(bell tolling)
- [Announcer] Ladies and
gentlemen, please welcome
to the stage, John J. DeGioia,
President of Georgetown
University and His Highness
Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani,
Amir of the State of Qatar.
(audience applauds)
- Well good morning and thank you all
for being here in joining
us in Gaston Hall.
We are honored by this
opportunity to welcome
His Highness, the Amir
of the State of Qatar,
Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani
to Georgetown this morning.
Your Highness, it's an
extraordinary privilege
to have you with us today
and I look forward to our
conversation in just a few moments.
I'd like to take a moment
to welcome the many
special guests who are here
today and speak to the context
that brings us together.
I wish to welcome His
Excellency Ambassador
Mohammed Jaham Al Kuwari,
Ambassador of the State of
Qatar to the United States,
His Excellency Dr. Khalid
Mohammad Al Attiyah,
Minister of Foreign Affairs,
His Excellency Ali Sharif Al
Emadi, Minister of Finance.
I want to thank you for your
presence here this morning
and I wish to offer my gratitude
to the Embassy of Qatar
and the Qatary delegation
for their contributions
to today's events.
You have our deep appreciation.
We come together today in Gaston Hall.
Throughout our history,
this Hall has served
as one of the most important
places for public discourse,
in discussion here in Washington.
And coming together today with
a distinguished world leader,
we cannot help but recognize
our interconnectedness,
our shared interest in the
issues at stake in this
conversation, our shared
investment in understanding
and responding to global challenges.
We know that our world is
more interconnected than ever.
We now live in a time when
thanks to unprecedented
advances in transportation
and communications,
and information technology,
nations are increasingly
interdependent, people
more interconnected,
humanity less divided
by narrow domestic walls
than ever before in history.
This interconnectedness
makes gatherings like this
that much more important.
Being global is fundamentally
about connecting,
about how we connect, how
we engage the opportunities
of connecting and how we
navigate the challenges as well.
Universities have a special
role in contributions to make,
such as through the
dialogue we convened today
and through our partnerships
around the world.
Earlier this month, I had
the privilege to be in Doha
with my colleagues from the
main campus to celebrate
the 10th anniversary of
Georgetown's presence
in Education City through our
school of foreign service present there.
It is in this context
that we are privileged
to have with us this
morning the Amir of Qatar
to speak to our community
about issues of importance
to Qatar and to our world.
One of the youngest heads
of state in the world,
the Amir began his
service after his father
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani stepped down.
Since becoming Amir in June 2013,
he has provided steady
leadership in a region
often beset by turbulence.
In his roles both as
Crown Prince and now Amir,
he has been instrumental in
raising the international
profile of Qatar.
He has served in top
security and economic posts
and has been responsible
for promoting Qatar's
ties in the region including
with such key nations
as Saudi Arabia.
In 2009, he was appointed
deputy commander in chief
of Qatar's armed forces.
He's also played a major
role in shaping Qatar's
contributions to the world of sport.
He's a member of the
national Olympic Committee
as well as chairman of the
Qatar National Olympic Committee
and was a large part of
the successful bid to bring
the FIFA World Cup to Qatar in 2022.
Just a few days ago and
this is his first visit
to Washington since assuming
his responsibilities as Amir,
he met with President Obama.
The meeting emphasized the strong ties,
commercial, educational,
scientific, technological,
shared between our nations
and the commitment we have
to addressing the most
urgent issues in the region
from terrorism and conflict
to engaging Arab youth.
Your Highness, we welcome
you to Georgetown.
We thank you for being here today.
We will now begin a
conversation and then we've
been able to secure some
questions from some of you
who were in line and I'll
try to go through a set
of questions that I've
prepared and then go through
a set of questions that
we've been able to secure
from all of you.
Again, thank you all for being here today
and it's now my privilege to engage
in conversation with the Amir.
(audience applauds)
- Well, Mr. President,
dear faculty, first of all,
thank you for having me here.
