These remarks were delivered April 13, 2000 before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, as part of the Institute's Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2001.

Established as a bipartisan initiative in 1984, the United States Institute of Peace was founded by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. An independent, nonpartisan federal institution, the Institute is funded through annual appropriations by Congress with a mandate to strengthen the nation's capacity to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflict. The Institute is governed by a 15-member, bipartisan Board of Directors appointed by the President of the United States.

Statement to Congress on the FY 2001 Budget Request for the U.S. Institute of Peace

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

I am honored to have another opportunity to review with you the annual budget request of the United States Institute of Peace. Today I will set out the Institute's FY 2001 appropriation request of $14,450,000. This amount is an increase of $1,499,000 over the Institute's FY 2000 appropriation.

In addition to supporting our current activities, the requested appropriation is intended to make possible a much needed expansion of our Special Balkans Initiative; further develop our conflict resolution training activities both within and outside the Balkans; create new educational activities; and help fill a gap in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Fifteen Years of Work for Peace

Mr. Chairman, let me begin today by putting our work in some context. Fifteen years ago last October the United States Institute of Peace Act was signed into law by President Reagan. With that signing, Congress and the Administration took an innovative step toward creating a unique institution embodying the concerns of the American people for a more peaceful world.

It is worth asking, a decade and a half after the Institute's creation, "Have we made a difference?" Mr. Chairman, I believe I can answer that question with an unqualified "yes!" We can say with confidence that the work of United States Institute of Peace is strengthening our nation's ability to deal with conflicts around the world by political processes and to achieving America's foreign policy goals by means short of war.

How is this so?

• We are training peacemakers. There is a growing number of Institute Fellows who have served as professionals in conflict management around the world: Adnan Abu Odeh, who became chief political adviser to the new King of Jordan; Vesna Pesic, who returned from her year at the Institute to become a leader in the opposition to Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia; Mohamed Sahnoun, who serves as the U.N. Secretary General's special envoy for Africa; Jamsheed Marker, the U.N. special envoy for East Timor; and Americans such as Col. Jim Warner, former commander of the U.S. brigade in Tuzla. There is now a worldwide network of more than 150 former Institute Fellows, individuals committed to promoting peace who have each other and the Institute as sources of encouragement and support. These fellows are the human embodiment of the work and purposes of the Institute of Peace.
• We are helping former adversaries find common ground. There is a deeper understanding among former adversaries -- Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs, Chinese from Taiwan and mainland China, Palestinian and Israeli youth -- of the costs of unending conflict as a result of frank and constructive dialogues the Institute has facilitated.
• We've shown senior officials now coping with political tumult -- in Indonesia and Bosnia -- how processes of reconciliation and justice can help create sustainable peace through the rule of law.
• We've expanded the range of policy options that give senior officials alternatives to the use of force -- most notably through the efforts of our Korea Working Group.
• We've developed flexible and mobile training programs to help professionals become state-of-the-art conflict managers in the Balkans, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.
• Institute publications are expanding the body of knowledge about the underlying sources of conflict in today's world, and approaches to dealing with them.
• We are developing curricula on conflict resolution, along with our publications, for educators to use to in attracting the next generation of practitioners and thinkers to careers in international affairs.

As a result of our work, a growing number of leaders from the U.S. and abroad now turn to the Institute as an independent, nonpartisan forum to address questions of international conflict. In the past two years, world figures, led by President Clinton, and including the Presidents of Ecuador and Peru, and Chen Shui-bian, the newly elected president of Taiwan, have chosen the Institute as a platform for major policy addresses. They tell us that we are making a difference for peace.

While we take satisfaction from what we have accomplished over the last fifteen years, our work -- and the state of our world -- only makes evident the need for us to do much more. And our programs are creating some of the tools to do so.

Peacemaking -- or as we characterize it, conflict prevention, management and resolution -- is clearly more cost effective and humane than war making. As we develop more constructive ways to support those who wish to negotiate resolution of conflicts, we not only help to save lives, we also save money. The recent examples of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo show only too clearly the human and material costs that fall to the United States and the international community when peacemaking efforts fail.

Mr. Chairman, let me briefly review in this summary statement the Institute programs we propose to expand in the coming year.

Building and Keeping Peace in the Balkans

The Institute has now made special efforts in the Balkans for five years; and we are regarded in this region as an important participant in conflict prevention and resolution activities. We are carrying out a combination of mutually reinforcing Balkans-oriented programs both on-the-ground in the region and here in Washington.

