regional, regional, and continental bodies. That is the gist of what it's about, and that is why this fits to our whole thrust of development-diplomacy.

So I want to welcome you all for responding so well to this opportunity to listen to the ambassador. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

M.C: We'll now have a brief perspective by the Honorable Brownie J. Samukai, Minister of National Defense, Republic of Liberia.

HON. BROWNIE J. SAMUKAI: (Inaudible) -- Her Excellency Madam Foreign Minister, our guest Ambassador Holmes, distinguished panelists, guests, ladies and gentlemen, let me again join Her Excellency expressing thanks and appreciation for Ambassador Holmes and his willingness to come and participate in this lecture today. Liberia's partnership with AFRICOM has been a couple of years, just a couple of years when the concept, the idea, started -- we were, as a matter of fact, the first on the continent … when the president announced full support for the initiative in developing this partnership. It was a strategic decision taken by Her Excellency as a position of our country. And we have made that position known and very clear to the region. We continue to benefit from our partnership in building our capacities.

Liberia continues to engage with AFRICOM in other arrangements, such as the -- (inaudible) -- agreement. And we continue to see cooperation in fields including support for the Armed Forces of Liberia, as well as other programs under the APS station [Africa Partnership Station]. It is our anticipation that this partnership will continue to expand, not only with Liberia, but also in the subregion as well, and the continent as a whole.

It is hopeful that this lecture series and the presentation to be made by Ambassador Holmes will provide a full perspective on this partnership and relationship. Ambassador, you're welcome. (Applause.)

J. ANTHONY HOLMES: Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. Minister King-Akerele, Minister Samukai, colleagues from the diplomatic corps, students, and administration from the Foreign Service Institute, members of the press, thank you all for coming. I'm not here to give you a speech. I'm going to give you a briefing. There is a difference.

Now normally … I speak regularly for a variety of audiences; they fall into two general categories. One is Africans who are interested, who have heard a lot about AFRICOM. They have many misconceptions, and often they have misapprehensions. Then, on occasion, I'll talk to international audiences, often American audiences, and I find that they have misconceptions and often misapprehensions.

So I've found that it's particularly useful to give people who are aware of AFRICOM, but don't work with AFRICOM, and have impressions -- often dated impressions, from when AFRICOM was first announced in 2006 (sic) -- that are very far from the reality of AFRICOM today. And so I think it's useful to try to disabuse some false notions and to try to tell you a little bit about our origins, what we're here to do, and how we go about doing it.

And in the process, to develop some true understanding of our efforts to create partnerships with Africa -- and not least of which is the partnership with the government of Liberia, which is one of our most important partners on the continent. And one, a nation, perhaps the nation on the African continent, with which the United States has a truly special relationship -- a relationship that dates back 190 years, give or take one or two, and a nation that, because of these historical ties, we take a special interest in.

But first, let me say right from the beginning: AFRICOM is about us, about the United States. It's about who we are as a nation, as a people, as a government. But it's also about changes in Africa. The Africa of October 1, 2008, which was when AFRICOM was formally established, is very different than the Africa that the U.S. military first started paying any attention to at all, which was during the Second World War.

And so the U.S. military's approach to Africa was largely an afterthought. And we dealt with Africa from the U.S. military's perspective in Europe because with very few exceptions -- Liberia being one of them -- Africa was all colonies of European powers at the end of the Second World War, when the United States emerged as the sole, intact nation -- I mean, one of two superpowers, or what we would then come to call superpowers, but the only one that really wasn't devastated by the war.

And so we dealt with Africa as necessary, but largely, over the ensuing decades, in two ways. The first was, somewhat to our embarrassment in 2010, as a battleground during the Cold War, as a strategic battleground -- not an epicenter, by any means, but as a battleground for hearts and minds in the strategic struggle against communism.

And that led us to make some very poor decisions about governments to back, African leaders to back. But this was done in a strategic context, and it was only later that we, at least, came to acknowledge publicly some of those mistakes.

The other way we dealt with Africa was from a completely different direction. And this was because of our own history, because of our own origin as a colony of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain, we identified very strongly with the emerging nations of Africa in the late '50s and '60s that were becoming independent, that were throwing off their colonial ties, establishing independence, and clearly needed help.

And so the American response was one I'd largely characterize as altruism. We wanted to help. We identified with the continent; we identified with the struggles of the people of the emerging nations, and we wanted to help. And so you had somewhat a schizophrenic approach during the '60s and '70s and '80s, as we sought to deal with this strategic competition with the Soviet Union, [and] at the same time, to help emerging countries.