It's an honor and it
all began a few days ago
when you were in Doha
and we had the meeting
and you asked me, you invited me
kindly to come to Georgetown
and it was an honor, but I didn't realize
that I'm gonna be facing in front of me,
students and faculty so you know,
it's not easy so I need your help
if there are any questions.
But really, it's an honor for me.
I'm very happy to be here.
Let me just begin by saying, you know,
congratulations to all
of us that Georgetown's
been in Doha now for 10 years.
We all know how important
this prestigious university,
being in the region of the Middle East,
but we realize how much, how important
it is when we see our
students graduating from there
and trying, playing a
bigger role in my country
and also in the region.
I'm sure some of the
students here, we're going
to see them having high
positions in either
in this country or back at their country
so I think as you said Mr. President,
I've been Amir now since 2013.
Our region is unstable.
We have a lot of problems
happening around us.
Thanks to God that Qatar
and the gulf region
is a stable countries.
It doesn't mean that we are, you know,
we should sit back and relax.
We have to do lots of work, lots of reform
and to try and solve problems around us.
I've been in this position, 2013.
It wasn't, you know, thanks to my father,
I had lots of advice,
lots of help from him.
Still, it was very difficult to be dealing
with all those issues.
I became Amir just three or four days
before what happened in
Egypt, the 13th of June.
And I had to deal with the situation,
not me only, but I was
one of the countries,
one of the leaders that had
to deal with the situation
to try to find a solution in Egypt.
It was very difficult.
Unfortunately, you know, I tried my best.
I wasn't successful.
There are reasons for that, but you know,
I was supposed to have a
speech and talk to you,
but I decided, you know, I
would just let it go easily
like that, it's much
easier for me and I think
it's much easier for you
if you have any questions.
I don't want to take much of your time
to talk to you, boring
you with what I did.
You know, I know that
some of you have questions
to ask me, but let us, since
we are at a university,
at a very important university,
I think if we could
concentrate on the importance
and the role of the youth in our region
to be very important because they were the
youth that's played
the most important role
in the Arab spring and believe me,
some of them, many of
them, I was surprised
when I met them after the
revolution from different
parts of the countries that
stood up against dictatorship.
They are very intelligent,
they are very clever
and they have a great
vision for the future.
So we should try to talk about
this and we can help them
in the future.
So I'm, I don't know if
I should say anything,
but I will be expecting
questions from you.
So thank you very much, Mr.
President and I'll say it again.
I'm very honored to be
sitting in front of you here.
- Thank you so much.
So I, we have been able
to pull some questions
from the audience.
Let me get started though,
first with your visit.
You've been here three days now.
Your first visit in your role as Amir.
Tell us about your meeting
with President Obama.
How did the discussion go?
What, how do you see the importance,
the significance of the
relationship between
your country and the United States?
- Well, it was a nice meeting.
He was very easy-going,
which it's a personality
that I like and I get along very quickly.
I think it was a very
good meeting with all the
officials here in DC.
It's a very important visit for me,
first visit for me as an, in my position.
We have a strategic relation with America.
People talk a lot about
military, security,
but there's something very
important that, you know,
we should talk about and
we should also promote more
is educational relationship
we have America.
We have, of course,
Georgetown and five other
great American universities
in Doha with other institutes
as well, but overall, the
meetings went very well.
We had a lot to discuss.
Honestly speaking, we
were discussing mainly
about the regional
problem because the region
with all the terrorist
movements and dictatorships
and some war, and the
war in Syria and Iraq
and with the situation in Yemen as well.
We were discussing mainly
about those countries.
We spoke briefly about how the important
the relation is between both countries,
but overall, I think the
meeting went very well.
- So President Obama's not
the first head of state
you've been in recent days.
Shortly before your visit
here to the United States,
you were in Saudi Arabia
to meet with King Salman.
Can you give us a sense
of how that meeting went
and how you would
understand the nature of the
relationship between your
country and the Saudi's?
- It's, for us as a small
country on the Gulf,
Saudi Arabia is the most important country
to have a relation with.
We had a historic relationship
with Saudi Arabia,
very strong relationship with Saudi Arabia
and it is still as strong
and it will always be strong.
