Amb Remarks at Water Treatment Plant Sadr City

January 21, 2009

Opening of Water Treatment Plant Sadr City

AMBASSADOR CROCKER:  (Greets guests in Arabic.)  It is my great pleasure to be with you today to inaugurate this important project.  As His Excellency, the Mayor, rightly said, it is truly a strategic project.  It provides 96,000 cubic meters of water a day to the residents of Sadr City and adjoining areas.  The United States of America is proud and pleased to have financed this project, and to have seen it through to completion with our close friends and our partners in the government.

Like many things in Iraq, this project was hard to complete.  It took great determination and great courage to see this through, especially on the part of those Iraqis who oversaw the construction, who did the work, who supervised it, and brought us to this day.  It was completed, ladies and gentlemen, in the same way that many other hard things in Iraq have been completed and will be completed:  through courage, through determination, through hard work, and, above all, through partnership.

Iraq has moved into a new era in 2009 as it fully assumes responsibility for its present and its future.  The Government of Iraq, at every level -- federal, provincial, and local -- increasingly turns attention to providing the citizens of Iraq with the services they need.  The city of Baghdad has made great progress in improving those services, and we have been pleased to be a partner here, and in a number of other projects as well.  And that partnership will continue.