Now, the Cold War ended in 1989. And then we in the United States made a strategic decision -- not a tremendously wise one, but we decided that in the aftermath of the Cold War we were going to have a quote-unquote, "peace dividend," domestically, in the United States. Because there was this consensus in our nation that we had sacrificed a lot, over a generation, to fight this Cold War, to wage this strategic battle, and that we had long neglected problems in our own country -- systemic problems: racial problems, problems of poverty, problems of infrastructure -- and that we needed to invest in those.

And so we stepped back and we drastically reduced our budget for, among other things, the military and foreign assistance. Now, in the 21 years since the end of the Cold War, the world has changed a lot -- in part because of the end of the Cold War, but also because of the development [and] the evolution of technology. And so at a time when we were turning inward -- not dramatically, but we were definitely turning inward -- the world was changing.

And this was brought home to us through two events, a decade or, 10 to 12 years ago -- 9 to 12 years ago -- that led us to take a profoundly different perspective on the African continent. The first was -- and this we don't talk about very much -- on the 6th of August, 1998, there were terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Not too long thereafter, of course, we had the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

And we looked at ourselves. We looked at the rest of the world. We had a new enemy, in a sense, but we had a new threat. And we realized that the United States had true security interests, national security interests, on the continent of Africa. Now, the focus, of course, was on the Middle East, but nonetheless, there was a lot of new and very deep thinking about how we would address our own national security concerns around the world in this new era.

And one of the results of that thinking, of that assessment, was to respond to what many of our African partners had been telling us for the past 30 or 40 years, since they became independent and realized that we were dealing with them -- military-to-military, on a security basis -- largely as an appendage of our relationships with Europe.

Because even though they became -- you became independent -- well, Liberia was already, but even though most of the countries on the continent became independent, we still dealt with them through our U.S. European Command based in Stuttgart, Germany, where it was set up in 1945. And often we would have engagements in Africa and our African partners would say to us, "you don't respect us." "What do you mean, we don't respect you?" They would respond, "you have a military command for the Middle East; you have one for the Pacific; you have one for Latin America; you have one for Europe. You don't have one for Africa." Of course, they were right. But in the new world, particularly in the new way we looked at the world, it suddenly became very obvious to us that they were right, and we did have interests, national security interests, real interests, in Africa.

So we reorganized ourselves. And we took most of the continent that was overseen by the U.S. military in Europe, and then there were six countries in the Horn of Africa that were overseen by our Middle East regional command, and the islands in the Indian Ocean that were overseen by our Pacific Command, and we unified them. And that was what we called AFRICOM. So it is, first and foremost, an internal reorganization of the U.S. military -- nothing more, nothing less.

But to that, we have added a whole other dimension. This is something that places AFRICOM on the cutting edge of how the United States will address its security needs around the world. And that is what we call, in a word, engagement.

Now, the United States military has been engaged with the capacity-building of other militaries since the end of the Second World War. We've done it throughout NATO; we've done it in the Pacific. But now we're trying to do that in a systematic way with virtually every country on the African continent. What we're trying to do is to build capacity in African militaries so that African countries can increasingly provide for their own security.

Now, in order to do this, we also had to acknowledge that the security threats to the United States emanating from Africa are different than they are from other parts of the world and are not conducive to the traditional military approaches that we use in other parts of the world. The security threats in Africa are inherently long-term in nature, not conducive to traditional military solutions, and ones that are largely reflective of poverty and lack of progress towards development that lead to problems that eventually spill over in a globalized world and a globalized economy of the 21st century.

So we want to engage with, literally, every country in Africa. But of course, we don't have the resources to do that, so we pursue a targeted approach to this engagement. And central to our approach is what I would call regionalization, or a regional approach. There's virtually no security problem in Africa that is conducive to a unilateral solution. Almost all of them have a regional, or indeed, a continental dimension.

And that means that we want to work with -- in addition to programs like we have in Liberia, and which is a bit of a special case, but in which we are developing national institutions -- we try to put neighboring countries together, almost always working through either the African Union on a continental basis, or one of the subregional organizations in Africa.

Now, in this part of the continent, of course, that is ECOWAS. And so we spend an awful lot of time working with the ECOWAS Commission in Abuja and working with the 15 member countries, as well as subsets of those countries, if there is a natural reason not to include everybody.

So we do a lot of things, for example, in the maritime area, in which we work with just the coastal states and not the landlocked states. We do a lot of things related to countering narcotics, or trafficking in persons, that are with only selected countries where we know we have an issue, and where we know that there's a critical mass of countries that's right. But if you have too many, you dilute the impact of your engagement.

