Karen P. Hughes & Dina H. Powell On Diplomacy

Remarks with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen P. Hughes and Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Dina H. Powell Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Benjamin Franklin Room
Washington, DC
January 10, 2007

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POWELL: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the State Department. Welcome to the beautiful Benjamin Franklin Room. We are so delighted to be the co-host of the Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy with our great partners, the Public Relations Coalition, PR Coalition. We have had already a morning of tremendous panels, speakers and we have already, I think, planted several seeds that will bear fruit. Our desire, as we mentioned this morning, is to ensure that public diplomacy cannot be seen as the work of government alone. And with the help of all of our partners in this room, I truly believe we're going to leave a lasting legacy of these kinds of partnerships because we have such a common goal in promoting mutual understanding of Americans and American values with people all around the world.

There are a few people that I would like to thank. It's very hard in a setting like this not to mention everybody that has been such a strong partner and such a strong supporter of our efforts, but there are a few people without whom we really would not be here today.

The first is Karen Hughes, who when I come to her with ideas, I often preface them with just listen to the entire proposal first -- (laughter) -- before you make a judgment. But more often than not, she not only encourages the ideas that we come up but she is so fully supportive of them. And when we -- when BJ Goergen and myself went to talk to her about partnering with the PR Coalition -- on the first of its kind -- public/private summit, this high-level summit with corporate leaders and communications professionals, she got it immediately and she actually was so appreciative that the PR Coalition had selected us.

Last night, Josh Bolten introduced her at the White House and he said, "If you needed one symbol of President Bush's commitment to public diplomacy, it was the appointment of his closest advisor Karen Hughes, who he brought back from Texas to take on this tough but critical mission." So thank you, Karen, for listening to our ideas.

I also have to thank Jim tremendously and all of your board members for making this a reality. This morning every one of the speakers was terrific. And as often happens, we did not have enough time and I'm so thrilled we're going to have this afternoon.

I don't think anyone is going to mind, though, that I'm going to single out one of the speakers and that was Maria Pacheco, who absolutely stole our hearts. Maria is one of our exchange participants. Maria would you stand, please? (Applause.) Maria participated in a program called the State Department FORTUNE Most Powerful Women in Business Mentoring program that our friends, Donna McLarty and Melanne Verveer of Vital Voices helped us create. It brings an emerging businesswoman from around the world and partners her with amazing leaders, female leaders, in our country. Her amazing leader was Cathy Buskin (ph). But Cathy (ph) told us this morning that not only did she learn more from Maria, she actually hired her as a consultant. But Maria touched our hearts when she said, "I came to participate in the program and I arrived at the hotel and obviously I was nervous. But I arrived at the lobby and I saw the most beautiful portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King. And I thought this is a good omen because I, too, have a dream." And Maria is a reminder of the dreams of so many people all around the world that we try to partner with and especially women. And I am so proud of you, Maria, and I'm so proud that you now have gone back to Guatemala and helped so many other women. You truly make us proud.

(Applause.)

I now have the great opportunity of introducing my partner in crime, Jim Murphy. Jim, I think, got a good lesson in dealing with government bureaucracy. But the great thing is our teams have stayed wonderful friends. And Jim, I'm just so delighted that this afternoon we're going to have what business likes to call action products. And we are so looking forward to you all voting on and unveiling the top ten things corporations can do around the world to help in our efforts in public diplomacy. So with that, Jim Murphy.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. MURPHY: Well, thanks so much. You know, one of the objectives we had for the morning was to put a lot of smart people in a room and tell them some things they never heard of before and I really think we accomplished that. And I really want to thank the panelists for the terrific job. Could you all stand up? We just want to give you another round of applause -- all the panelists, please. (Applause.)

Now it gives me great pleasure to introduce our luncheon speaker, or one of them, I've had the privilege of working with Ambassador Hughes or meeting with her a number of times over the last year or so since she's taken over the job that she has. And when working with her, you can certainly tell firsthand what a remarkable person she is and why the President and others call upon her for advice. And also if you haven't read her book, "Ten Minutes to Normal," you know what that meant. It was ten minutes from the next stop on the political roundabout, please read it. It's a terrific story, a tale on politics in America told by someone who really understands it.

