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State's Hughes To Visit Malaysia, Indonesia on "Listening Tour"

Trips to Latin America, Europe in coming months also planned, she says

By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File White House Correspondent

Washington -- Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes will embark on a “listening tour” of Indonesia and Malaysia the week of October 17, and is planning trips to Latin America and Europe in the months ahead.

Hughes, citing the positive experiences of her visits to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in late September, announced the new round of visits October 14 at George Washington University in Washington at its Forum for Public Diplomacy.

She said the recent listening tour in Turkey and Arab countries was both “fascinating” and a “learning experience,” and she welcomed the level of debate and discourse she heard on issues ranging from Iraq, women’s empowerment and the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy in the region. (See related article.)

Hughes said, “I did learn a great deal,” adding, “one of the things that's very valuable to me, as a communicator, is to understand how things are heard by different audiences in different parts of the world.”

“I styled my recent tour as a listening tour. I wanted to go and meet with people that Americans don't always meet with and hear from people that Americans don't always hear from,” she said.

THE MIDDLE EAST

On issues such as Iraq and the conflict in the Middle East, Hughes said that during the trip “I heard very strong opinions, and I expected to hear very strong opinions.” 

With regard to Iraq, rather than focusing on disagreements surrounding the 2003 coalition invasion to remove Saddam Hussein, she said she tried to move the discussion to “making sure that we help the Iraqi people develop a unified and stable and democratic country. And I think most everyone agrees with that goal.”

In speaking to Palestinians, she said she learned that in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, “sometimes a Palestinian hears that Gaza is it, as opposed to Gaza is a step toward what we support, which is a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and in freedom with Israel.”

Hughes said that most of the people she spoke with share the Bush administration’s stated policy goal of having an independent Palestinian state, even if they “think that the United States ought to push more or pull more or … try to achieve that result in a different way.”

THE ENVIRONMENT

Turning to another controversial issue, the U.S. decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change, the under secretary repeated the administration’s view that the agreement “would be very bad for the United States' economy and therefore the world's economy.”

“However,” she asked, “are there ways that we can work together on the issue, the fundamental issue, climate change? Absolutely, and we are doing so.”

The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases, which have been linked to global warming.

WORKING TOWARD MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

Hughes said that in Saudi Arabia, she found that Arab women are “very articulate and very passionate and very eager to express their opinions,” and that just as Americans are concerned over how they are viewed in the Arab world, “the women in Saudi Arabia were very concerned about what Americans think about them.”

In Egypt, she met with different political parties and received conflicting opinions of what the United States should be doing in the region.  Hughes said she was encouraged by the debate and discussion she found there.

“One of them said the United States needed to mind our own business. She was pretty blunt, just about that blunt. The other one said we needed to speak up even more strongly and more loudly and encourage voices who were speaking up on behalf of free speech and greater political participation in the Middle East,” she said.

Upon her return to the United States, Hughes said she wrote “an extensive memo” to President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about what she had heard, and that she briefed them and other senior U.S. officials and policymakers.

The current battle of ideas between the United States and those who advocate terrorism and religious extremism, Hughes said, is “a fight about our most fundamental and founding values,” namely the freedoms to speak openly and disagree, to worship freely and to participate in the political process.

These ideals “do not belong only to America, but are shared by civilized people the world over,” she said.

This is in contrast, she said, to opponents such as al-Qaida and others who kill innocent people, including fellow Muslims to establish “by terrorism and subversion and insurgency … a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”

“At every opportunity the civilized world must come together to say that no injustice, no complaint can ever justify the murder of innocents. We must speak plainly also about the terrorists intentions,” she said, pointing to the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan as an example of what extremists seek to impose.

The United States is confident of its ideals and believes that, “given a fair hearing and a free choice,” people will “choose freedom over tyranny, tolerance over extremism, diversity over rigid conformity, and justice over injustice.”

Her mission as the Bush administration’s public diplomacy chief, she said, is to “create the climate and conditions that allow people to give us that fair hearing” through exchange programs like the citizen ambassador program, academic exchanges and empowering groups such as Muslim Americans that “have far greater credibility to debate issues of their faith, to condemn terrorism that's being committed in the name of their religion, than I do.”

Hughes also thanked the international community for its assistance in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster that devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast and said Americans “were so touched” by the response.

The United States, on both public and private levels, also has responded to disasters overseas, such as the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami, and, most recently, to the earthquake in South Asia and mudslides and flooding in Guatemala.

“[A]s we deliver aid and help to people who desperately need it, we're doing so for the right reasons: because we are concerned and because we care about those people,” she said.

She said she hopes that the aid is “showing the world a very important side of America, and … more about what we are truly like and what a wonderful and generous people my fellow Americans really are.”

The transcript of the under secretary's remarks is available on the State Department Web site.