But fundamentally, what we're doing is trying to get African nations, African militaries, in the habit of working with their neighbors -- of picking up the telephone and not calling New York or Washington or Brussels, but calling Accra or Freetown or Dakar or Abidjan.

And putting together regional exercises, so that the minister, who already knows his counterparts in those countries, but -- the head of the coast guard, or various people in positions in the army, or where there's a navy, in the navy -- have worked with, under the auspices of an AFRICOM exercise, toward achieving an interoperability, so that they can work together to leverage their own investments in their uniformed services and for their own defense.
Now, at this point it's extremely important for me to tell you that AFRICOM is a tool of U.S. foreign policy. AFRICOM implements. AFRICOM, the U.S. military, does not set policy. Policy is set by the White House and the State Department. And we have, of course, an interagency process that generates positions that are then reconciled.

And because of what I mentioned a moment ago, about the different nature of the security threats emanating from Africa and how traditional approaches are not conducive to addressing them, we have, what Minister King-Akerele just called this 3D approach -- this addition of development and diplomacy to defense, to achieve what we also call a whole-of-government approach. So that we have the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Coast Guard, and sometimes the Agriculture Department -- many specialized branches of the U.S. government -- participating in the activities and exercises we organize, so that they truly address the needs of the recipient countries. Not just what we think our priorities are, but ideally -- and this is what we try to achieve; this is what we strive for -- what the leaders and the people of the African governments identify as their own priorities.

So we want this to be a demand-driven process -- what you need -- not a supply-driven process -- what our priorities are and what we're best at providing. Now, of course, many discussions are necessary to reconcile two different perspectives and to come to a common agreement on what the right engagement is and what the right balance is. And in this regard, we count exclusively on the U.S. embassy in the country.

So Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and the deputy ambassador, Karl Albrecht, who's at the end of the table, are responsible for coordinating the entire U.S. government -- the most important agencies of which have representatives here in Monrovia -- to make sure that what we're doing on the military side is in the right balance, from their perspective and from the government's perspective, with what we're doing in terms of economic development, in terms of agriculture and education, health care, and the other aspects of the U.S.-Liberian bilateral engagement.

So we don't want to -- we, AFRICOM, we don't want to overly militarize the nature of our bilateral relationship. We understand that given the history of Liberia, there is tremendous need for attention, for resources, in the reform of both the defense sector, the military, and the broader security sector. But we are not sitting in Stuttgart, Germany, in a position to decide what that balance is, what those specific needs are, and how to prioritize them.

So we count on a dialogue, largely between the embassy and your government, to identify for us what those priorities are. And then we try to put together -- use our resources -- to put together a program that will do that. Now, to be very honest with you, we are a new organization. We were created October 1, 2007, and we became official October 1, 2008. We have a very large military, a huge military budget globally, but for Africa our resources are much more modest.

Last fiscal year in the U.S. government fiscal calendar, the year that ended the 30th of September -- so 26 days ago. The U.S. government gave Africa about $7 billion U.S. dollars in direct assistance, not including IMF and World Bank and U.N. system -- $7 billion directly. AFRICOM's program budget that came from what Congress allocated to AFRICOM was about $80 million, eight-zero. So that is only slightly above 1 percent of what the U.S. government provided directly to Africa in our most recent fiscal year.

So that is indeed very modest. So for an organization like we are, that wants to have good relations with the militaries, with the security institutions of all 53 countries on the continent, and its island states, that is a very thin strip of engagement. And so it's very important to us, as well, in addition to having bilateral national governments as partners, and regional organizations like ECOWAS and the African Union as partners, that we have international partners.

So we work from our headquarters in Stuttgart, as well as from New York and as well as in Washington, with a variety of international partners. Now, the U.N. system, writ large, is probably the largest and most important by far. But we work bilaterally with -- if you can call it bilaterally -- with the European Union, the commission in Brussels and the council in Brussels, but also with almost all of the individual nation-members of the European Community -- so with Germany and France and the United Kingdom and Belgium and the Netherlands and Spain and Portugal and Italy. I would say those are the most important ones. But there are many others as well.

And this multifaceted approach with African nations, African organizations, international … organizations, is one of constant dialogue, constant reality checks for us as a military so that we can get this balance right. Because we recognize that despite the size of the United States, despite the size of the American economy and the size of the American military and its budget, we don't have anywhere near enough resources to meet the needs of the continent. We need help, and we try very hard to achieve that help.