I will make sure that
the relation stays strong
with Saudi Arabia.
We all know that there is a
big pressure on Saudi Arabia
with what's going on around the region,
that Saudi Arabia should, is a big country
and they can handle this
pressure and it's their role
to try to solve problems
around the region.
And I'm confident that King Salman
and the people aiding him, as well,
especially the second
generation aiding him.
I'm confident that they will do a good job
and they'll do, at least, I
know that they'll do their best.
But it's up to us as well to help them
for them to stabilize the region.
They have a big task ahead of them.
It's not gonna be easy and it's not easy
to be successful with what's going on
but the meeting went very
well and I'm confident
that King Salman will help
to stabilize the region,
but it's going to be very difficult.
- Place your country's recent
growth and development.
Under your father's
leadership, as I mentioned
in my opening remarks,
you played increasingly
important roles over the
course of the last decade.
Take us through what this
last decade has been like
for your country and how
you understand the nature
of your responsibility in the region.
- Well, first of all, we start
of what we did internally.
The reforms that we did internally.
We concentrated a lot on education.
We believe that education is a thing
that we should invest in.
So that is why we invited six of the best
American universities in
Doha and also we did lots of
reform in our education system in Qatar.
We have a great Qatar university.
We improved it a lot.
It's been all strong, but we
had to improve a lot in it.
We had to do, we did a lot
of reforms in our country.
If you go back 15 years
ago, we first started with
the municipality election.
It was a big thing in our
country and it went well.
It's still going.
We have also other things
to be done as well.
One of them is the
elected Majlis as-Shura,
which is a parliament and
hopefully it's going to be
very soon.
There's just some legal
issues and logistics issues
to be dealt with, but we
are committed to do what's
better for our country.
My father did a lot for our country.
Of course, I'm not my father.
Even if I try to be like my father,
I cannot be like my father.
I should take all the
advantages that my father did
and try to harden them as well
and I say everybody's different.
But my father did a
great job for his country
for the region and I am
very proud and my country's
very proud of.
- One of the challenges of leadership
is there are a set of
short-term, urgent matters
that require your attention
and then there are longer-term,
more developmental issues that
require care and attention.
How would you differentiate
right now the most immediate
short-term challenges that
you must address and then
how do you balance those with
the longer-term questions
that your country faces?
- Well, I think for the short-term,
that we should address the security.
Security is very important.
We have economical challenges,
we have many challenges,
but I think the security
due to what's going on
around our region.
We say we're stable, yes.
We are a stable country,
but what happens in Yemen
and Egypt and Syria and
Iraq affects us one another.
And the longer it takes, the more effect
that we're going to be affected by.
There's something very
interesting that we should,
that we are working on
very, very hard and I know
that it's going to be a great challenge.
It's depending on the oil for our income.
This has been the challenge.
If we go back just 100
years ago, more or less,
100 years ago, our country
and the countries around us
were dependent on selling the pearl,
but after the pearl planting
came, farming, sorry,
came and our Japanese friends
found this new system,
we were broke so we were in trouble.
Now when the oil came, we
started breathing again.
We are, in the '70s, we faced
a big drop of oil prices.
We were all depending on oil.
The same thing happened
in the '80s, the '90s
and now also, the drop of the oil prices.
Yes, yes we are a rich country,
but we have to see what
we did to be at this level
and in the mid-90's when
my father first took over,
the oil price was so
low, was how much was it?
$8, and you know, we were
in trouble finding money
to pay salaries.
People don't think that, you know,
we are, a rich country, but no.
We had our difficult moments,
but the way how to challenge
them now is how to have
other resources than
the oil price.
We know that one day,
we will not be depending
on oil and gas.
When, I hope it's going to be
long, but I don't know when
it's going to be, but
we have to be depending
on other things and one
of the, the main thing
that we're doing is we're investing,
we're having a lot of
investments and to make sure
that things go alright, as
I said, the main investment
in this was with education
and this is the challenge
and these are the youth in the future
will be running the
country and we'll make sure
that our economy stays stable.
