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STEVEN JOHN: Good afternoon from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Steven John. The head of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission says, it'll probably be next week before action has taken on a settlement that would keep the Minnesota Twins playing at the dome for another year.

Bill Lester says, commission lawyers are working on a response to a written agreement forwarded to them yesterday by Major League Baseball. Under the settlement, the commission would drop a lawsuit against the Twins in Major League Baseball in return for a guarantee that the Twins would play in the Metrodome at least through 2003.

Federal prison officials say an ailing Egyptian cleric convicted of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center is being held in Colorado following a four year stay in Rochester. Minnesota Public Radio's Erin Galbally has more.

ERIN GALBALLY: Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is now a prisoner at the US Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. His location had been kept secret after he was moved from Rochester's Federal Medical Facility back in April. Abdul-Rahman was convicted and given a life sentence in 1995 under conspiracy charges.

He's widely considered to have links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Last month, four people were indicted on terrorism charges for passing messages to and from Abdel-Rahman about the activities of his extreme Islamic organization. The indictments include his lawyer. Erin Galbally, Minnesota Public Radio, Rochester.

STEVEN JOHN: Ground was broken this morning for the new Breezy Point elementary school East of Pequot Lakes and an addition to the existing high school in Pequot lakes. The groundbreakings mark the beginning of work on $20 million worth of projects approved by school district voters last fall. Students could be in the new facilities by fall of 2003.

Partly to mostly sunny, breezy and warm. A wind advisory for the Northwest today. It's currently 88 degrees in Morris and Moose Lake, International Falls at 81. Look for highs in the upper 80s for the Twin Cities this afternoon. Right now, mostly sunny and 80 in Minneapolis, Saint Paul. That's news from MPR.

SPEAKER 1: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Tea Source offering more than 200 of the world's finest loose leaf teas in Saint Paul or on the web at teasource.com.

GARY EICHTEN: It's 6 minutes now past 12.

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And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. This is our Midday Voices of Minnesota interviews with two Minnesotans who have been trying to help the poor people of the world. Tony Kozlowski is the former head of the Minnesota-based American Refugee Committee. We'll be hearing about his new job with a Swiss humanitarian agency.

Meanwhile, Dr. Juliette Fournot lives in Minneapolis, and she is a board member of Doctors Without Borders USA. She led that group's first aid mission to Afghanistan. Both have very interesting stories to tell. And here's Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

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DAN OLSON: Dr. Juliette Fournot says in 1979, the Doctors Without Borders team members dressed as locals, loaded a pack train of donkeys with medicine, and hid money in their underwear as they slipped across the border to start their work in Afghanistan.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: We had to be very careful to hide ourselves from the Pakistani army and the border militias to be able to enter Afghanistan.

DAN OLSON: Tony Kozlowski's new job includes finding homes for the hundreds of thousands of children in African nations left homeless because their parents are victims of AIDS.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: The normal mechanisms to cope with orphans are no longer there because the people in the prime of life have disappeared from these communities.

DAN OLSON: Stay with us this hour for our Voices of Minnesota interviews with Tony Kozlowski and Dr. Juliette Fournot as they talk about their humanitarian work.

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For nearly 10 years, from 1979 to 1988, when Doctors Without Borders was just getting started, Dr. Juliette Fournot directed the work of hundreds of international volunteers and Afghan residents. These days, Fournot lives in Minneapolis. She works for the University of Minnesota's School of Dentistry.

She's on the board of directors of Doctors Without Borders USA. Fournot is a native of Paris, France. However, she spent a good share of her youth living in Afghanistan. She says, her father reacted to his midlife crisis in 1965 by moving the family to Afghanistan, where he began a second career in development and humanitarian work.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, it was exciting for me. I was 10. I moved to Afghanistan and completely different lifestyle and actually a big opening on the world and on the freedom of interaction with the a bigger world. It was still one of the poorest country in the world, but it was poor, but not miserable. It was relatively peaceful. And the former King, who is right now going back to Kabul, was at that time ruling.

DAN OLSON: So what was your life like? Were you in a French speaking or an English speaking school for children, or were you with the other kids of Afghanistan and Kabul?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: I was home schooled. And my friends were from all nationalities and mostly Afghans.

DAN OLSON: How long did this last?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: This lasted for over eight years.