I'd like to list just a second -- the broad responsibility she does have. She overseas three bureaus of the Department of State: Education and Cultural Affairs. Public Affairs and International Information Programs and she also participates in foreign policy development in the State Department, I think is a great American, Karen Hughes.

UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, thank you so much, Jim, and welcome all of you to the State Department. I want to especially thank Jim for having the vision and coming to us with a vision for this summit. I want to thank Assistant Secretary Dina Powell. And I have to brag on Dina a little. She's my partner. (Applause.) You know, what better representation of America can there be than from an Egyptian American who came to this country when she was four, speaking no English, and later in -- actually later, but at a very young age -- I think in her early 30s was able to introduce her father to the President of the United States for whom she was a top advisor. And I think that's a wonderful story of the land of opportunity that our country indeed is. And I want to thank Dina and all her team because this is a major even and they've had to do a lot of work and I've been getting e-mails in the middle of the night from people who are down here working that I keep emailing back and say, go home, go home.

I really want to thank all of you for being here. And I had to say, looking around the room and seeing the quality and the scope of the talent represented here, I feel like reinforcements have arrived. And so I'm very grateful to all of you and I'm looking forward to listening and learning from you this afternoon in your sessions. I'll be popping in to listen because if ever our country needs your advice and your communications knowledge and your great skill, if ever there was a time for our country to bring together its very best talent, this is certainly it in the challenging times that we face around the world today.

The list of companies that have stepped forward to make this summit such a success are literally of the who's who of business in our country and in both the quality of the talent that's represented here and the scope of your reach. This private sector summit is truly an unprecedented event -- the first of its kind to bring together leaders, the top executives in America with top government leaders to identify clear steps that the private sector can take to support and improve America's public diplomacy.

Your work will make a difference, the work and the advice and the input that you are giving to us, you are already making an enormous difference around the world. And our hope is that by working together to come up with some very specific tangible, specific actions that we can take, that you will be able to -- we will be able to help each other reach out to the world in a spirit of friendship and partnership and respect and that is our goal. I know the private sector is already working in so many ways around the world to make our world a better place. Today we're going to try to put that in a little bit of a strategic context and magnify all of our abilities to be effective and to create a new paradigm for public diplomacy in the 21st century.

I thought, as a way to jump start your discussions this afternoon, I would share with you the three strategic priorities, the imperatives that we use to judge our programs here in the State Department. And first, it is that America must offer people across the world a positive vision of hope that is rooted in our deepest values, our belief in liberty, in justice, in opportunity, in respect for all. I saw an interview of a young man in Morocco and he was asked; "What do you think when you think of America?" And he said, "For me, America represents the hope of a better life." And it's vitally important that our country continue to be that beacon of hope, that shining city on a hill that President Reagan talked about so eloquently. And that's why we speak out for democracy and against human rights offenders and for a free press and against those who would stifle religious freedom, for equal treatment for women and minorities and against sex trafficking because America believes that every person has worth and dignity and value and we proudly stand for human rights and human freedom everywhere.

Our second strategic imperative is to isolate and marginalize the violent extremists that we are facing and confront their ideology of tyranny and hate. We have to undermine their efforts to betray the West as somehow in conflict with Islam because Islam is a part of America. As a government official, I represent an estimated 7 million American Muslims who live and work and worship side by side with us here in this great country.

And one of the things I've worked to do is to empower their voices and to demonstrate respect for Muslim cultures and contributions. I think you all heard from Steve this morning that r-e-s-p-e-c-t word is a vitally important word that we respect. And it's, in some cases, the number one thing we can do is show that we respect the contributions and cultures of others. And that's why I've spent a great deal of my time as Under Secretary reaching out to Muslim Americans because I believe they're an important bridge to Muslim communities across the world.

We're also encouraging greater interfaith dialogue. It's vitally important that we bring people of different faiths together and foster dialogue and understanding. And I wanted to suggest that that might be something you might want to talk a little bit about, how you can foster that in your workplace. We found -- we've hosted several programs here at the State Department to try to bring people of different faiths together to talk about what they have in common, to talk about what they believe and to share that with our employees who are going out to work in many places in the world where faith has a major impact on people and their lives as it does in our country.

