State Department Welcomes Iraqi Local Government Officials

Media Note
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
October 15, 2004



State Department Welcomes Iraqi Local Government Officials


The U.S. Department of State welcomes four Iraqi local government
representatives to the United States for an International Visitor Leadership
Program (IVLP) to explore the nature of local government in the United States
and to the institutions and organizations that support its work. The delegation
consists of four representatives of the Iraqi cities of Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah,
the city of Baghdad and the Province of Baghdad to the United States.



The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, in collaboration with Sister
Cities International, is building upon the "International Partners for Peace"
initiative announced by First Lady Laura Bush in June. The goal of the program
is to emphasize the potential benefits of friendly relationships between
communities that can result in humanitarian assistance, economic and civic
development. The IVLP program is designed to strengthen and explore these
partnerships with meetings with government officials and private citizens in
Washington, D.C., Tucson, the Denver region and Orlando.



Three U.S. and three Iraqi cities/regions have been announced as the initial
participants in the initiative. The Iraqi city of Kirkuk will be paired with
Dallas, Texas; Sulaymaniyah with Tucson, Arizona; and the city and province of
Baghdad with the Denver region of Colorado.



This group of Iraqi IVLP participants is part of an ongoing series of exchanges
with Iraq that resumed in the last year, including the resumption of the
Fulbright program; Iraqi high school and college students coming to the U.S.
under new exchange programs; the performance of the Iraqi National Symphony
Orchestra in Washington, DC; sports exchanges; programming for Iraqi museum
specialists; and others. The 4,500 visitors who travel to the United States
annually through the International Visitor Leadership Program are among the
more than 30,000 annual exchanges managed by the Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs.



For more information about this exchange program or other ECA exchanges, please
call Adam Meier, (202)203-7926 or Nicole Deaner, (202)203-7613.



2004/1111
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Released on October 15, 2004

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See [url]http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/c3212.htm[/url] for
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