onstrated the United States intends to provide leadership in fighting poverty and disorder that are so often at the root of conflict. The United States continues to make progress in securing international assistance for counterterrorism efforts throughout the world. In particular, great strides were made during 2003 to solidify cooperation from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. Many nations in Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia have continued to be good allies in the war on terror.

In our own hemisphere, the Colombian Government, with U.S. support, has made measurable progress in increasing personal security for its people. Murders and kidnapings were down significantly in 2003. Colombians are traveling in parts of the country that until recently were thought to be too dangerous.

In Russia, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and its associated programs continue to safeguard and destroy the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction built by the former Soviet Union. Through the G-8 Global Partnership Against Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, we have secured $10 billion in commitments for this endeavor from our allies over the next 10 years of time. Congress passed legislation that allows the NunnLugar program to be used outside the states of the former Soviet Union and, with President Bush's strong encouragement, chemical weapons destruction at Shchuchye in Russia has been accelerated. We must ensure that the funding and momentum of the program is not encumbered by bureaucratic obstacles or undercut by political disagreements.

The United States has also moved forward in the area of arms control negotiations. Last year, at the request of the President, the Senate ratified the Moscow Treaty governing the strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States. In coming weeks, the Foreign Relations Committee intends to report the resolution of ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol to the Senate. This protocol will strengthen the international community's ability to detect illegal weapons programs. Yesterday President Bush called for immediate ratification of the Additional Protocol.

Libya's decision to open its weapons of mass destruction program to international inspection and its acceptance of responsibility for Pan Am 103 constitute a remarkable success for United States foreign policy, resulting from close cooperation with allies, specifically Great Britain, firm diplomacy, and the demonstrations of our resolve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

State Department diplomacy played an important role in the growing opportunity for rapprochement between India and Pakistan. If this initiative can produce a more stable and prosperous subcontinent, our own security will be immeasurably improved.

American diplomacy also contributed to movement toward a peace agreement in Sudan, the ratification of a constitution in Afghanistan, and the conclusion of a breakthrough tax treaty with Japan, which will be a boost to any American company doing business in that country.

During the last year, even as our relationships with some of our NATO allies were strained by the war in Iraq, the Senate ratified the treaty admitting seven Eastern European nations to NATO. The administration also secured agreement for a central NATO role

in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. In my view, NATO must build on these successes by defining a broader mission for itself in maintaining stability in the greater Middle East. This should include an expanded NATO presence in Afghanistan outside Kabul and a role in Iraq's stabilization. Progress in these areas by NATO would help heal the rifts created by disagreements over the use of force in Iraq.

Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, though difficult, have produced important successes. The people of those two countries are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Schools are operating. Police forces and national armies are being trained. Free media is being established and women are participating in society in many more ways than they have done before.

However, our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate we must be better prepared to undertake post-conflict missions. To this end, the Foreign Relations Committee has organized a Policy Advisory Group that is attempting to come to grips with how the State Department and our government as a whole should organize and prepare itself to deal with complex emergencies. Some of the best national security minds in Washington have participated in these discussions, including Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman. I anticipate that the committee will put forward a legislative proposal in the coming weeks.

Public diplomacy is another area where deficiencies must be corrected if our policies are to succeed in the Middle East and elsewhere. I was heartened by the appointment of Margaret Tutwiler as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. She has worked well with our committee and is committed, as you are, Mr. Secretary, to boosting the effectiveness and frequency of our communications with foreign populations. I believe this will require a sea change in the orientation of the State Department, particularly as it relates to training, language expertise, and avenues of professional advancement.

Regionally, more attention must be paid to Latin America. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti face severe challenges to their constitutional governments, and Mexico's importance to our prosperity and security continues to be misunderstood and undervalued by policymakers in both executive and legislative branches. President Bush's immigration proposal is an excellent starting point, but the U.S.-Mexican bilateral relationship must be elevated to a higher priority.

With the establishment of the Global AIDS Initiative and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, this administration has done more to improve our engagement with Africa than any administration in recent memory. I believe, however, that our policies will not be fully successful in Africa until we improve our economic engagement with the continent. To this end, I am hopeful for strong administration support of the extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA, which I have introduced in the Senate.

Mr. Secretary, this partial but lengthy list of foreign policy successes and priorities demonstrates how expansive the global challenges for the United States are. We want to hear from you about

the needs of your Department in this era when it occupies the front lines in the war on terrorism.

I want to compliment you personally on your efforts to expand funding for the State Department and for foreign assistance programs. You have brought strategic vision to budgetary questions involving the Department and this committee could not ask for a better partner in explaining the importance of our international affairs budget to the American people.

The progress we have made in the last 3 years has begun to reverse the damaging slide in diplomatic funding that occurred during the 1990s. Most Americans recognize the importance of investments in national security, but often our national conception of foreign affairs focuses too heavily on the crisis of the moment and fails to appreciate the painstaking work that occurs every day in the State Department and in other agencies. To win the war against terrorism, the United States must assign U.S. economic and diplomatic capabilities the same strategic priority we assign to military capabilities.

We must continue our investment in diplomats, embassy security, foreign assistance, and other tools of foreign policy. If a greater commitment of resources can prevent the bombing of our embassies, secure alliance participation in expensive peacekeeping efforts, or improve detection of terrorists seeking visas, the investment will have yielded dividends far beyond its costs.

I yield now to my distinguished friend Senator Biden for his opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., RANKING

MEMBER

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

It is great to have you before us, Mr. Secretary. We are a friendly crowd, and I have told any staff member if they editorialize with their facial expressions they are fired. I want to just say for the record, I get as angry as you when that happens. But you are in friendly territory here, among Democrats and Republicans.