- When you arrived earlier in the week,
you had an op-ed in The New York Times
and in that you described
the root cause of terrorism
to be hopelessness, among the youth.
How do you see empowering
youth in the region?
Right now we estimate there
are probably 100 million
young people between the
ages of roughly 15 and 29
in the Arab world.
How do we empower youth?
How do you see yourself
and your nation being
a part of the solution to this?
- Well, President, when
I talk about things,
I like giving examples, you know,
to make things easier for
everybody to understand.
When we go back a few years
ago, when the Arab Spring
started, if you think of it
and you go back four years,
you didn't hear about
any terrorist attack,
any terrorist movement.
Everything was quiet.
All those youth, they had, you know,
they saw their future, they had ambitions.
They thought that they were
going to have a better future
when they started this Arab Spring.
Now, the problem that we're facing now
is the counter revolution.
We call it the counter revolution.
People call it other names.
Well, we call it counter revolution.
Now if those youth, we
don't give them a chance
and participate in sharing power,
because this is what they wanted.
They wanted dignity and freedom.
If we don't make them participate
and put them in jail or no jobs,
this is what I call hopeless.
They'll be looking for other things.
Now going back to giving examples.
Some of the youth that stood up against
leaders, dictators, they were moderate.
Muslims, but they were moderate.
They believe in living together.
You know, they believe in democracy.
After the Arab, after
the counter revolution,
some of them unfortunately
went to terrorist groups
and we have them by name and we know
which party they were
and they weren't even
in the Islamic party before.
So this is what I mean.
Hopeless, you know, you have to
give them hope for the future.
This is what I meant in that
and we don't, of course,
I don't like saying
that because I'm Muslim
but you know, we should
never tie terrorists
with our religion because
terrorism doesn't have a religion.
Every religion had
terrorist movements one day
in history.
So we shouldn't tie this to our religion,
but hope is the most important thing
we should give to our youth.
- Your visit comes at a
time in the United States
where we're very focused
on trying to determine
what's the most appropriate response
to the threats in Syria,
particularly from ISIS.
Did your visit here to
the US give you some sense
of an approach that will make sense for us
we go forward in
addressing this challenge?
- Okay, Syria, we have
to, when I spoke with
officials here, we have to
identify and see the real cause
of those terrorist movements.
When the Syria people stood
up against Bashar al-Assad,
asked him for freedom, dignity.
You can go back and you can go check.
They weren't, all of them
were youth asking for
dignity and freedom and
there wasn't movement.
We said that from day one.
If Bashar al-Assad
doesn't find the solution
in solving his problem,
we will be facing terrorist movement
because the way he was
treating his people,
killing his people,
young people, if we don't
find a solution, we will be dealing with,
we will find terrorist groups
that nobody can control.
Now, it's important for people
to understand how this thing
started in Syria.
They were asking for freedom, dignity.
50 kids or 12 kids at
the age of 12, 13, 14,
just wrote on the wall.
Leave, Bashar al-Assad.
You have to leave.
They were put in jail.
Some of them, their nails were taken off
and those are young boys and girls, boys.
Now, if you're gonna see your child
being treated like that just
because he did something
small on the wall and
you forgive the regime,
but you ask for your child to come back,
and then after that, the
regime starts killing his own
people, what do you all
expect this atmosphere,
what will the atmosphere create?
It will create a terrorist
movement that we are facing now.
Now my, what I always say
and also that, I told that
to the president.
Yes, it's important that we
have to face terrorist movement.
It's a threat to us and to
all of us, to everybody.
But we have to see what caused all this
and we have to make sure
that if we're going to fight
these groups, that these
groups don't come back again.
Because if we fight them and
we leave the main reason,
they'll come back again
in the near future.
So it is difficult, but we
have to face two things.
There is the regime that's
killing his own people
and there is those terrorist groups.
Unfortunately now in Syria,
there is terrorist groups
and there is the regime.
People tend to forget those
millions in the middle
that demanded for their freedom,
who are the important people,
who we should also support
for in the future in Syria.
This is how I see things in Syria.