DAN OLSON: So you had an incredible grounding in Afghanistan, a country you would return to, what-- about how much later?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: I came back very shortly after I graduated as a dental and oral surgeon from the French University in '79, just after the Russian invasion.

DAN OLSON: Why did you want to go back?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: I was not really looking to go back. I was stunned with what was going on. Very-- felt really connected to the people and the suffering of the people there. I had lifelong friends, and it was my backyard.

DAN OLSON: Did they ask you to come back, some of your friends?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: It's Doctors Without Borders. It was still a nascent organization, and they were looking for someone who knew the language and the country to evaluate the needs in the refugee camps. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of refugees were flowing into Pakistan. The country was sealed. The Soviet army didn't want to have any witnesses or a foreign presence in Kabul in any forms.

And so the UN agency for refugees contacted Doctors Without borders, MSF, to make-- and I will refer to MSF instead of this long translation of Médecins Sans Frontieres from now on-- contracted MSF to evaluate the needs of the refugees along the border, and we quickly realized that all of these were tribal zones where the Pakistani government had really not-- no control. It was highly political. The aid could be diverted in many ways. So we decided to go inside Afghanistan.

DAN OLSON: However, the border was sealed. Neither Pakistani nor Afghan authorities were allowing people in. Fournot and her team decided to sneak across the border. She says it was a logistical nightmare. They made the trip on foot with money stashed in their clothing,

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Tens of thousands of dollars banknotes in our underpants and buying medicines locally or in India, generic drugs, packing all of that in small parcels of about 40 pounds each to be loaded on donkeys and horses. And they were-- it was being snuck against the border. We had to be very careful to hide ourselves from the Pakistani army and the border militias to be able to enter Afghanistan.

So once we were in Afghanistan, there was this incredible sense of freedom, actually. We didn't have to hide ourselves, except we had to be careful, to be aware from the roads where the Russian-- the Red Army was patrolling. And in some areas, travel at night because of the surveillance flights, the helicopter attacks, and the MiG attacks. 95% of Afghanistan was not under the occupation of the Red Army.

And so the villages and the regions were run in a pretty autonomous way, and the local leaders were starving for any kind of attention. They were immediately extremely keen in understanding that beyond the assistance that we could bring on a practical basis, the humanitarian assistance, the health care we could provide to the sick and the wounded that could not otherwise access to any health care. There was an incredible value in having witnesses to what was going on.

DAN OLSON: Were you in disguise? Were you in costume?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: We were in disguise as we were crossing the border. And then we were dressed like the locals in Afghanistan. From a distance, people couldn't tell that we were not Afghans. But up close, it was-- so our dress code was also a way to show respect for the local customs and to be seen as being decent-- decently dressed.

DAN OLSON: You're on the ground in Afghanistan trying to assess needs and carry out your work. At least once, maybe twice, you were abducted. By whom?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: All various parties or factions of the Afghan rebel groups. It was a constant education to explain to them what humanitarian action is.

DAN OLSON: Because they thought you were, what? What did they think you were doing?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, why would someone, a woman especially, come from an-- other people, doctors, nurses that live in peaceful, rich nation take risk to come in their country that is at war, poor. There must be some hidden purpose there. So what would be the hidden purpose? Could be political, could be religious, could be spying. I mean, they have all these questions.

DAN OLSON: They were eventually satisfied with your explanations?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: They were. And we were demonstrating all the time and sticking to those principles. And we had to be extremely vigilant that whatever place we chose to work, our interlocutors, the leaders we were associating with, the way we were traveling from place A to place B, what we were doing and how we were doing it was impartial. All the time, impartial and always focused on the most vulnerable people, the most vulnerable victims, and regardless of their ethnic group or political affiliation, that it did not matter.

DAN OLSON: What happened during these abductions? Did they just come into your area, wherever you were working, grab you, drag you off, beat you up, and then proceed to question you or what happened?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, personally, I was not. I speak Farsi, so it's really easy for me to--

DAN OLSON: What did you say?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: --to make my points. Actually, I was held for three weeks in the mountains by a radical Islamic group, the Hezb-e Islami. Right now, it's known as Hezb-e Islami. And they were hoping to trade me against weapons from the French government. And I, you know, explained to them that we were not-- I was not a French government envoy. That the French government had absolutely no responsibility or interest in having me there or out of there.