Our third strategic imperative is to foster -- this one sounds kind of simple -- it's to foster a sense of common interest and common values between Americans and people of different countries and cultures across the world. And it sounds simple, but it actually came from a meeting I had with a beloved former Ambassador -- many of you may know him, Frank Wisner -- who lives in New York now. And I went to see him and he said, "Karen," he said, "especially at a time of war and terror, you have got to focus not just on common threats, but you have to actively seek to nurture common interests and common values."

Now, you'll notice that of those three strategic objectives, two of the three have nothing to do with the war on terror, even though our friends in the media sometimes refer to my job as Muslim outreach and that's an important part of it, but it is part of it because America's public diplomacy involves the entire world. Our relationship with our neighbors in this hemisphere is vitally important. We must work to nurture the vital transatlantic partnership that we have that is so critical to so much of what we're doing across the world to build our relationships with India and Pakistan, to reach out to people across an emerging China, which I will be doing next week with a trip there. And we're also trying to establish relationships with people, even when we don't have relationships even when we don't have relationships with their governments in countries such as Cuba and Iran, and I think Dina talked a little bit about that this morning.

Now, we're doing all this, as you well know, in a dramatically different communications environment. I was thinking this morning about when I started my career in television back in the mid-'70s in Dallas-Fort Worth, one of my first jobs as an intern at the TV station was to make what was called "the meet." And what the meet was it literally, a person would get in the car in Dallas and drive halfway and the person would get in the car from Forth Worth and they would drive halfway on the turnpike and make "the meet" to transfer the film to go back to Forth Worth for processing for that night's news. So I was -- one of my early jobs was to make "the meet." Well, within a year, it was totally irrelevant because we'd gone digital and electronic.

In the 2000 presidential campaign I didn't have a BlackBerry. By 2004, I couldn't imagine how you would participate in a campaign without a BlackBerry. So we're in a dramatically different communications environment than we were in the Cold War. In the Cold War we were primarily trying to get information into largely closed societies where people were hungry for that information. But you know what, in a few places there are, but in most places across the world there aren't people just sitting around waiting eagerly to hear from America anymore. We're competing instead for attention and for credibility in what is a very, very crowded communications environment. And so today's public diplomacy has to be rapid, it has to be global, it has to be multimedia, it has to be people-centric and it has to be a team effort because all of us are involved in painting a very complex tapestry that is the picture of America across the world.

I'm finding myself after almost a year and a half here focusing increasingly on three areas. One of them is communications. And since you are all communicators, I thought I would talk about it first. We have launched a new Rapid Response Unit that monitors world news from a state-of-the-art broadcast center. It produces a morning summary of what is driving news across the world and what our message is on those issues and it goes out to every military commander, every ambassador, every cabinet Secretary, to all the key leaders of our government. And I think one of the beauties of it is not only that it gets our message on the same page, but it also focuses the attention of policymakers in Washington on what is important to audiences across the world, what is making news across the world and what is our policy position on that news.

To speed up our reaction time and to get more U.S. Government officials out on television, which is becoming -- again, there are exceptions in some places. In Africa, in Afghanistan, radio is still the primary vehicle of news delivery. But in much of the world, people are getting their news on television. And so we have to be more aggressive as a government getting our spokespeople out on television. And so we have established three regional media hubs in Dubai and Brussels and London. These hubs recognize the increasingly regional nature of today's media which transcends borders and bilateral relationships.

When you think about it, our State Department setup is very -- is structured to have an embassy and nurture a bilateral relationship so the public affairs officers in an embassy in a country is focused on that country's media. But in a place like Dubai you have a thousand media outlets represented and they aren't just focused on the country, they're focused on the entire pan-Arab world. And so these hubs -- and we're hoping to expand them to other regions as well -- recognize that increasingly regional nature of the media and seek to strategically place U.S. Government spokespeople and experts and officials on particularly television. And we've launched a digital response team to respond to misinformation, to answer questions, to put out information on the blogs and the chat rooms.

I've challenged my team to -- I've told them the first person who comes up with a good plan to put TV cameras in the hands of some of our exchange students, so that they can do little postings to YouTube, I'll fund it. And so I just -- I'll give you that challenge as well. I gave it to my global PAOs earlier today. We're having to get into podcasting and all sorts of the range of new communications tools that we need to be involved with in today's world. In coming weeks, we're going to expand our efforts. We're working to set up a new counterterrorism communications center to specifically develop messages and counter some of the false propaganda that is put out against our country around the world.

