Dodd Chairs Foreign Relations Committee Nomination Hearing

Press Release

Dodd Chairs Foreign Relations Committee Nomination Hearing

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of its Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps and Global Narcotics Affairs, chaired a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today for the nominations of Arturo Valenzuela to be the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Carlos Pascual to be Ambassador to Mexico; Thomas Shannon to be Ambassador to Brazil; and Kenneth Merten to be Ambassador to Haiti.

"I applaud President Obama for assembling such a strong team to articulate our national interests and develop and carry out our policies in this important region," said Dodd. "The Western Hemisphere is not a distant land with distant interests. It is not our backyard, but instead, our neighborhood, and our partnerships in it should be as deep as our interdependence and as durable as our shared values."

Full Text of Dodd's Opening Statement, As Prepared for Delivery:

I am delighted to preside over this morning's important hearing, to consider the nominations for the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Ambassadors to three key nations in Latin America - Mexico, Brazil, and Haiti.

I applaud President Obama for assembling such a strong team to articulate our national interests and develop and carry out our policies in this important region. The Western Hemisphere is not a distant land with distant interests. It is not our backyard, but instead, our neighborhood, and our partnerships in it should be as deep as our interdependence and as durable as our shared values.

We, Canada, and Latin America are bound by history, culture, and a rich web of mutual interests more far-ranging than we have anywhere else in the world. Our two-way trade with our neighbors is more than $1.3 trillion a year, accounting for a third of all U.S. exports -- $618 billion in goods and services purchased from the United States each year. Though many Americans don't realize it, the Western Hemisphere provides fully half of our imported energy. We also share ecosystems, and we are bound to address the challenges to our environment together.

Our relationship with Canada is solid as a rock, and our shared border, like our border with Mexico, has brought our governments to ever-higher levels of cooperation not just on security, immigration and traditional cross border issues, but also on economic issues, the environment, and in our partnership as NATO allies as far away as Afghanistan.

Our shared interests with Mexico also go far beyond the border. As Secretary Clinton said during her recent visit there, the U.S.-Mexico relationship "is one of the most important relationships between any two countries in the world." Just as we admire Mexico's progress, we also regret its challenges - including the ongoing surge in drug-related violence - and we have a duty to help address the underlying causes, including U.S. consumption of illegal narcotics and the southbound flow of thousands of weapons and crates of bulk cash that fuel the violence afflicting the Mexican nation. And when we have disputes on trade issues, we must faithfully use the resolution mechanisms built into NAFTA to resolve them.

I am among the optimists about developments in Latin America over the past twenty years - and its continued progress in the future. Whereas the United States optic in the region in the past was defined by East-West struggle, military dictatorship and the lack of basic human rights, today it is a region dominated by consolidated democracies, searching for creative solutions to economic inequality and public security, and willing and ready for partnership among themselves and with us in addressing regional and hemispheric challenges. The international financial crisis tempers expectations in the short-term - its shockwaves throughout the region will surely hamper progress - but the region has already proven that no challenge insurmountable.

Recent developments in Honduras, and occasional digressions elsewhere, signal that challenges in the institutionalization of democracy remain, but the region's unanimous condemnation of the coup - embodied in the OAS resolution passed on July 1 - underscores the historic progress the hemisphere has made toward protecting our hemispheric values of democracy and rule of law.

In the same vein, a new, positive framework for our relations with the region - our neighbors and partners - is emerging. It is a relationship based on consultation, on understanding each other's history and interests, and on those shared values. President Obama and Secretary Clinton's direct and effective engagement with the hemisphere's leaders at the Summit of the Americas in April highlighted the Administration's commitment to this renewed relationship.

Our friends in the region are ready to lead as well. The consolidated democracies of Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, among others, have a profound leadership role to play, developing and expanding models to address economic and energy challenges and the United States should support them playing such a role.

Despite this solid progress, our new Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs and our Ambassadors throughout the region face serious challenges. Honduras is but one example of the countries in which autocratic tendencies - by government leaders as well as military forces - are just beneath the surface. Chronic political tensions in Venezuela and Bolivia serve no useful purpose, squandering democratic energies. The "false positives" scandal in Colombia - the extrajudicial execution of innocent boys and men - poses the challenge of a democratic nation that has seen tremendous progress but experiences lapses in human rights.

The task of refashioning U.S. policy toward Cuba to effect peaceful, democratic change remains important. The perennial challenge of helping Haiti overcome its legacy of poverty and weak institutions, however difficult, must be addressed.

In today's testimony, I look forward to hearing Dr. Valenzuela's vision for building on this dynamic evolution as Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Dr. Valenzuela has an extraordinary grasp of the issues at hand and previous policy experience at the State Department and National Security Council. I warmly applaud his nomination.

Our relationship with Mexico is broad and deep. Our Ambassador in Mexico City must be expert on the array of bilateral issues - and expert at marshalling the U.S. Government resources needed to address them. Ambassador Pascual's career at USAID, the National Security Council, and the State Department, including his service as Ambassador to Ukraine, equip him well for the job.

The Administration of President Lula in Brazil is among the most accomplished in the region. It reduced poverty an impressive 27 percent during President Lula's first term, and Brazil has emerged as a true leader in alternative energy and environmental protection. Moreover, Brazil has played a crucial role in regional affairs - providing extraordinary leadership at the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti - and promoted regional integration and coordination through mechanisms such as UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations). Having just served as Assistant Secretary during much of this period, Mr. Shannon is superbly qualified to manage this historic period in U.S.-Brazil relations.

Despite extraordinary challenges, including devastating hurricanes last year, Haiti continues to make incremental progress under the leadership of President Preval and Prime Minister Pierre‑Louis. The government has reversed the economic decline, albeit with very modest growth, but more than half of the population lives in extreme poverty - on less than one dollar a day - and more than three-quarters of the Haitian people do not get the minimum daily ration of food.

International donors recently pledged $353 million in assistance, and the World Bank and IMF's forgiveness of a billion dollars in Haitian debt paves the way for the flows to start. But much, much more remains to be done. Mr. Merten has served a tour in Port-au-Prince, worked as special assistant to the Department's special advisor on Haiti, and speaks fluent Creole. I look forward to hearing his vision for U.S. policy toward Haiti.

I welcome our nominees today and look forward to hearing their testimony. After my distinguished colleague, Chairman Lugar, offers his remarks, we will proceed with two panels - the first with Dr. Valenzuela, and the second with the ambassadorial nominees. At that time, I will ask each nominee to speak for four or five minutes, with the reassurance that their full statements will be entered into the record. Senator Lugar…

Source