Our projects in the Balkans are extensive and numerous. We are supporting peace implementation efforts in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and activities designed to prevent further armed conflict in Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

We watched, along revulsed with the rest of the world, as Kosovo was subjected to ruthless ethnic cleansing. Prior to that tragedy, we had worked to improve the prospects for a successful mediation and/or negotiation of the conflict. When Serbs and Albanians met at Rambouillet, two of the delegates had had the benefit of prior Institute training. One of these negotiators, Veton Surroi, told us, "The Institute's training had a profound effect on how I handled conflict issues. What I learned and practiced in the training was put to good use at Rambouillet and in the preparations for it."

The situation in Kosovo has changed significantly for the better following the NATO intervention, but much remains to be done to secure a lasting peace. Our recent work with Kosovar Serbs and Albanians is designed to lay the basis for facilitating further efforts to bridge the ethnic divide, such as the recent meeting in Pristina chaired by Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin and Ambassador Chris Hill. We currently are working with the U.S. Army to provide conflict resolution and negotiation training to Serbs and Albanians in the U.S. area of operations, and we are collaborating with the State Department to get the Kosovo Serbs, who met with Institute staff last month, together with Kosovar Albanians who want to preserve the multiethnic character of Kosovo.

There are three main themes to our Balkan initiatives: stabilization and security; prevention of new or escalating conflicts; and support of indigenous and regional efforts to promote peace and security. To these ends, we will use additional funds requested for FY 2001 among other things to:

• Expand efforts to bring Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo into dialogue on a range of issues basic to building tolerance and a multiethnic society; following up on the Lansdowne and Sofia sessions we sponsored last fall is critical to building on the confidence in us that many of the civic and political leaders have and to multiply the number of participants in this constructive discussion over contentious issues.
• Undertake reconciliation efforts in Brcko that will engage local groups following the arbitration decision there, as requested by the American supervisor.
• Initiate grass roots conflict prevention efforts in those parts of Montenegro where future violence may break out.
• Support the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission in Bosnia -- an effort we began by working with justice officials there and which now requires further work with the political leaders and the indigenous non-governmental organizations. Preparations for a commission have reached a new and critical stage.
• Work to prevent conflict in Macedonia and Albania, specifically through conflict resolution training as well as sessions of facilitated dialogue.
• Begin work with educators in the Balkans who have largely been neglected by the international community preoccupied with dealing with immediate crises. These educators are now in the front lines of conflict prevention as they promote curriculum reform and textbook revision related to conflict resolution.

On the ground, we are working to create conditions for long-term stability by building local capacity for conflict prevention, peace implementation and regional cooperation. We expect to train police, political, and community leaders in conflict management techniques. And we seek to develop a constituency for processes of conflict resolution, especially in the emerging generation touched by the war but not yet in positions of authority.

Anchoring our well-recognized presence in the region are analytical and policy-related activities here in Washington, organized through the Institute's Balkans Working Group. The Working Group serves as the forum for discussion among administration officials and private sector NGOs active in the Balkans. It helps develop policy options, providing a unique forum for exchanging information and building consensus on next steps to secure peace throughout the Balkans which are then published for wider circulation. Its most recent publication is on conflict prevention in Macedonia.

The focused and hands-on nature of our initiatives can best be illustrated by our day-to-day activities.

Working group meetings planned for the coming year will focus on such issues as policy developments for Bosnia "beyond Dayton" -- a series of sessions to explore how the Dayton agreements can be upgraded to consolidate a more unified and democratic Bosnia; crime and corruption and their impact on stability; Brcko and the prospects for successful implementation of the arbitration decision; the regional Stability Pact; and creation of truth commissions for Bosnia and Serbia.

Institute staff receive requests daily from the American and international media for commentary on current events in the Balkans. Our reports are regularly translated and published in regional media. On recent visits to the Balkans, Institute staff were received by presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers at each stop. All were aware of Institute activities and several offered suggestions for additional future projects in support of stabilization and reconciliation efforts.

We strongly believe in the central value of our work in the Balkans, because without such peacebuilding efforts, international economic assistance risks being wasted on projects that will not be viable in an environment of continuing conflict. Many of our leading policy makers who are working to establish peace in the region have come to rely on the Institute as a platform for public statements. National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke have acknowledged our important role in this regard. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who spoke on Kosovo at the Institute this past year, has written to us that it is her hope "that the Institute will be able to expand its resource base both to carry on its important work [in the region] and to meet new challenges as they arise."

Expanding Training For Practitioners In Conflict Management And Negotiation Skills

Of all Institute areas of activity, it is safe to say that our training program has shown the greatest growth and evolution over the past year. We benefit from the seasoned leadership in our training efforts of Ambassador George Ward who --encouraged by your urgings, Mr. Chairman -- has rapidly developed our training programs.

