Secretary-General's Joint Press Encounter with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende

SG: Thank you very much Mr. Prime Minister, Madame Minister. I am also extremely happy to be here, to have this opportunity to exchange ideas on important issues of the day. I have been very pleased with the strong support The Netherlands has given to the UN reform. [The] Netherlands and the European Union together have been really part of the motor behind the reform process.

We are working on establishing the Human Rights Council. I hope the Member States will be able to do that by 15th of February, and we can then press on with the other reforms, management, mandate review and other essential aspects of reform. But we are determined to press ahead and achieve the objectives that the Heads of States set for us in September.

From here, I'll be going to London where I would attend the Quartet meeting and also a donor conference on Afghanistan.

On the Quartet meeting, I think you are all aware of the developments in the region. We will discuss the next steps following the Palestinian elections and, of course, the Israeli elections around the corner in March.

On Afghanistan, we are going to try to raise money for reconstruction and recovery. I think the international community has invested a lot in Afghanistan. We've made quite a lot of progress and it is due to that effort by the international community that Afghanistan is not the wasteland that it was. It is not the anarchic environment dominated by terrorists as it was, but a country on its way to recovery -- yes, making tentative steps toward democracy, still difficult, but we are making steps. And I think it is now time to consolidate the gains that we have made. Until now, we have focused on what we have called the Bonn process, the political process, the political transition, the national dialogue leading to presidential and parliamentary elections. Now is the time for reconstruction, institution building and strengthening, but that kind of recovery and reconstruction needs to be done in a reasonably secure environment. You cannot have development or reconstruction without security and you cannot have security without development. And all this has to be rooted in international law and respect for human rights or otherwise these developments cannot be long sustained. So this is the time for the international community to come together and focus on completing the work that we all started several years ago. I think we will pause here and take your questions.

Q: (inaudible question about safety in Uruzugan)

SG: We live in a rather difficult world these days. No operation is risk-free even for my own UN staff, and we do tell them that they have to be aware of their environment. We do take measures to protect them, and we try to get the work done with support from security forces. In fact in Afghanistan, we have got ISAF and American troops there who have helped and, of course, training of the local troops, and they have helped maintain relative security. And I think that troops going to the south will also help strengthen security in those parts so that UN staff and other international agencies, development workers and humanitarian workers can do their work. They need that security to have access to be able to help those who are in need. So deploying troops would be essential for our work as well.

Q: (inaudible question about Dutch troop deployment)

SG: I don't want to get into national politics, but let me say to the population that the work that is being done in Afghanistan is extremely important. It is an international effort and I think we all have a stake in it. No one can afford to see a destabilized Afghanistan in that region. We saw what it meant when Afghanistan was destabilized in the hands of the Taliban and terrorists. Do we want to go back to that? We also know what's going on in Afghanistan that the international community wants to do something about -- the drug trade, the bulk of [heroin] Europeans use comes from Afghanistan. Eventually we want to also work with them to steer them towards other sorts of livelihood, to wean them away from poppy growth and [heroin] production. And I think this should be of interest to the average person on the street here and around the world and see the need why we have to do something there.

Q: (inaudible question about Dutch Parliament decision on deployment to Afghanistan)

SG: There is nothing I can do, but it will create problems for the operations on the ground. As I said, if you are going to work on recovery and reconstruction, you need a modicum of security to be able to do that and I have quite a lot of UN staff there who have worked throughout the country. But of course, if they don't want to be martyrs, they will need to have a bit of security to be able to get their work done. If we do not get the security, it means that some of the things we want to do will not get done. It means that perhaps we will not be as successful in Afghanistan as we would want to be. It would mean that the international effort in Afghanistan, after all the investment that we put in, may not be successful. And so I hope the right decision will be taken.

Thank you very much.