- And do you have a sense
today that a collective will
and a collective strategy
is emerging to address
this combination?
- There is, there is, but
I'll be honest with you.
We shouldn't only be depending on America.
Us Arab countries, we
should do our own work
and then we should ask the
Americans if we need help
to help us solve our problems.
The problem that we've been seeing,
we've been always blaming the Americans.
Yes, the Americans have their mistakes.
I have my point of view,
a different point of view,
but we have to depend on ourselves as well
as Arab countries.
We have the capability
to be solid together,
to be facing those terrorist movements
and also to be helping those populations
for their freedom and
then we can ask the help
of America to help us in this.
But there's a sense, yes,
what I've been hearing from officials here
that the regime in Syria lost legitimacy.
They know that and they're worried about
the terrorist movements.
But we all forget that
there are millions of people
in the middle that are
the people that we have
to bet on and to help.
- We asked members of the
audience to ask some questions
while they were in line to come in.
And so I've got a few of those here.
Let me take these on.
The first one comes
from someone from Qatar.
"As someone who calls Qatar home,
"how can we work to get
away from the negative media
"coverage and show the world
that we stand as a nation
"to make a difference
according to our vision?
"What is government policy
and how can we contribute
"to address it?"
- It's a good question.
There have been some
negative things in the media
about Qatar and for me, honestly speaking,
I don't have a problem
when somebody criticizes
me or criticizes our policy.
We're fine with that and we have friends
that do that as well, but
what hurts me sometimes
is when you see something in the media
which is not true about my country.
Now, the way how we've been dealing,
we don't have response.
We used to say no, what
they say is not true.
Sorry for this language.
It was rubbish, so we're
not going to answer them.
People know the policy of
Qatar, which is not true.
People listen to the media,
people read the newspaper.
If we don't go and talk to the people
and to show them what is
the policy of my country,
whether you agree or don't
agree, but I have to show
you the policy of my country
and then you can judge.
But if we give chance for
others to write on our behalf,
of course you guys will
believe what they say
because we're not responding.
But now, you know, as a Qatari student
or somebody living here
who asked me this question,
it's an important
question, but we are doing
everything now to make sure that our voice
will be listened by the
media, by all our friends
because I know that we
have lots of friends.
But they tell us, guys, we cannot help you
if you don't help yourself.
So this is what we're doing now.
That's why I'm here.
That's why I have to visit
friends in Washington.
That's why I'm meeting with media people.
That's why I'm honored
to be meeting faculty
and students here to
talk about our policy.
At the end, we'll
disagree and we'll agree,
but I want you to know
from me, from our people
what exactly that we're doing.
Something said in the media, negative
and as I said, I don't
have any problem with it.
But you have to listen
to our voice and then
you can judge by yourself
what people say about Qatar.
- So the World Cup in 2022.
Shameless plug for Georgetown.
We have two of the
greatest soccer programs.
Our men and women's soccer programs
among the best in the United States,
but that's not relevant to my question.
(audience laughs)
So there's some controversy,
but it also has great
significance, I think,
as you move forward in presenting
your country to the world.
First, tell us what the World Cup means
for your country and
second, how do you defend
your country against
allegations of cheating
to get the World Cup.
- Well, there's been lots
of talk about the World Cup,
all that World Cup happening in Qatar,
even former World Cups, why
did it go to this country,
didn't go to the other country.
You know how important
soccer is and sports is.
We are very proud that
we're going to be hosting
the World Cup in 2022.
I think the main reason
that we were successful
in hosting this World Cup is because,
and we believe in that,
is that this World Cup
is for all the Arabs, and not for Qatar.
If it was Qatar, I'm sure
we wouldn't be successful.
We said that this World
Cup is for all the Arabs
and that's why we're successful.
It's a big challenge
and those allegations,
as I said, you know,
I'm not just going to go
and any person says anything
about Qatar, I'm going to answer.
There's FIFA and they
had people investigating
and everything, they
investigated with everybody.
All the officials that we have in Qatar
and they found out that
there's about Qatar.