That it was entirely a private and personal mission that I was doing there and that was backed and supported by civilians in Europe and in France mostly. And they wouldn't get anything out of me. They would have to feed me forever. But that-- and I would be a pest to them. And for about two or three weeks, it was like a gradual mutual understanding that developed. It was always respectful. I was always treated as a guest.

DAN OLSON: You were not tortured. You were not beaten.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Not only not beaten and tortured, but I was given the best food of the village and the best mattress to stay, and the best of everything. The debate was serious. You know, they really were inquisitive about whether we were missionaries, if we were going to propagate another religion, or whatever. And over time, they started understanding these principles of impartiality, of neutrality, of humanity.

Too often, humanitarian principles or charity in those countries are just a veil to hide some other political goals or political inaction as well. So that's why it makes people suspicious that there is nothing such as impartial humanitarian aid, that there must be something there. It's fishy.

DAN OLSON: What did your family think about your work, your family and friends? You were in great danger. What did they think of what you were doing?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: My father at the time was working in Indonesia. My mother was going back and forth between France and Indonesia, and they were supportive, actually. You know, being a volunteer is-- actually, my parents were supporting me financially. They were worried, but they never had me carry that guilt.

DAN OLSON: Were you always a pretty independent-- were you independent minded as a kid and as a result, it came naturally as an adult?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: No, I was not. I was a very what we call an easy kid, but I had very independent minded parents who, I think, recognized themselves in what I was doing and how I was doing with an independence of mind, but in a very gentle, non-aggressive fashion. Many of our programs were so far in Afghanistan that we had to walk 35 days across the Hindu Kush and very difficult, rugged situations with very scarce food and the dangers.

But all the time when I was meeting groups of refugees or people walking to Pakistan going the other way, I would write letters that were being mailed from Pakistan and would end up to my parents. That's, you know, the carriers. And actually, that's how me and my teams were communicating in Afghanistan as well.

DAN OLSON: I hope somebody saved those letters. They'll be your first book, perhaps, that you'll write.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Oh, my mom saves everything. She's a-- she could be an archivist in a library.

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DAN OLSON: You're listening to a Voices of Minnesota interview on Minnesota Public Radio with Dr. Juliette Fournot. She led teams of Doctors Without Borders volunteers in Afghanistan for nearly 10 years, when the country was at war with the former Soviet Union. Fournot and other Doctors Without Borders volunteers reported to the outside world what the Soviet military was doing in Afghanistan.

They described attacks on civilian populations, including the use of anti-personnel bombs which maimed and killed children. The reports caused the soviets, Fournot says, to begin a defamation campaign. They labeled her a drug dealer. Fournot says, the defamation campaign was evidence the Doctors Without Borders work was getting in the way of the Red Army.

By the mid 1980s, their work was complicated by Afghanistan's changing political landscape. Young men from Saudi Arabia began appearing in the country, preaching a radical version of Islam. The abductions continued. Kidnappers took a team of 10 Doctors Without Borders volunteers, 150 Afghan workers, and 150 horses carrying medicine. Fournot says, she negotiated for the release of the workers and noticed the presence of a man she later realized was Osama Bin Laden.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: I went right to the leader who was the head of that political party whose Commanders in the field had abducted my team and was there sitting with him. And next to him was this Saudi, tall with big eyes, sweet face. And it's only after that I realized it was Bin Laden because three of his envoys were part of the group that abducted my team.

DAN OLSON: This man who has now become this pariah was sitting in on this negotiation session with you for you to get the release of your team.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: He was not negotiating with me. And he never spoke Farsi. He was speaking in Arabic all the time with the Afghan, but he could very well understand what was going on. But he was pretending to never address me or never look at me.

DAN OLSON: How did you win the release of your team?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Actually, I think there are a number of things that happened. I kept it real quiet for a month, so there was no-- it didn't get out of-- in a bigger debate. I used-- all the time, I used the most fundamental, one of the most fundamental tenet of Islam, which is hospitality. Hospitality is one of the five Commandments of the way that the Muslims define themselves. And in Afghanistan, it's such in the fiber of the people, the hospitality. They love hospitality. You owe protection and hospitality even to your worst enemy, if he is in your home.

