I want to follow-up briefly on a point I have made in previous posts. That point was that all too often international consultants and organizations think they can provide meaningful assistance to developing countries quickly, without truly understanding the country and its problems and without involving the people in fashioning solutions to those problems. According to an article by A. Lin Neumann in the most recent Far Eastern Economic Review, this is precisely what happened in East Timor. A Timorese journalist who worked with the World Bank and the UN told Mr. Neumann that: "The international advisors who swooped into Timor failed to understand the depth of the political rivalries that existed in the country." An unnamed UN official is quoted as follows: "There needs to be a serious rethinking about how this kind of assistance works. Too often the decisions about what needs to be done are taken by international consultants who have little or no knowledge or understanding of the country concerned and with no serious consultation with that country's citizens." Precisely my point.