Let me say I associate myself with some of the remarks my colleague the chairman has made. There are a number of successes that are out there. But it is the nature of this oversight process, we tend to focus on those things which are in limbo or where there is disagreement.

I want to say at the outset before I give you my formal statement that I also know that, having been here for now I guess seven Presidents, that there are always and should be, and it is healthy, disagreements within administrations about policy, but once policy is determined there is a team, everybody is on the same team. So I am going to be asking you some questions here which for all I know you might have been on the other side of an argument internally, that may be more consistent with what I think should have happened or maybe not. But I do not want you to-we have known each other a long time and I know you will not; this is not about you, this is about policy areas I would like to explore.

So welcome. I realize this is now the political season. We are going into a Presidential election. But the problems we face and the seriousness with which we have to address them, particularly

in your job and ours, it does not stop because it is a political season, and hopefully we can move beyond a lot of that.

Our Iraq policy I believe at this moment appears to be a little bit in limbo. The June 30 deadline for transfer of sovereignty is looming and Mr. Sistani's demand for elections has put in doubt our ability to proceed on key points of the November 15 agreement, which is starting to look a little more difficult to implement here. I have had the opportunity, as I know my colleague the chairman has and others, to have some private and frank conversations with the Secretary General of the United Nations. We all understand his dilemma as well and we are trying to figure our way through this. I agree that we need to end the appearance of occupation as soon as possible, but it is also vital, it is also vital that Iraqis have some confidence in the process and believe that a neutral referee is going to be on the scene after June 30 so that the current disputes do not escalate into a civil war.

I think, quite frankly, as you know because I am like a broken record with you on this and with others in the administration, I believe we have missed some meaningful opportunities to share the burden more fully with our friends and allies in Iraq, and I hope we do not miss the final opportunity because I think we are at a point where everyone in Europe, including the French, have decided that, notwithstanding their occasional unwarranted and untoward comments and actions, that success in Iraq is essential. I think everybody is, sort of like that old expression: Nothing to focus one's attention like a hangman's noose. Failure in Iraq is of greater danger, quite frankly, to the French and the Europeans than it is even to us, because it is their front yard and our back yard.

So I think the elements are there to significantly broaden the coalition to take on responsibility for securing the peace in Iraq, and I look forward to hearing some of your thinking, if time permits today—if not, I know you are always available on the U.N. role in Iraq's future beyond generic assertions that it is going to be significant, or whatever phrase the President uses, also on the possibility of holding direct elections for a transitional government.

On the security side, I had the privilege of preceding you in Brussels at the NAC when you appeared on a Friday calling for NATO to participate in Iraq and eventually take that over. I could not agree with you more. I would like to talk to you a little bit about that if time permits, and I would appreciate an update, if you are able to in open session, on recent discussions with our NATO allies on those matters. Obviously, if you would rather not do some of this in public, even though it is not, quote, "classified," but would limit your negotiating ability, I appreciate that.

On Afghanistan, I am very pleased the administration has agreed to expand the International Security Force. I do not want to get you in trouble, but if I am not mistaken a guy named Powell suggested that a couple years ago. But progress I think has been awfully slow. I have had the opportunity, as others have, to spend some time with a man I have great respect for and I know you do, General Jones, our Supreme Allied Commander-NATO, and as you know he has some concerns about the pace as well. The administration's security solution, which is these small Provincial Recon

struction Teams, I quite frankly think are inadequate to the task, and at some point maybe we can talk about that.

So too are the resources for reconstruction. You did a great job heading to Japan immediately after our successes in Afghanistan. The President declared-his words, not mine or yours-a "Marshall Plan for Afghanistan." I quite frankly think that we have got a long, long, long way to go, notwithstanding we are occupied in other parts of the world as well.

Afghanistan is again the world's top supplier of opium, and the ability to help them construct a legal economy has been sort of difficult, in large part because in significant parts of the country warlords continue to control the total environment.

I want to commend you for your recent op-ed piece in the Moscow press, with which I agree completely. Russia, as you observed, has traveled an enormous distance since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike you, however, I and I suspect the chairman and others as well are very concerned about the recent backsliding in Russian democracy, especially regarding the rule of law and independent media, and also about continuing Russian brutality in Chechnya and meddling in Georgia and Moldova.

One issue that begs for a coherent policy is nuclear proliferation. Yesterday the President delivered an important speech on that subject and I am very glad to see he has turned his attention to this subject in a much more concentrated way. I support many of the President's proposals, such as encouraging countries to criminalize proliferation activities, getting all countries to sign and implement the Additional Protocols of the IAEA, and enhancing the IAEA's oversight, safeguards, and verification capability.

But we cannot just rely, in my view-I am not suggesting you think otherwise, but we cannot just rely on the preemptive use of force if we are going to contain this deadly threat. But I worry that in too many cases ideology for the first 3 years of this administration has trumped or at least gotten in the way of nonproliferation policy.

The President says he wants to reexamine the essential bargain, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and I think it warrants being reexamined. But in return everybody has to remember what that bargain was, that in return for not pursuing nuclear weapons states can receive assistance for civilian nuclear power applications. But there was another part of that central bargain of the NPT, which was that-that I believe this administration has ignored. That is that the nuclear powers will gradually move away from nuclear weapons while non-nuclear weapons states refrain from acquiring them.

Over the last 3 years I believe we have sent mixed signals at best and negative signals at worst, that the United States has undermined our message that other nations must forgo the bomb. For during this period the administration has raised the specter of the possible use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. We have begun exploring new nuclear weapons of dubious utility, and we have walked away from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

It does not really embolden the rest of the world to think that we are keeping the second part of that implicit bargain in NPT,