DAN OLSON: So you had to be nice to these people out--

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Once he's out, you can stab him. But when he's in your home, you owe him protection and hospitality. And so based on that, I was saying not only we are not your enemies, we're helping your people. We were working to bring unconditional support for the civilians, treating the women, and the children, and the elderly and vaccinating against measles so that the kids don't die like flies in the winter during the measles epidemics, and the malaria epidemics, and the TB that is rampant, and the kids that were dying from infection because they had picked up in the fields are booby trapped, teeny bombs, et cetera.

And so they knew we were doing that. And I said, not only we're not aggressing you, but we are helping your people, and we are your host, so you have duties toward us. And so I kind of turned it around using their own principles and their own rules and their own customary laws also.

DAN OLSON: Did you carry a weapon for self-protection?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Never.

DAN OLSON: Never.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Never touched one and never even felt a need. My best protection-- our best protection was to not be armed.

DAN OLSON: What would happen if you were armed?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, we could be perceived as a threat.

DAN OLSON: Any run ins with the Red Army? I think you said earlier, they were essentially an only 5% of the country. The rest of the country was somewhat free of them.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Yes, they were in control on the roads when they were on the roads with their convoys in between the wheels of their tanks and of the air. But that's all. So there risk were minefields, booby trapped, or anti-personnel mines on the way, ambushes by troops, and bombing or attacks from helicopters mostly because the MiGs not being-- are not very precise in their targeting. Russian convoys and troops have ambushed our teams.

DAN OLSON: People were killed.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: People were killed. Not expatriates, but Afghan staff was killed. Four of my hospitals were brought down to ashes in the first 1 and 1/2 years of our programs there. Fortunately, they had had reconnaissance flights the day before, and the Afghans with whom we worked sense the danger and decided to evacuate the hospital and the inpatients.

DAN OLSON: Now, through all of this, the stress on your patients, the people who you were serving, and the stress on your staff and you must have been great. Were there moments of despair when you thought, I may have to pack it in, I may have to beat a hasty retreat to Pakistan through the mountains soon?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Yes. I mean, there are moments when danger hits. There were ideas crossing my mind, thinking, why did I put myself in that situation, or why would I put any people in that situation. And that was one of my highest priority in my work was the security of my teams. I was responsible, morally responsible for the life of hundreds of Afghans that were working in our programs and the expatriates. You know, they didn't choose to be there. The Afghans had chosen to be there.

So in many ways, I was even more responsible for the expatriate MSF team members that were going there. Over nine years, I sent more than 500 doctors, and nurses, and surgeons, lab technicians, and others from Europe, and they all came back, which is, I think, it's not a miracle. I think it reflects that they were respected as neutral. They were being protected by the civilians. Everybody could see their own interest in protecting them.

And also, I was spending a huge amount of my time, my working time were having a network of information to make sure that the roads they were going to take were safe, to double check information all the time on the security, on the conditions, on the people in the hands of whom they were. I had never slept quietly for nine years. I always thought I had. And it was felt like a mom responsible for 35 children inside of Afghanistan.

DAN OLSON: You left in 1988. Your work was done or were you forced to leave?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: My work was not done, actually. It had expanded greatly. I had over 15 hospitals and clinics all over Afghanistan, and the Russians had-- were negotiating and making the steps to withdraw from Afghanistan. And I sensed that if I didn't go, then when things were looking good, I would never be able to leave when things are difficult and hard. So I had to take-- that was a good time for me to go. Otherwise, I would have spent my whole life there.

DAN OLSON: Dr. Juliette Fournot recounting her nearly 10 years in Afghanistan as the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders or MSF, the French acronym for the organization. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. Juliette Fournot lives and works in Minneapolis. She says she met her partner, a Doctors Without Borders volunteer physician in a Pakistani refugee camp. When their volunteer work was over, they decided to move to the Midwest. MSF, or Doctors Without borders, was started in France.

These days, the organization does humanitarian work in 90 countries around the world. Its volunteers and staff number in the thousands. The organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. Fournot has been a member of the board of directors of the US branch of Doctors Without Borders for 11 years. She says, this is her last year. Doctors Without Borders, Fournot says, guards its independence. It does not take government money and does not work with other groups. Fournot says, the need for humanitarian assistance around the world is overwhelming.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: What we do is a drop in a bucket. All we can do is prove that it's feasible. However, it's not an end to itself. You know, humanitarian assistance should be a means to restore health and dignity to people. And what is dispiriting is that the condition of life is abysmal, not because there is a lack of aid, it's because there is not-- there is a lack of political will to put an end to the conflicts and the manipulation of civilian populations that are being used and hostages in those conflicts.