Now, let me mention a couple of other things where we focus before opening to questions. Okay, I mentioned maritime. This is …. AFRICOM is what we call a joint command, so it has representatives from all of the military services in the U.S. military -- the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard. And because we are a military organization, we have a whole variety of American laws that we must comply with. So we are limited to military-to-military engagement and a little bit of military-civilian engagement, in which we get involved in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.

But we are limited to working with the Liberian military. We can't work with the Liberian police, and thus we have our colleagues in the embassy, from the State Department and from other U.S. government organizations that conduct similar engagements with the police, with the other parts of the Liberian government, that counter-corresponds to our engagement in the military -- but one in which the embassy, essentially, has to integrate the parts.

So we try hard not to militarize this foreign policy, even in a country where the need is so great in the security sector, and which is probably our foremost example of involvement in defense-sector or security-sector reform. It's a delicate balance for us and it's one in which we are often misperceived from afar because what we do is we try to attract to attention to it. We try to get good publicity about it. And the relative debts from those investments amount to this 1 percent or 1.15 percent that the $80 million from AFRICOM's budget represents in terms of the U.S. investment in Africa every year. It's not seen in the right perspective. But the maritime area, we find that it is less sensitive; it's an area that has not been addressed properly in most African countries.

And so there's a tremendous need for countries whose 200-mile territorial waters are fish or overfished, depleted in some cases, by foreign fishing fleets, and that have no idea what's going on, or whose waters are being used by narcotics traffickers or other traffickers and aren't able to control their territories. So this area of maritime is an extremely important one for us.

Another one -- and I'll run through these quite quickly -- is peacekeeping. We have trained [in support of the U.S. State Department-led peacekeeping training program] -- I believe the figure is about 85,000 African peacekeepers from 29 nations over the past 11 years. We try to work, in small ways, to professionalize African militaries. Liberia is in the forefront of that. But we do a lot of work on the role of militaries and democracies and the importance of subordinating militaries to civilian authority control.

We invest in things like professional development. And one particularly interesting area where we focus is the development of noncommissioned officers -- sergeants and warrant officers -- because one of the secrets to the efficiency, the effectiveness of the American military is the impressive amount of responsibility and authority that our noncommissioned officers have.

And finally, let me say that we've taken -- we've found a few areas that we incorporate in all of our training that we find is extremely important politically and one where abuses in a few countries have underscored the need to really institutionalize these values. And that is in terms of human rights, and we provide human-rights training in all of our programs. And the other is, increasingly, we're putting in training on sexual- and gender-based violence. It's extremely important for us that African militaries are part of the solutions to African security problems, not part of the problems themselves. Let me stop there and open it to some questions. Thank you for your time. (Applause.)

M.C: Thank you, and now it's time for question-and-answer period.

(cross talk)

QUESTION: (inaudible) … and I understand that AFRICOM is going to have a headquarters in Africa somewhere. Has the decision been made yet as as to where that's going to be?

AMBASSADOR HOLMES: Thank you. I'm glad you brought that up. That, actually, is a question that comes up every place that we, where we take questions on the continent. And not infrequently from international or American questioners.

AFRICOM made a big mistake when it got -- when it was first announced four years ago by focusing on this issue of where the headquarters would be. The reaction, the furor that this question caused caught many people in Washington by surprise and led to a very serious rethinking of the issue. And for several years now we have had the policy that AFRICOM will remain in Stuttgart, Germany, for the indefinite future -- for the foreseeable future.

So we have no plans whatsoever to move. There is no internal process to evaluate where else we might even consider. And so we expect for the foreseeable future we will remain in Germany. And there's no active consideration being given to any relocation anywhere in the world.

M.C: Thank you. We have three more questions … (inaudible).

QUESTION: -- Sir, my question has to do with the regional aspect of AFRICOM in Africa. Considering the current situation … where ships are being hijacked … (inaudible) -- and you see this within Somalia -- to be continuing … that would appear that the nations in the Horn of Africa seem not to have the capacity to continue the situation -- (inaudible). I would like to know whether AFRICOM has a special package for the countries in the Horn of Africa to assist in Sudan, the situation in Somalia, and change for a better situation to be created.

The next question has to do with the threat in West Africa, especially the Sahel region -- in Mali, where we continue to hear about the presence of al-Qaida in the Maghreb. We would also know whether AFRICOM has a package to help Sudan, the situation in that region to continue -- (inaudible) -- will be assured in Africa. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR HOLMES: Thank you. Those are two excellent questions. In fact, the answer to them is largely the same answer, even though you're talking about two regions of the continent quite far from each other. Our approach to both is to work with the nations of the region, both individually and as a group to -- with long-term capacity-building programs -- increase their ability, again, individually and collectively, to deal with the threats that you just described.