Now, it's bad to say
that the race was between
Qatar and America to
hold the World Cup 2022.
And I know that you guys,
people here were very upset
that how come this small country can beat
this great country, but
I think, you should be,
you're all sports, you should
believe that, you know,
you can lose sometimes.
(audience laughs and applauds)
No, serious.
And there's something, I
don't know if it's polite
to say or something.
After winning the World Cup,
when I was waiting to host,
to welcome the delegation,
I wasn't there for it.
So one guy came to me and asked me.
He said, President Obama
said that the World Cup
shouldn't go to Qatar,
it should go to America.
I don't know if he said it or not.
My answer was, what was my answer?
God forgive him for saying that.
That was my answer, but I think, you know,
this World Cup is very
important for our nation
and you guys should support
it because you guys don't know
how important that this World Cup
brought all the Arabs together.
If you see children
from Libya, from Egypt,
from all around the Arab
world crying because
we won the World Cup and
the same thing a Qatari
would do if any other
nation win the World Cup
so it's very important for us.
- [John] And the plans are proceeding?
- Yes, everything's doing well.
- Great.
So here's the third
question from our audience.
Given the recent spat with
the Gulf Corporation Council
and the conflict with Egypt,
Qatar has come under fire
for alleged intervention in the affairs
of other Arab countries.
With these events, what
do you see as Qatar's
role in the GCC, in the
Arab world as a whole.
- Qatar plays a big role in the GCC
like any other GCC countries.
This question has been
asked to me many times.
We had different views on Egypt.
We all agree that Egypt
is an important country.
Egypt should be stable
and it's not up to me
or up to the Americans or up to the GCC
who chooses who wants Egypt.
The people of Egypt are responsible
of choosing their president.
Now there is a government there.
We have differences, but we all agree
that this government has to be stable.
Now, instead of asking help from outside,
I only say that this government
should help itself before.
Then we can help the Egyptians.
But my policy is to make
sure if there's anything
that I can help to stabilize the situation
in Egypt, I would do so.
We had differences between
Qatar and some GCC countries
concerning our force to Egypt.
We don't interfere in Egypt.
We have never interfered in Egypt.
But what we did is when
a government was elected,
we stood by the government
and what happened in
13th of June, we believed
that it was wrong
and it could've done in another way.
They could've done another election,
but the way how it happened was wrong.
Now this is the past, now we
should look in the future now.
What will this government do?
At the end, we are there.
If there's any help that we can do,
we will be happy to help.
It's our duty to help, actually.
- So we know we're your
last stop in Washington
before heading onto your
next leg of your US tour.
So this will be our last
question for this morning.
First, thank you for
supporting the Arab language
and Olive Program at Washington
Latin Public Charter School.
What is your vision for education
and intercultural exchange in Qatar?
What is the role of Arab
language instruction?
What would you like US students to learn
about Qatar and Qatari culture?
- Well, first of all, you know,
anything that will support Arab language,
always the first one to be supported
so we will always be happy to
support this great language.
What do I want people to
learn about my culture?
Well my culture is among the culture
of the Arab peninsula.
It's a great culture and
by learning the language,
you will understand the culture.
Talking about Arabic, Mr. President,
something very important
that I personally worked on
with my staff in Doha.
We had some classes in
schools and universities
that were taught in English and I said
that we have a great
language and it's a very
important language.
There are good examples around the world
that they teach everything
in their language.
So why don't we do it in Arabic?
There was a big debate,
but we're successful now.
All the classes are taught in Arabic.
So this is how I look
into my Arabic language.
It's very important and we
hope, if there's anything
that we can add and
help, for American people
to learn this language,
we will be happy to do so.
- Thank you.
So that was our last question.
I want to thank you for
your presence here today
and wish you the very best for the rest
of your trip here in the United States.
I want to express my gratitude to all here
in the audience for being a
part of our conversation today.
I'm grateful for your presence.
I ask that our delegation,
our special guests from Qatar
leave as we exit the stage.
Again, I want to thank you for being here
and wish you the very best.
- Thank you very much.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you.
- It's been a pleasure.