DAN OLSON: You've pointed out MSF does not take sides, but you see yourself as a reporting organization, as a set of eyes on the scene. Why is that important, do you feel?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: It is important. Because we have a responsibility to-- bringing the assistance and the relief to pain alone would not be enough. And that's a concept that became clear after our switch and World War II. The Red Cross, the International Red cross, had been active in the camps, but they never were able or had decided to talk about it or were able to talk about it.

So we-- that's at the end of World War II, after the death of 38 million people, the Geneva Convention were written by the leaders of and political leaders and of our countries and ratified by most of the countries in the world because they recognized that there was a need in armed conflicts to have impartial, independent actors whose goal and aim was to protect and bring relief to the civilians.

This convention defined the legal terms for what is an act of war, what is a war crime, what is a crime against humanity. And it's within that framework that the humanitarian organization are active. And it is important that we be impartial. But we also need to talk about it because what we find, if it's only reported to the political authorities by the time they take action, it might take the end of the war. It's very lengthy. So unless, we speak out and bring it out in the open to the public, to the knowledge of everybody, it won't have any effect.

DAN OLSON: MSF apparently sometimes, maybe often declines to work with other organizations instead apparently deciding to go it alone on your own work in the field. Why is that?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, too often coordination bodies gather non-governmental organizations from many different affiliations with goals and missions that can be very diverse, and their sources of funding are not always clear, or when they are clear, they do not respect neutrality and impartiality.

When an organization receives more than 90% of its funding from its own government, well, of course it's not going to conduct missions in a settings that are controversial or bring-- or speak out in a free way about issues that would be contrary to their government goals. Otherwise, they would lose their funding. So that means their offices closed down. So that's why intellectual independence comes at the cost of monetary independence.

DAN OLSON: Juliette Fournot says, the philosophy of humanitarian assistance is being compromised. She says some governments are using the term to describe military assistance to civilians.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Humanitarian action is, as it's defined in the Geneva convention, is neutral and impartial. So how can an army deliver neutral or impartial aid?

DAN OLSON: But they're helping people.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: They are helping people. And so it is true that it is aid to populations. It's aid to civilians. What we object to is that it's being labeled as humanitarian aid. Too often, like in Kosovo or in Yugoslavia, armies have engaged, by the lack of political power, have engaged in humanitarian action because they didn't have the guts or the will to solve the problem on a political level.

DAN OLSON: I take it your definition of humanitarian action is help for anyone.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: It's help to those who are the most vulnerable, regardless of their affiliations.

DAN OLSON: What will be the outcome, do you think? I mean, what does MSF want to do to try to protect the domain of humanitarian work, if you will?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, we want to protect that space of humanity and impartiality. Otherwise, those enclaves are going to become political tools and maneuvers of one conflict, one side of the conflicts against the other. And again, the civilians will be hostages. Civilians are the hostages of these wars, since the '90s.

DAN OLSON: When you speak with your friends and neighbors here in Minnesota about the work you do and what you have seen in your life, what kind of reaction do you get? Do you get a spirit of activism from your neighbors and friends in Minnesota, or complacency, a sense of complacency about the problems of the world?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: Well, the Americans have a very, very strong-- identify themselves very strongly with the principles of justice, fairness, equality, and yet what is conducted outside of the US in the name of the US interests or in the name of the US companies or in the name of democracy is not fostering those issues.

For example, pharmaceutical industry, treatment of an AIDS patient cost $15,000 a year. So that's not the best use of the money that is given to us. And yet it's critical. So for years now, MSF has engaged into a battle that has a totally different angle, which is how to make medicine and health more accessible to patients because the barriers are not only bringing the medicines to them, it's getting the medicines.

Our governments, mostly the Swiss government and the American government, but some European governments also have been really unhelpful in negotiating agreements to bring the prices of those medicines not only to us, but to the governments who have the most massive population of sick people like South African government, Kenyan government, and those poor countries so that they can put on the market those drugs at a cheap price.