And we're also reaching out to voices other than those of the U.S. Government to help tell our American story with great credibility across the world. I had a conversation with a woman in Germany -- our Ambassador in Germany has done a great job of reaching out to the Muslim communities there. And I was meeting with a young woman and she was talking about telling me how isolated the members of her community felt. And I said, well, "Could I come and maybe meet some of those folks?" And she looked at me and said, "Well, no." (Laughter.) I was kind of taken aback. I mean, nobody usually says no when I say could I come meet with you.

And I said, "Well, why not?" And she said, "Well, because you know, we don't -- we're not interested in hearing from our own government, why in the world would we want to meet with yours?" And I said, wow -- you know. And I said, "What if I sent some Muslim American citizens over to visit with you all?" And she said, "That would be fantastic." And so we did it and it was fantastic. It was very successful and we're expanding that program. We call it Citizen Dialogue, sending young -- sending Muslim American students and professionals and business leaders across the world to engage in dialogue and to speak about America with just that great credibility that comes with being one of our citizens who has lived the American experience.

We're also recruiting and deploying special American public diplomacy envoys. And if you have ideas for those, I would welcome them. Our first is world champion skater Michelle Kwan, who will be traveling with me to China. And I imagine if it's true to form, the young people there will be a lot more interested in hearing from her than they will this middle-aged woman. And so we're expanding those type of programs so that we can tap into the creativity and talent of America to send it out across the world and speak on our behalf.

The second area that I'm finding myself -- in addition to communications, the other area that I'm finding myself focusing on is exchanges. I am absolutely convinced, without a doubt, that our exchange programs have been our single-most effective public diplomacy tool of the last 50 years. Everybody that you talk with who has participated in an exchange says the same thing, that their lives were forever changed. And what better way to tell the story of America than to bring people here and let them see for themselves.

We're particularly focused on student exchanges. And I'm very proud and I have to commend my colleagues here at the State Department and Consular Affairs and at embassies across the world, particularly students, everywhere we really worked hard to speed up the student visa process and for the first time we have now reversed the trend of decline that began in the aftermath of September 11th. And that is a very, very significant moment for -- important fact for our country. Because as I travel the world, I meet young people who -- I meet leaders, political leaders, business leaders, the leaders of the world, and more often than not they tell me they were educated here in America. And that is enormous intellectual capital for our country and I want the same thing to be true 20 or 30 years from now as it is today.

So we're really working hard to get students here. We're working in partnership with our higher education community. Dina led a group to China, Korea and Japan to reach out. We're bringing our university presidents together to tout America as a higher education destination. I'll be leading a trip later this spring. As well, our First Lady. And this is so important because in many areas of the world the majority of the population is under the age of 25 and we need to reach out to those young people, again, with new means. You know, every young person about that age that I see has earphones in their ear, either on the cell phone or they've got the little iPod in. So we've got to reach out in creative ways.

Another way we're reaching out to young audiences is through sports diplomacy, which I think also has a great deal of significance, and English language training. I remember meeting a young man in Morocco and I asked him, I said, "You know, tell me what difference it makes, has made in your life that you've learned English here in this program." And he said, "I have a job and my friends don't." And that is the kind of real world difference. We can reach out through English with something that the world wants that we have. It's knowledge that we have that the world wants and it opens the window into a wider world.

We're also increasingly working and forming partnerships. We're partnering with -- the third area in addition to exchanges that I'm focused on is what I call the diplomacy of deeds. And that is the way in which the things we do around the world make a difference and improve people's lives. We're partnering with NGOs on things like the Malaria Summit that was hosted at the White House, both to improve our effectiveness but also to improve our ability to communicate about what we're doing to wipe out the malaria that kills 3,000 children a day. A preventable disease -- think about that -- that kills 3,000 children a day. And we have it in our power to change that and we're working to do that.

We're partnering with Nancy Brinker and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the people who run the Race for the Cure, too. Nancy traveled with me to the Middle East for the first ever women's health initiative to be launched in the Middle East. And we're working with our American medical institutions on this breast cancer initiative that we're hoping to take to other areas of the world.