In West Africa, in the Sahel, we work -- we have a political program called Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Program. We have a military part of that, that we in AFRICOM are responsible for, called OEF-TS, Operation Enduring Freedom--Trans Sahara. And through that, we try to assist the militaries of the member states to increase their ability over time to deal with these threats themselves.

So you might recall about five to six months ago now, we had an exercise called Flintlock in which nine of the 10 partnership countries in the Sahel participated. Most of the activities were in Burkina Faso, that's where the opening and closing ceremonies were. There were smaller parts of the exercises in Nigeria and Senegal.

And it's one in which we work with a long-term horizon to do just what I said, develop this capacity. Now the same thing is true in the far more complex region of the Horn of Africa, with Somalia because the Somalis have a nominal, temporary, Transitional Federal Government, but most of the mechanisms of the modern state do not exist.

So we try to work through the African Union, through the United Nations, and through the regional partners, both those that are flying troops to the African Union nation in Somalia -- which are Burundi and Uganda -- as well as with the bordering states Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya -- to increase their capacity and to contain the regional spillover of the problems in Somalia.

Now, also I should mention that we work on land. The way the U.S. government has divided it up, drawn the lines on the map between our regional areas of responsibility, it's our Central Command for the Middle East that has responsibility for the oceans. And so the piracy issue is one in which the Central Command deals with. We in AFRICOM do not. But we [meaning the U.S. State Department] deal with Somalia and trying to assist the TFG, the Transitional Federal Government, in Mogadishu, as well as the surrounding countries to be able to come to grips with the problem.

Q: (Inaudible) -- we hear rumors -- (inaudible) -- that this AFRICOM is another way to re-colonize Africa. (inaudible) - Thank you very much.

MR. HOLMES: Okay. Well, I just tried to tell you what AFRICOM does -- what its approach is. And that is to work with African partners to develop African capacity to deal with African security issues. So I'm not sure what in that construct in any way relates to colonization or recolonization. And I tried to describe to you the very small proportion that U.S. investment in Africa that comes from the U.S. military. Now, I mentioned the $80 million -- some of these exercise cost more and we get that from the services that are the primary participants in them. But what we spend on the military -- on our military on African militaries -- is a very modest amount. Only a small, small fraction of what the needs are.

If you asked Minister Samukai -- oh, he snuck away while I wasn't paying attention -- (laughter) -- what he needs in terms of resources, or if you asked the minister of justice what the resource needs of the Liberian National Police are, they would be far, far greater than what the U.S. government is providing to the Liberian government. The same is true in every other country on this continent. And in terms of relative proportion, we are giving far more to Liberia because of this historical relationship and affinity that exists between our countries.

So other than to just step away and not be engaged at all, I'm not sure what we could do to deal with that perception other than to do what we're trying to do -- which is to be open and address it straightforwardly and matter of factly. We have a public affairs section in the embassy. We have a website that anyone can go on, anywhere [www.africom.mil]. We have an open process in Washington in which the appropriations from our Congress to our military are there and can be read by anyone.

There are a few secret things, but they exist in the details. In terms of the big allocations, it's all there in the public domain and available to you or anyone else who has such suspicions. As I said before, we're trying to find the right balance. We respect you as sovereign nations. We have no pretentions to recolonize you. Can you imagine what the reaction would be of the American taxpayer if he or she thought we were trying to recolonize it? The government would fall very quickly for a misallocation of taxpayer funding. I promise.

(cross talk)

DR. AUGUSTINE KONNEH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF FSI: I'd like to thank all the Excellencies that are present here, members of the diplomatic corps, government officials, development-diplomat trainees. I wish to take this time - (inaudible) - to thank His Excellency Ambassador Anthony Holmes for addressing - for giving us this informative address on AFRICOM and its mission.

From your address, we take note of the intended efforts that AFRICOM wants to bring to Africa, particularly in defense capacity, and based upon the mutual cooperation between the United States and the Republic of Liberia, it is our hope that this will make a contribution to the stability and to the well-being of the region.

Let me also say that there's no doubt that Africa needs assistance in many areas that he mentioned -- in the area of humanitarian, in the area of health, in the area of economics, in the area of disaster response, and in the area of peace-supporting operations. And we'll welcome any -- (inaudible) -- efforts, as the minister puts it, to realize development, stability and prosperity.

Once more, I will thank you, and on behalf of the Foreign Service Institute and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through you, I also want to thank the United States government for this demonstration. Thank you all for being here. (Applause.)