12 June 2009
This Week from Washington June 12
Podcast on Middle East peace talks, drug-resistant TB, FOIA
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U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell says the United States seeks a quick resumption and an early conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The former U.S. senator said June 10 after a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the only viable resolution to the conflict is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states. All parties share an obligation to create the conditions for the prompt resumption and conclusion of negotiations, the U.S. envoy said.
Mitchell’s visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, is part of President Obama’s efforts to reinvigorate negotiations that ultimately would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel — often referred to as the “two-state solution.”
In a major speech to Muslims around the world from Cairo on June 4, Obama pledged to work aggressively to end conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. He has sent Mitchell back to the region to continue negotiations. On June 9th, Mitchell met with Israeli officials, including a two-hour private meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a broad range of issues. Mitchell said during the meetings that “the United States’ commitment to the security of Israel remains unshakeable.”
Mitchell also travelled to Amman, Jordan, on June 11th and Damascus, Syria, on June 12th and 13th. Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to deliver a speech on his policies June 14th.
Partnerships involving governments, the private sector and nongovernmental organizations are critical in global efforts to conquer tuberculosis, commonly known as TB, a disease that in some cases is resistant to drugs. The World Health Organization has called these drug-resistant strains of TB a global health “time bomb.” Multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR TB, occurs when a majority of TB drugs are ineffective. Nearly 500,000 new cases of MDR TB were reported in 2008. Another strain, called extensively drug-resistant TB, occurs when no combination of drugs is effective and is fatal in 53 percent of cases. The United States, the largest single-country donor to the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, is a leader in efforts to combat drug-resistant TB.
The fifth annual Pacific Health Summit, which focuses on drug-resistant TB as a major global health threat, will highlight the value of partnerships in the fight. Hundreds of scientists, government officials, corporate leaders and researchers from more than 24 countries (including Peru, South Africa, Japan, Kenya, Switzerland, China, India, Brazil and the United States) will participate in the meeting in Seattle June 16th to 18th.
U.S. government efforts against drug-resistant TB can be found at every level. Local and state governments, federal agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are all involved. Partnerships usually concentrate on the 22 nations with the highest number of TB cases and focus on finding new drugs and diagnostic tools.
In the Philippines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a Filipino tropical disease institute are creating a new training framework for health care workers using a yearlong class schedule. Previous training partnerships in Latvia, Malawi, South Africa and Peru centered on one-week, one-time sessions; the new course will be divided into four sessions that build on students’ skills.
Elsewhere, NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the South Korean government support a research center in Masan, South Korea, that evaluates new TB drugs. USAID also worked with the Brazilian Ministry of Health to increase the number of TB centers in Brazil from 63 in 2004 to 122 in 2007. Other projects include CureTB, a bilateral initiative with Mexico that coordinates TB care on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Efforts involve the private sector as well: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation signed a $33 million agreement with China’s Ministry of Health in April to work on TB in six Chinese provinces.
Scientists, activists and health care providers say they sense a new momentum in the fight against drug-resistant TB. The Pacific Health Summit is designed to capitalize on that momentum. Ultimately, all partners are focused on a key indicator: The global increase of TB cases has slowed somewhat, but the rise of drug-resistant TB has not.
The principle of free information is vital to a functioning democracy. In America, a 43-year-old law called the Freedom of Information Act helps keep the U.S. government open and transparent. The Act is not just for the use of journalists, researchers and scholars. In fact, senior citizens, military veterans and businesses make up the bulk of requests for government information.
Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, the federal government has released millions of documents requested by individuals, corporations and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. The law, which applies to all agencies in the executive branch of government, is administered by the Department of Justice. Some documents are exempt from the law, such as certain classified foreign relations documents, national defense information, proprietary business information and trade secrets.
The United States’ Freedom of Information Act process has been a model for nations that have developed similar laws, according to Tom Blanton, director of an NGO called the National Security Archive. Blanton says the process has been used to get more closed societies like Cuba, Vietnam and Russia to open up their government archives. According to Blanton, there has been “an openness revolution,” particularly in the 1990s when the number of countries that have information freedom laws went from about a dozen to about 80 today.
Blanton's organization has shown American documents to foreign governments. The information contained in the documents threatens to tell the history from an American perspective rather than theirs, and this poses an interesting challenge for them to open up, according to Blanton.
Some of these meetings with leaders of more closed societies actually have led to unveiling of new information. For example, the Gorbachev Foundation provided the National Security Archive with a transcript of a meeting between former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. president George H.W. Bush at Malta in 1989. The American version is still classified and has not yet been released.
The National Security Archive is working with a number of countries to help develop or strengthen their own freedom of information laws. A team recently visited Georgia and is working with lawmakers there to set up a functioning information-access process.
NSA has also helped train journalists and others on how to use FOIA laws to investigate stories. Training of journalists aims to encourage them to lessen their mistrust for government by seeing how they can work with the government to gain access to information.
This podcast is produced by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs. Links to other Internet sites or opinions expressed should not be considered an endorsement of other content and views.
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