We're partnering with journalism schools and the Aspen Institute. Walter is here to provide professional training for journalists around the world. One of the things we focused on is who are the key influencers in a society. And in a time when you have an explosion of information and media outlets across the world, those journalists are reporting the news and we want them to be trained in the standards of fairness and accuracy and giving both sides of the story. And so Walter and the journalism schools and the Aspen Institute have been terrific partners in that effort.

And we're partnering with business in new ways. Dina mentioned Maria and the Fortune women's -- most powerful women mentoring session -- so many of these people-to-people programs that really invest in people. And you heard from Maria the impact it's made on her life. And one woman from -- who attended the Fortune session said -- it was a great statement. She said, "I came by myself, but I brought my village." And so we are really through people touching whole communities.

I traveled with business leaders to Pakistan to offer disaster assistance after the earthquake there, and to Guatemala and Honduras after the flooding there. Dina led a group of CEOs to Lebanon to offer help in reconstruction and job creation in Lebanon in the aftermath of the war there. And I can tell you, when people across the world see that American business leaders care enough to take the time to fly across the world and go to a community that's been devastated by a disaster or has been through the trauma of war, and say, you know, we're Americans and we are here to help, what can we do to help, it makes a difference in their views of our country.

I recently saw some research that showed that after the Navy hospital ship USS Mercy went to Bangladesh, polls showed the favorable opinion of the United States rose to 87 percent. Now, that's not the reason we do these things; we do these things because that's who we are because we believe deeply that every life matters and every life counts. But as we do them and as the world sees that that's who we are, it also comes to the benefit of our country.

We need to take that goodwill and multiply and magnify it because it's that kind of people-to-people interaction that I believe is one of the most effective diplomatic tools we have. These deeds of diplomacy, the effort to combat AIDS in Africa, the effort to fight malaria really display the compassion of America in a very tangible and I think a very important way.

Now, your companies come at this experience from a very different perspective than government does, but I think we have a lot of interests in common and you have the ability to be so vital to what we do. You have employees all across the world who have an incredible reach into their societies. Your operations touch millions of lives every day. You know, the truth is the image of America abroad is shaped by a lot of different things. I think of it as like a giant tapestry on which we have thousands of different artists painting, because it's everything from our exported consumer goods to how Americans act when they travel abroad, to an experience you might have with a clerk at a visa line, to an experience when you land at our airport, to how a company behaves overseas, to how a company treats the foreign workers on its team, as well as the culture that we export, the movies, the art, the television. It's a very, very complex tapestry painted by thousands of different artists. And your contribution can be really invaluable. When you donate computers to a school overseas, you are not just helping your company, you are also helping your country. And we're very grateful for that and you have a unique role to play.

It's no exaggeration, I don't think, to say that this is a hinge moment when history can tip one way or the other in a more positive direction or not. And it's a moment that calls on all of us to pitch in to counter violent extremism, to stand up for the values of liberty and justice and respect and opportunity that our country believes in so deeply. Across the world in every country, in every place where we work, America seeks to be a partner, a partner for peace and a partner for progress.

Now, I know it is hard to talk about peace at a time of war, at a time when we face violent extremists who want to undermine our confidence, our freedom, our way of life. Yet we are at war and war is difficult and no one likes war, but we are at war because we want to preserve that broader peace, we want to preserve that opportunity for a life of security and a life of justice and a life of safety, not only for our own citizens, obviously for our own citizens but not only for our own citizens, for our neighbors and our friends and our partners across the world.

When I first took this job, I went on a listening tour across the Middle East, and a young man asked me a very haunting question. I've never forgotten it. He looked at me and through the translator he said, "Does the Statue of Liberty still face out?" And he meant, you know, is the United States still a welcoming country, do you still face out in the world? And the answer -- is it still that place of hope, is it still a symbol of a better life that the young man in Morocco talked about? And I told him yes, the Statue of Liberty does face out. And our companies, your companies and our business people and business men and women across this world can be an important part of making sure that America remains the land of opportunity, the symbol of hope and -- for the rest of the world.

So I thank you for being here today to help us with that challenge. I look forward to listening to all of you this afternoon.

