We are focusing our programs in three areas: expanding our education and exchange programs, improving communications and highlighting the diplomacy of deeds. We are also expanding the reach of our programs to include key influencers - women, journalists, teachers, clerics and religious educators, who have the capacity to influence opinion more broadly within their societies. We have placed special emphasis on youth, and engaging individuals from underserved and disadvantaged sectors of society.

Our people-to-people programming, including student and professional exchanges and English teaching programs, is one of the most effective things we can do to build better relationships around the world. Participation in these programs has grown in the last three years from 27,000 to nearly 39,000 and will increase to more than 42,000 with support for our budget requests. We are reaching key audiences in new and innovative ways.

Our flagship Fulbright program in FY06 is at a record high of 1,300 awards to American students. Last year, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) launched a new Fulbright award to bring the most talented overseas students to the U.S. for Ph.D. study in science and technology fields. The program is designed to showcase U.S. expertise in science and technology and to demonstrate that the U.S. continues to welcome international students in those fields. The Bureau also sponsored a special "From Labs to Markets" enrichment seminar in San Jose, California, for 80 Fulbright science, technology and business students from the Muslim world.

The Fulbright student program in Iraq is the largest in the Middle East region. In each of the past three years, 35 academically well-qualified Iraqis have come to the United States for graduate level studies to expand and polish their skills in critical areas such as public administration, public health, international relations, economic development, and teaching English as a foreign language. The numbers of applicants to the program continues to be strong this year, with the national merit-based recruitment closing in Iraq May 31.

In Pakistan, the Fulbright Program, through a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), sponsored 133 Pakistani Fulbright students to study in the U.S. in the fields of economics, finance, civil engineering, and computer science. The number of Fulbrighters from Pakistan has increase to approximately 175 this year.

Our new National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), is designed to increase dramatically the number of Americans learning critical need foreign languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Urdu and Farsi. From more than 4,200 applicants in 2006, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchanges awarded scholarships to 167 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students and 43 high school students from 43 states and the District of Columbia for intensive overseas summer language learning. In 2007 we received more than 6,000 applications and are awarding 365 scholarships.

Our most recent evaluation showed the overwhelming majority of students in our Access English language program reported a more favorable view of America as a result of their studies. The Access program provides underserved students aged 14 to 18 in countries with significant Muslim populations the opportunity to study English, gain an appreciation for U.S. culture and values, and increase their ability to participate successfully in the socio-economic development of their countries and in future study and exchanges in the U.S. Since FY 2004, the program has successfully engaged over 10,000 students in underserved communities in 45 countries, many of them in the Middle East and South Asia.

Another program with a youth focus is YES (Youth Exchange and Study). YES was launched in 2002 to provide scholarships for secondary school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to spend up to one academic year in the U.S. Nearly 300 high school students from across the NEA region, including the 33 from Lebanon who left the country under difficult circumstances last year, are about to complete their 2006-2007 academic year.

Since 2002, our International Visitor Leadership Program has invited religious educators from Saudi Arabia to participate in programs focusing on religious and public education, religious tolerance, and U.S. attitudes towards Islam. Embassy Riyadh reports that response to the program is overwhelmingly positive. Last year, 22 Saudi imams and scholars participated in the program, bringing the total number of alumni participants to more than 120. The program in Iraq is one of the largest in the world, and in line with last year, we expect to host more than 80 up and coming young and mid-career Iraqi leaders on thematic visits to the United States to introduce them to our country, people, culture, values and core beliefs.

Through the Citizen Dialogue and Strategic Speakers programs we are sending influential American Muslims to speak with audiences in the region. These credible voices have been a forceful corrective to widely held misperceptions of Muslim life in America. For example, a Citizen Dialogue Delegation consisting of a Muslim-American cleric, a Bethesda-based business executive, a female Iraqi-American filmmaker, and an undergraduate at the University of Michigan that traveled to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan a few months ago reported conversations in which Saudis, Egyptians, and Jordanians told them they had affected their views about the U.S. for the better by meeting with "their brothers and sisters from America." Through ECA's Faith and Community grants we are further promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding between the Muslim world and America.

Sports diplomacy is another important way to reach younger audiences by using sports as a way to teach them important life skills while exposing them to American values and culture. As part of our sports initiatives ECA brought 30 youth from 13 countries to participate in a World Cup program last summer. Through the common language of soccer, the boys and girls learned about the U.S. in their travels to D.C., New York and Nuremburg, Germany for a World Cup match. Youth from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Bahrain and Lebanon participated.

Cultural programs often offer the most direct way to demonstrate U.S. respect for the cultures and traditions of others - as well as the importance we give to maintaining our own traditions. ECA sponsors a variety of cultural diplomacy programs throughout the Muslim world. A principal focus of our cultural diplomacy is on young artists and young audiences, especially in underserved and disadvantaged areas. Native Deen, an Arab American rap group, has traveled to Turkey, Dubai, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, Jerusalem and other countries in the region on behalf of the Department, incorporating the teachings of Islam into songs about respect and humanity. Members of the group say that at all their regional appearances they are greeted like "American superstars."

