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Media Note
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman
For Immediate Release October 15, 2004
2004/1111

MEDIA NOTE

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)203-7026 or Nicole Deaner, (202)203-7613.

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