And the US government, along with the Swiss government, have been the most obstructive into the revision of the trade agreements that protect those patents, until in last November the fear of national anthrax epidemics in the US when four postal workers died from anthrax, the US government demanded that the price of the drugs to treat anthrax be given at a generic price from the pharmaceutical industry.

At that point, we said, well, if it's good for US citizens, why should that same law would not apply to millions of people that are sick but can't access to the medicines that exist in Africa and Asia. Is that some humans are more equal than others?

DAN OLSON: Office holders in the United States are raising a huge controversy over the price of drugs. Do you think that this is the beginning of a breakthrough in that area that will lead to more affordable drugs in overseas?

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: It is the beginning of a breakthrough. A reconsideration of certain goods like medicines and certain medicines, not all of the medicines, not necessarily for comfort medicines, as not being subjected to the same property rights as others.

DAN OLSON: Dr. Juliette Fournot, thank you so much. A pleasure talking with you.

DR. JULIETTE FOURNOT: My pleasure.

DAN OLSON: Dr. Juliette Fournot, a member of the board of directors of Doctors Without Borders USA. For nearly 10 years, from 1979 to 1988, she led the group's medical work in Afghanistan. I spoke with her at her home in Minneapolis.

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You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

Tony Kozlowski led the Minnesota-based American Refugee Committee for nine years. He helped ARC win high marks for its humanitarian work in Kosovo during and after the war in Yugoslavia. ARC under Kozlowski, grew from $3 million to a $26 million a year humanitarian organization. Last year, ARC was named one of America's 100 best charities.

Tony Kozlowski is a native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, after getting a degree at King's College in Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the University of Maryland, Kozlowski went to work for the Ford Foundation in the North African nation of Tunisia. It was his first job in a developing country.

He worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees for 10 years, then did a 15 year stint for a Geneva-based humanitarian organization. All that, before coming to Minnesota for nearly 10 years. Tony Kozlowski is back in Switzerland. He now works for a Family Foundation with the Swiss acronym AFXB. A good share of AFXB's work is helping aids orphans. I talked with Tony Kozlowski by telephone from his office in the Swiss City of Sion.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: I just got back from a visit to Uganda and Rwanda, where we have two programs. These programs are managed entirely by Indigenous staff, both medical, psychosocial workers, administrators, managers. What we do basically in both countries is focus on AIDS orphans and helping the community cope with AIDS orphans. As you probably know, these countries have been decimated by AIDS and people in the prime of life.

So the normal community mechanisms to cope with orphans is are no longer there because the people in the prime of life have disappeared from these communities. So what we tried to do is through various community committees that are established by the communities themselves, identify families who can actually take orphans into them, into their midst and provide those families with income generating activities to be able to support those orphans. And at the same time, provide the schools with support so that these orphans can go to school.

DAN OLSON: And for the children who don't find such as describe it, foster care situations, what happens to them.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Well, that's the big, big problem that we're facing in Africa and increasingly in countries like India and China. When the ravages of AIDS takes its course, we're seeing more and more orphans that are not being provided for. They become inevitably street children in urban centers, for example.

DAN OLSON: Former American Refugee Committee President, Tony Kozlowski. He left Minnesota last year to take a new job for a Swiss-based humanitarian agency with the acronym AFXB. AFXB is helping about 5,000 families and AIDS orphans in Rwanda and Uganda. I asked Kozlowski to talk about where he gets the inspiration for his work after more than 30 years with humanity agencies.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: My happiest achievements are being associated with organizations like the American Refugee Committee, or AFXB today, which bring me to-- face to face with people in really dire circumstances, whether it's following the genocide in Rwanda or whether it's following the ravages of AIDS, to see these people and the hope that they still have, and the ability that the communities around them have to welcome them and to help them get on with life. And to the small extent that we can help really makes me feel, at the end of every day, that it's worth it.

DAN OLSON: Does a word picture come to mind, whether it was early on in your career, in Tunisia or later on as you were working for UNHCR or perhaps in Bosnia with American Refugee Committee of an instance where you felt, yes, these dollars in this human effort is really making a difference?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Well, I just got back from a trip from Rwanda and Uganda, and I think a woman that I met in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, really epitomizes what I'm trying to say and what makes me feel so proud to work with a humanitarian organization. I was meeting with a group of perhaps 50 or 60 women in Kigali just about a week or two ago. These were all AIDS victims who we were supporting through income generating projects, and we were talking about their problems and their perspectives of things.