Our public diplomacy also helped us build bridges where none have existed for nearly 30 years with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This fiscal year, we launched the first group of Iranian International Visitors since 1979. Sixteen healthcare professionals, representing geographically and professionally diverse institutions in Iran, attended a three-week International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) on "Public Health and Medicine." This group was followed by three more Iranian delegations-a second group of medical professionals, experts on disaster relief and a delegation of artists.

Under the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) program, young English teachers from Iran are currently teaching Persian at U.S. colleges or universities for one academic year.

In January 2007, twenty American athletes and coaches, representing the USA Wrestling Federation, competed in the Takhti Cup in Bandar Abbas, Iran. The Americans were greeted to a standing ovation when they arrived at the 3000- seat arena. The tournament was followed nationally in Iran with a particular interest not only in the sport, but in the fact that the U.S. government does not control sports federations. We hope to have Iranian athletes in the United States later this year.

The Department's Digital Outreach Team and Arabic web-based programs have established a USG presence in Arabic cyberspace, ensuring that U.S. policies and values are included in the conversation about issues central to the ideological debate. Through modern technology as well as traditional means, we are "present for the debate," as recommended by the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World headed by Ambassador Edward Djerejian. Our Persian-language website serves as a virtual embassy to Iran and allows U.S. officials and others to discuss issues like nuclear non-proliferation with the Iranian people. The Rapid Response Unit monitors foreign media and provides embassies and military commands - an email list of several thousand senior officials - with background and talking points. New media hubs in Dubai, Brussels and London facilitate engagement by U.S. officials with Arabic and other foreign media, especially television, in real time. Our presence on Arab media has increased 30 percent since the hubs were established last fall.

The Internet is central to our engagement strategy, as exemplified by the Digital Outreach Team, our Arabic and Persian electronic outreach programs, and other operations. We have increased our presence on Internet discussion forums and our webchat and other activities. We are exploring the applicability to our mission of new cyber-technologies like Second Life. Our coordination with other agencies for monitoring and analyzing Internet activity, especially in Arabic and English, has increased substantially.

We have developed integrated interagency plans to combat ideological support for terrorism in key countries under the pilot country initiative. These plans identify specific target audiences and recommend programs to reach them, and we hope with additional funding to be able to begin implementing these programs. Lessons learned and best practices under this initiative will be applied to other countries around the world.

At the direction of Under Secretary Hughes, we have now created a new Counterterrorism Communication Center, an interagency initiative to develop and deliver effective messages to undermine ideological support for terror and to counter terrorist propaganda. The Center provides leadership and coordination for interagency efforts in the war of ideas and seeks to integrate and enhance the U.S. Government's diverse public diplomacy counterterrorism efforts.

The Counterterrorism Communication Center, like the pilot country initiative, the Rapid Response Unit, the Digital Outreach Team and other programs, is an operational outgrowth of the Policy Coordination Committee on Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication headed by Under Secretary Hughes. The Policy Coordination Committee draws together numerous U.S. Government entities engaged in the fight against extremist propaganda internationally. Besides the State Department, the Defense Department, USAID, DNI, DHS and other agencies are key to the effort. Together, these agencies manage a wide array of activities, from exchanges and media training, analysis to Internet outreach.

We are emphasizing the "diplomacy of deeds" - the concrete ways in which America is helping people around the world to have better lives, especially in areas people care most about: education, health and economic opportunity. Under Secretary Hughes has established a new office of private sector outreach that has to date leveraged more than $800 million dollars in private disaster relief, job training, education and exchange programs through new partnerships with American companies, foundations, NGO's and private citizens. American CEOs have stepped forward to provide earthquake relief in Pakistan and to help rebuild Lebanon -- and at a private sector summit earlier this year at the State Department, the business community developed 11 specific recommendations to get American businesses more involved in public diplomacy. Through a new partnership with FORTUNE Magazine's most powerful women, American business women are mentoring emerging women leaders across the world. In partnership with the Aspen Institute and 12 American communications schools, nearly 200 international journalists are currently in America meeting with American policy makers, receiving training in professional standards of objective reporting and learning more about our country.

We are committed to evaluating our programs and funding those that are most effective. We have instituted a "culture of measurement" across public diplomacy, building on the success our education and cultural affairs office has had in evaluating its programs. Our new public diplomacy evaluation unit has initiated a "mission activity tracker" that is now being piloted and will go worldwide later this year to allow standardized tracking of our expenditures and the audience reached by activity. We are conducting focus groups and just completed the 10,000th survey in a new on-line evaluation system. What works we will expand and continue. What doesn't, we will change, cancel or improve.

We know from nearly seven decades of exchanges to build mutual understanding and mutual respect between the people of the United States and people around the world, that we must take a long view. We are investing in the future. At any point in time our policies may be received positively or negatively in various regions of the world, but we know that in the long run, the values that we convey through exchanges and public diplomacy tell the true story of America.

I would like to close by echoing remarks made by Under Secretary Hughes. We must establish a wide-ranging and frank conversation with critical regions such as the Middle East and South Asia, and reinforce the common interests and values that bind us together as human beings so that the next generation will inherit a safer and a better world not a more divided and dangerous one.

Thank you and we look forward to your questions.