By several measures, the ongoing expansion of the Institute's training activities has been very successful. The number of persons trained increased 400 percent from FY 1997 through FY 1999. This fiscal year we project another increase of 65 percent over last year. Trainee evaluations are enthusiastically positive, with former students telling us of instances in which Institute training helped them better manage conflict situations in their professional assignments. The Institute's worldwide network of partnering training organizations has been strengthened. Our partners regularly provide financial or in-kind support of programs. In short, we have satisfied customers who keep coming back for more.

We continue to train practitioners involved with conflicts in every area of the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We maintain strong institutional associations abroad with the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the United Nations and its subsidiary organizations, the Organization of American States, and many foreign governments. Within the United States, we work in cooperation with the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, the Department of Defense, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and federally funded research and development organizations.

Although we work with many partners, we have honed our training message to concentrate on areas in which the Institute as a whole possesses its greatest expertise. These include analysis of conflict situations, complex problem-solving techniques, negotiating skills, and mediation techniques. In presenting training, we strive to be sensitive to cross-cultural questions.

To help you visualize our training work, let me give you details about three of our many training initiatives.

Police Training: If a post-conflict environment is to be stabilized, there must be physical security. This is the objective of our police training work -- as in a recent orientation program, held in Dallas, Texas, for all U.S. police officers who volunteer for service as international police officials in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. We are also resuming training efforts, interrupted by the conflict in Kosovo, with local Balkan officials, community leaders, and international police monitors on problems of policing in a democratic political environment.

Women Waging Peace: The Institute has played an integral role in organizing and training a worldwide network of women leading conflict resolution efforts in their local communities. This past year, we worked with 110 women community leaders brought together in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from ten different zones of conflict to address their own experiences in conflict management and resolution. Nearly all the women have since maintained communication for mutual support through the Internet. Two new joint projects in which women from different conflict areas are supporting each other began within two months of the Cambridge training. These projects involve women leaders in Cyprus, the Middle East, South Africa, and the former Yugoslavia. We are exploring distance learning projects as one aspect of expanding training for this group.

Romania and the OSCE Role in Conflict Resolution: Recently the Institute was asked by the Department of State and the Romanian government to help orient Romanian officials to the conflict resolution responsibilities of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in anticipation of Romania chairing the organization next year. We augmented our team of professional trainers with several Institute fellows: a distinguished American professor and American and Polish diplomats. The Romanian government covered many of our conference costs.

We know that our training work is having positive effect because of the feedback we get from the alumni of our programs. Field officers of the staff of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say our training helped them negotiate with local officials for the safe passage of refugees in West African conflicts. One veteran American state police officer has told us that our seminar on community-based training in conflict resolution was the best he had experienced in 26 years as a law enforcement officer.

The increased requested funding for FY 2001 will be used for:

• Work with vulnerable governments and local organizations in southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to reduce the likelihood of ethic and religious conflict. Our aim will be to help prevent new Bosnias and Kosovos.
• Upgrading the skills of Americans, both civilian and military, who are assigned to work in peace operations.
• Focusing on areas of conflict in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Educating the Emerging Generation

While the Institute's training program focuses on the needs of the current generation of leaders and responsible officials, we also are looking to the future. Common sense tells us that to create a less violent world, we have to do a much better job of educating new generations of potential leaders about the difficult challenges they will face and the options they might have in responding to future conflict situations. Professionals in peacemaking must learn the skills of their trade. To this end we are proposing to expand significantly our education activities, both within the United States and overseas, in order to deepen the understanding of students who will confront conflict situations in their working lives.  

In the United States, we plan to double the number of Institute-run high-demand faculty curriculum enrichment programs, allowing us to work with hundreds of high school, college, and graduate school faculty--from New York to Hawaii--who are teaching the emerging generation of peacemakers. Similarly, building on Institute cutting-edge research, the annual peace essay contest, and pathbreaking Institute books on negotiating skills and the art of third party mediation, we plan to intensify efforts to develop teaching materials--written, audio-visual, and interactive--to prepare this next generation. We also want to build on our experience with the Disney Institute of exposing young Americans to the challenges of community conflict management through the experiences of teenage peacemakers from conflict zones around the world.

Outside of the United States, we plan to expand our work with faculty in countries in conflict, using educational programs as a means of building skills in conflict management. For instance, in the Balkans we are working with university faculty who teach about conflict resolution. Their educational efforts are building regional capacity to handle the difficult situations that are central to the region's transition to peace.