One woman got up and she said, look, I know I have AIDS. I know through your organization that it's possible to live with AIDS and to get on with life. What I really want to do now is tell my neighbors and tell my community that it's possible to do so, to get on with life because I have hope. And all I want from you is a few little materials to be able to hand out and be able to convince my neighbors who are in the same situation, that this is possible. And I just think that's fantastic.

DAN OLSON: By contrast, Tony, what have been some of the moments, I assume there have been some moments which must cause you great soul searching and perhaps even some despair as you look at the money and the human effort that's available and measure it against the scale of what you're facing. And it must cause-- it must cause some great concern.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Well, I think the thing that I think of most in my experience of near despair in the humanitarian field was arriving shortly after the genocide in Rwanda, actually in the neighboring country of Zaire at the time, now it's called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with colleagues to try to see what we could do. Really, the situation there was comparable to Dante's Inferno, where people were really dropping like flies because of cholera. And they were all around us.

And fortunately, ARC is a very, very malleable organization and goes to a place not to raise the flags, so to speak, and do something that it thinks is necessary, but goes there to find out what really the problems are and then to try to see whether we have-- whether ARC has the capability to respond. And fortunately, it was able to do so in those circumstances. At the time, we were really concerned that this situation was getting out of hand. Fortunately, through a coordinated effort by the international community in which ARC took part, the cholera epidemic was able to be contained.

DAN OLSON: Have you faced some personal danger whether it's from people hostile to your work or just run of the mill public health dangers yourself, contracting something that you were on hand to try to fight?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: You know, I consider myself very fortunate. I can count on my hand-- on the fingers of one hand the times when with ARC, we were-- and previous to that, we were really faced with danger. I think the last time was just a year ago, in fact, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where I was visiting our programs, which were fantastic programs. In fact, very, very much similar to what I'm doing currently, because there the AIDS epidemic in Sierra Leone is very big.

But as you know, in that country, there have been tremendous slaughter and hacking off of hands and feet of the people, by the rebels. We were confronted with that very thing when people, well, when my colleagues and I are staying at our country director's house were in fact raided by a band of five or six of these people, really at about 4:00 in the morning, when we were all sleeping. And they came in with guns and machetes. And I thought the moment of truth had come. Fortunately, although we were robbed, no one was seriously hurt and these people had left. But it was quite an experience.

DAN OLSON: At moments like that, Tony, what goes through your mind? What kinds of thoughts did you have?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: You know, it's very interesting because when they burst into my room, all five of them with their AK 47s and machetes, and I was in bed with a mosquito net around the bed. They ripped me out of bed. I just said, well, there's nothing I could do. I just let them do what they came for. And fortunately, as I said, they were really not after my life, but basically after money or other valuables.

DAN OLSON: As you travel both for your current work and then as for your previous job at American Refugee Committee here in Minnesota, do you encounter a kind of a growing degree of interest among governments that you deal with, whether it's in Africa or wherever, or a kind of continuing denial, if you will, whether it's HIV, AIDS, or other. Public health issues?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: You know, it depends, again, on the government and on the country. There are some countries that are very, very open to dealing with problems, whether they are refugee problems or HIV problems. And there are other governments that just ignore it to the detriment of their people. In fact, my organization, AFXB, has developed a petition to get these governments to try to recognize the tremendous problem we are having and are going to have with AIDS orphans, if governments do not start addressing this problem.

And I'd like to invite the listeners to go to our website, AFXB.org, and sign the petition. You can sign it on the web. And we already have over 1 million signatures worldwide for this petition for governments to really take action. I think it would be very fitting if we can get a real contingent from Minnesota to do so also.

DAN OLSON: You're listening to a Voices of Minnesota conversation with Tony Kozlowski on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. For nine years, Kozlowski was president of the Minnesota-based American Refugee Committee. Now he works for AFXB. I spoke with him recently by telephone from his office in the Swiss city of Sion. Much of AFXB's work is aimed at helping children orphaned by AIDS. Kozlowski says the HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a huge toll worldwide.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Some 13 million young people have been orphaned by AIDS already, and it's estimated by us that perhaps this figure can go up to 100 million by the end of this decade.

