*EPF403 12/16/2004
Powell Awarded Fulbright Prize for International Understanding
(Secretary praised for strong commitment to international education) (800)

By Anthony Kujawa
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has been awarded the 2004 J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding for his strong, consistent focus on international education and exchange to further constructive relations among nations and develop future leaders.

Previous recipients include former presidents Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Jimmy Carter of the United States and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The Fulbright Prize, established in 1993, is awarded by the Fulbright Association to recognize individuals who have made extraordinary contributions toward bringing peoples, cultures, or nations to greater understanding of others. The association is a nonprofit organization that supports the Fulbright Program, an international educational and cultural exchange initiative created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. There are Fulbright exchanges between the United States and more than 140 other countries and nearly 250,000 Fulbright alumni throughout the world.

In remarks at a December 15 award presentation ceremony, Assistant Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs Patricia Harrison said the secretary is strongly committed to international education and has rarely turned down opportunities to meet Fulbright Program participants or high school students in State Department-sponsored exchange programs.

Accepting the award, Powell lauded the many accomplishments of Fulbright program alumni and the importance of educational exchange programs in cultivating a generation of leaders.

Powell said that the U.S. ambassadors to Chile, Gabon, the Philippines and Syria and more than a dozen current ambassadors to the United States were Fulbright scholars.

He said he often meets Fulbright alumni when on travel. On December 10, in Brussels, Belgium, for the NATO ministerial meeting, Powell said he met with European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, a former Fulbright student at the University of Virginia. On December 11, at the inaugural meeting of the Forum for the Future in Rabat, Morocco, Powell said he met with Morocco's Foreign Minister Mohammed Benaissa, a former Fulbright scholar at the University of Minnesota.

Citing recent Fulbright Program developments, Powell said the program with Afghanistan and Iraq has been renewed, the Fulbright foreign language teaching assistants program expanded, and new outreach programs established so that Fulbright alumni can share their knowledge of Islamic societies with U.S. students.

The teaching assistants program, he said, brings graduate students from other countries to U.S. college campuses, where they teach their native languages -- Urdu, Housa, Arabic, Turkish, Uzbek, Hindi and others -- while they are students studying in the United States.

Powell also mentioned the State Department's Partnership for Learning (P4L) initiative, which includes exchanges for college and high school students and engages public and private sectors in the United States and other countries to address common concerns in education, human capacity building, and economic development.

The secretary added that he makes an extra effort to talk to young audiences when traveling and to meet with exchange students in the United States. "And I cannot tell you how exciting it is to have eight or nine kids from Azerbaijan or Afghanistan or Indonesia sitting at a table and we just chat, ����What did you like about living in America? What is the family you're living with like? Was it different than what you expected?'"

Noting some of the many successes of Fulbright Program alumni, Powell added: "But whether they become prime ministers or poets, scientists or senators, educators or engineers, Fulbrighters have all carried with them a better understanding of cultures other than their own, and as a result, they serve as agents of change, they shape opinions, and they contribute to the advancement of both knowledge and international understanding."

Powell said that better understanding among people is not a "magic potion" to resolve conflicts in the world, but added: "[W]e'd be irresponsible not to take full advantage of ... the better angels of human nature. And that's what the Fulbright Program is all about."

"I accept it [the Fulbright Prize] on behalf of all of the men and women of the State Department, who today are ... serving on the frontlines of freedom through diplomacy to create better understanding between people and to do their part to make sure that we don't have wars because we have found ways to achieve peace, and the Fulbright Program has been dedicated to that proposition from the very beginning," said Powell.

"I'm deeply honored to receive this award in the name of the men and women that I have been privileged to lead here at the Department of State."

A transcript of Powell's remarks at the 2004 J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding Ceremony is available at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/39821.htm

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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