One of the evident concerns for the countries of the former Yugoslavia is how they will teach their history to new generations without perpetuating the ethnic divisions and antagonisms brought about by the recent war. Other countries have also confronted the difficult question of how to teach history after a war or internal conflict. The German experience is well documented, but there are also current examples from the Middle East, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. Some of these experiences have been successful and some not, but all of them have some relevance for other countries struggling to emerge from conflict.

Filling A Gap in the Israel-Palestinian Peace Process

Absent a process of legal cooperation on a myriad of routine issues, normalized and peaceful life between Israelis and Palestinians will not be possible. Imagine any legal issue between Israelis and Palestinians. Which laws apply? Whose court has jurisdiction? Who will enforce the court's decision? Without a fair legal process providing for a clear and transparent method of resolving claims, a minor issue such as an automobile accident can become a political incident -- and too often does.

At the request of senior Israeli and Palestinian officials, the Institute is organizing a special dialogue on Palestinian-Israeli legal matters. Following discussions with the Institute, these officials established a formal committee on joint legal seminars, under a previously non-operational provision of the Oslo Accords. The Institute is requesting additional funding to help build professional relationships across the two legal communities which will enable them jointly explore a range of issues -- a process that they had not been able to undertake without outside facilitation and that no other international party is now supporting.

At roundtables and follow-on working groups in Israel and the Palestinian territories, members of the two legal communities and foreign experts will discuss practical legal issues affecting the daily interactions of their two systems, consider relevant models of legal relations between neighboring countries around the world, and develop proposed solutions to common problems.

Three weeks ago, the first of these dialogues addressed the need for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in the protection of intellectual property rights (a great concern for American business and the U.S. government). Eighty members of the two legal communities met for two days, learned about each other's laws and processes, and explored ways to promote cooperation -- for example on dealing with counterfeit CD production and smuggling involving collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian criminal elements, as it regularly does. At the end of this meeting, a top Palestinian legal official declared, "The ice has now been broken," and a senior Israeli official called it a "historic moment." Follow-up activities have already begun, with additional roundtables scheduled during FY 2000 and FY 2001. 

This initiative was not anticipated in the Institute's FY 2000 budget submission, but we have felt compelled to respond to this expressed need and thus fill an otherwise neglected void in the peace process. The Israeli and Palestinian Ministers of Justice have both expressed their appreciation to the Institute, requesting our assistance in developing further joint activities, which will promote a day-to-day relationships grounded on the rule of law. Senior U.S. officials have also urged us to expand this effort as an important element in the overall peace process.

The Institute's Headquarters Project

Before closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to touch on two other activities that I think are worthy of mention.

As you know, the Institute is continuing to advance its project for a permanent headquarters facility at 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue here in Washington. Fundraising is ongoing, and we have now raised over two million dollars from private sources. The Institute has also assessed the building site by completing boundary and topographical surveys, and is conducting the analysis required for an architectural "program." This work has established the size of a building that can be constructed on this site and that will serve the Institute's needs as best we can anticipate them well into the new century. We expect to complete the architectural program this summer, and then move forward in selecting a design team of architects later in the year.  

Let me stress, Mr. Chairman, that the Institute's permanent facility will be more than a "bricks and mortar" institution. We intend it to be a "clicks and mortar" enterprise. As part of the architectural work, we are designing a cyber-structure for the building -- the "clicks" part of the equation. The telecommunications revolution will give the Institute the capacity to expand the outreach of our education, training and policy development work a thousand fold, and on a global basis, without a major increase in staff size. We recently began "webcasting" our current issues meetings. Recently, one such session -- on the challenges of negotiating with North Korea -- reached a global audience as evidenced by call-in questions received during the webcast over the Internet from Mongolia and Belgium.

In Closing

Mr. Chairman, fifteen years is enough time for us to have made an impact, but it is too short a time to fully realize the promise in the Institute's charter from Congress. I believe we have laid a solid foundation in programs that will train the talent for better managing international conflict well into the 21st Century. A century from now, I believe our successors will look back and be appalled by the primitive way we dealt with conflict in the 20th Century -- and earlier!

I hope we have made a convincing case for the Institute's FY 2001 budget request. Our progress would not have been -- and will not be -- possible without your support and the help of others in Congress. In this "anniversary" year for us, and at the beginning of the new millennium, we have reminded ourselves of our mandate from Congress: to be a living institution embodying the heritage, ideals, and concerns of the American people. We daily strive to fulfill this worthy goal in our work in support of a more peaceful world.

Mr. Chairman, for all of these reasons, I request your support and the support of the Committee for the Institute's budget request of $14,450,000 for FY 2001.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.