And now it is my pleasure -- one of the things that we are working to do here is to reinvigorate America's cultural diplomacy, and it is my pleasure to introduce you to some of the great talent of our country. You may remember last September First Lady Laura Bush helped us launch the President's Global Cultural Initiative to bring together our private arts institutions and our federal cultural agencies -- oh, I see that our Secretary of State is arriving. (Applause.) I think that we are having a change in plans. (Applause.) We will get to the cultural after we hear from our Secretary of State and Assistant Secretary Powell is here to introduce her. Thank you. (Applause.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POWELL: Okay. She has a busy day -- (laughter) -- but I think it shows her tremendous commitment to public diplomacy and the fact that all of you are here working in partnership with us. And I know her time is short, but I have to say one quick thing about our Secretary of State.

You know all the amazing things she's done. But recently when a young man from Syria stood up and asked her, "What do you think about being the most powerful woman in the universe?" After she stopped laughing she said, "I don't think much about my power. But I do think about the power of the ideals of this country that allowed an African American woman to be Secretary of State. And I hope that you work on the power of the ideals of your country.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State. (Applause.)

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you and thank you for receiving me a little early. Sometimes the schedules of president's change and when the schedules of presidents of change, the schedules of secretaries of state change and so I didn't want to miss the opportunity to come by. Thank you very much, Dina, for that kind introduction. I am very, very pleased to join you here today. This is a really wonderful gathering and I want to thank Karen and Dina, who are giving just fantastic leadership to our public diplomacy efforts. I really don't think that the United States has ever had a better team leading our public diplomacy efforts, so thank you Karen and thank you Dina.

I'd like to thank also the Public Relations Coalition for its partnership with the State Department to advance America's public diplomacy. A special thanks goes to Jim Murphy, the Chair of the PR Coalition, for his vision and his energy in making today's summit a possibility.

This Summit is truly unprecedented and could not be more timely. As we look around the world, there are great challenges and opportunities. And as diplomats, we are accustomed to monitoring world affairs, but America's public relations experts and international business leaders are really attuned to trends that are changing our world in ways that perhaps those of us on the diplomatic side are not.

America is one of the most internationally engaged countries in the world, perhaps the most internationally engaged and global country in the world, and our nation's influence can be seen throughout the world in every field of human endeavor. Yet the solutions to the challenges of the 21st century are not going to be met by government alone. They come from all sectors of American society working together, and that means a close and vital partnership between government and the private sector.

Within the Bush Administration, we are actively looking to build partnerships with the private sector so that we can operate better and smarter. As I look around the room, I see a lot of colleagues, a lot of friends who've already done a lot of good work in this area. And I can assure you it is an effort that I'm personally very passionate about and I'm going to remain committed to strengthening public/private partnerships throughout my tenure.

As leaders in communications with international horizons, you have a unique role to play in public diplomacy. How you operate in the international arena has a real impact on America's presence in the world. At the same time, your engagement with the world adds another dynamic to how people and countries across the globe learn about America's values and its character.

Through all of this, you approach the work of public diplomacy from a different direction than we do in government but from the same concerns for America's progress and for the progress of democratic values. Good work is already being done around the world by American organizations, whether it's outreach programs for rising business women in countries like Guatemala and Afghanistan, or CEOs raising support for countries devastated by natural disasters and conflict, your contributions -- in partnership with the government or on your own have significantly and positively impacted our public diplomacy.

Now in order to recognize this excellent work and the contribution that it makes to our country, I'm very proud to announce today the establishment of the Secretary's Award for Public Diplomacy, to be named for the man for whom this room is named, Benjamin Franklin. Few individuals displayed the true character of America to the world better than Benjamin Franklin. Like America itself, Franklin had a seemingly limitless desire to help improve the world around him and he did it with a sense of humor and a lot of grace. I know this because I read Walter Isaacson's book on Benjamin Franklin. (Laughter.)

In the same spirit of Franklin, this award will recognize the broad spectrum of businesses and foundations and non-governmental organizations and private citizens for their outstanding contributions to America's public diplomacy and we hope to highlight the exceptional and to inspire others.

As this Summit continues today, I applaud each of you for your commitment and service on behalf of America. I thank you for what you have done in the past. I thank you for what you are going to do in the future. I can think of no better stewards and no better partners in public diplomacy than those of you gathered here today. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

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Released on January 10, 2007

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