DAN OLSON: Tony, on the HIV/AIDS front, we have all been hearing that Africa is the continent most deeply affected. Is that where most of your work is focused?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Well, our work is focused in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It's true that according to official UN statistics, that AIDS has really hit hard in Africa. In fact, most of those statistics say of 40 million people today living with HIV are in Africa. But the fact of the matter is this is a worldwide pandemic, and it's spreading like wildfire, particularly in Asia, and particularly in India and China. And no official statistics exist for those two countries. So it could be that the 40 million that I talked about is just the tip of the iceberg.

DAN OLSON: Tony, do you find the size of the pie in terms of money for the broad based humanitarian work that you've done over your 30 years expanding, staying about the same, or actually shrinking?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: It's shrunk over the past two decades, unfortunately, both for humanitarian assistance and for development assistance. And even though the Bush administration has promised to increase our development assistance over the next two or three years, we have to, as citizens, ensure that our Congress people actually follow up with that pledge made.

DAN OLSON: The United States spends, I assume, billions-- I don't know the precise amount-- on humanitarian and development assistance overseas. And yet we're told that is on a per capita basis, a rather small number compared to some of the other world's industrialized countries. Is that still the case or is that changing?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Very much the case. You know, in terms of volume, the amount, it seems large, but on a per capita basis, it's really the smallest of all of the developed countries. And the Scandinavians and the Dutch are the largest.

DAN OLSON: And I realize, of course, you're living abroad now, but when you were in the United states, I gather there's a certain public sentiment among many Americans that a lot of the overseas foreign aid is money that ends up in the hands of kleptocrats, in secret bank accounts, enriching their extended family rather than going to work and helping people. What, in fact, is happening, do you think?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: You know, there's still some of that, I think. It's really greatly improved over the last few decades because of the vigilance of intergovernmental organizations, UN agencies, the world bank, in fact, to avoid these things. But the best thing, of course, is to channel funds, whether they're for humanitarian assistance or development assistance through non-governmental organizations, through reputable ones like the American Refugee Committee or AFXB to ensure that these funds are really used for the purposes for which the donor wants to give the money. And I can speak for both organizations and tell you without the slightest hesitation that the money really goes to benefit the people and not the kleptocrats.

DAN OLSON: In the three decades that you've been doing this kind of work, what do you draw on when you find yourself looking for that next surge of motivation that you need to keep going?

TONY KOZLOWSKI: I draw on my wife, Pamela, and my two sons who are daily inspirations to me. My wife works in-- has worked in this area in the human rights field. Both of my sons are in non-governmental organizations, one as I said, in Minnesota at the American field service, and the other one currently in Paraguay working for a Paraguayan environmental organization. And they give me inspiration on a daily basis.

DAN OLSON: Tony Kozlowski, thank you so much for your time.

TONY KOZLOWSKI: Thank you, Dan, and it's been a pleasure talking with you and talking with the people of Minnesota. I really miss it. And we want to come back frequently, and we want all of our friends to come and visit us here in Switzerland. But of course, not all at the same time.

DAN OLSON: Tony Kozlowski, last year, he left his job at the Minnesota-based American Refugee Committee and went to work for the Swiss based agency with the acronym AFXB. Kozlowski has been involved in humanitarian work for more than 30 years. He spoke from his office in Sion, Switzerland. You've been listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olsen.

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GARY EICHTEN: And that does it for our Midday program today. By the way, if you missed part of Dan's report, his two interviews with Tony Kozlowski and Juliette Fournot, we'll be rebroadcasting this program at 9:00 tonight. And of course, it'll be available on our website, MinnesotaPublicRadio.org. Tomorrow at 11:00, Our Meet the Candidates Series continues. We'll be talking with Republican candidate for governor, Brian Sullivan. That's at 11. And over the noon hour, we'll hear from Robert Caro, author of Master of the Senate, another in his series on LBJ. Gary Eichten here. Thanks for tuning in to day.

SPEAKER 2: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by the law firm of Matt Entenza. Protecting the charities who build our communities on the web at www.nmwatchdog.com.

GARY EICHTEN: Talk of the Nation is next.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: I'm Greta Cunningham--