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M2 PRESSWIRE-31 October 2003-US DOD: News transcript(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:10302003

DoD News Briefing: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, Powell Moore

(Participating were Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), Sue Kelly (R-NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R. Fla.), Jennifer Dunn (R. Wash.) Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.), Caroyln McCarthy (D-NY), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Katherine Harris (R-Fla.)

MR. MOORE: Good morning. The secretary hosted another breakfast this morning for a congressional delegation that returned from Iraq. They were in Iraq, I think, on the 23rd and 24th of October. Just for those of you who are keeping score, we've had 98 members of the House and 25 senators who have been to Iraq since the 1st of May. We have three members of the House who have been there twice.

The chairman of the delegation is also chairman of the Republic Conference, Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio. She was joined by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida, Jennifer Dunn from Washington, Sue Kelly from New York, Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Katherine Harris from Florida, Darlene Hooley from Oregon and Carolyn McCarthy from New York. Also attending the breakfast was the deputy secretary of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Undersecretaries Zakheim, Feith, Larry DiRita and myself.

So with that, Chairman Pryce, I'll turn it over to you.

REP. PRYCE: Thank you. Thank you very much.

I'm Deborah Pryce, 15th District of Ohio -- that's Columbus, Ohio. I'm the Conference chairman for the House Republicans, and it was my honor to lead this delegation, a historic delegation of all- women members, bipartisan delegation, to take a look at what was going on in Iraq.

Our major focus was -- well, we had several things we wanted to do. We wanted to visit our troops, and check on their morale and encourage them. We wanted to see how the rebuilding and the infrastructure and the progress on the ground was going. And third of all, but which became a more major focus when we got there -- we wanted to visit with the Iraqi women, and understand how the war has affected them and their families, how we can encourage them to become integrated into their society, how we can get them involved in all levels of their government, because it's our belief that truly secular and representative government must include women Iraqis. And they have made some progress thus far, but we have a lot of work on our hands ahead. And we intend to continue relationships that we made over there with the -- some of the Iraqi women, and build on those relationships and do what we can from back here in the States to get them fully involved in their new democracy.

We made that point to the secretary this morning. We had a long discussion of how we can help from here. And it's going to be an ongoing process.

And we expect to continue to see more and more Iraqi women involved in this new fledgling democracy.

We will each say a few words to you and then we'll take questions.

There are eight of us, so we'll try to keep it brief. And I'll now introduce Darlene Hooley, who was the Democratic representative lead on this trip.

Darlene?

REP. HOOLEY: Thank you, Deborah, and thank you for the wonderful job you did leading this trip.

One of my goals was, in fact, to talk to the women. And this was an opportunity, as they're looking at forming new kinds of councils throughout the country, to encourage women to be involved in government. This is also a time when they're going to be writing their constitution. And again, one of my goals, and I think all of our goals, was to make sure that there is a woman on the constitutional writing committee so that, in fact, they are included. I mean, after all, there is -- 65 percent of the population are women, because they've lost so many young men.

And so it...

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