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Fulbright Association
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Jimmy Carter Speaks to Fulbrighters

Editor's Note--Before President Carter's address, United States Information Agency Director Joseph Duffey read a letter of congratulations from President Clinton. Under Secretary for Management Rochard M. Moose, the Fulbright Association's host at the State Department and a former aide to Senator Fulbright, brought greetings from Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The following is a transcript of President Carter's address.
I listened with great attention and some degree of emotion to the letter written to me by President Clinton on behalf of him and his wife. And the introduction was very generous as well. I'm pleased to be here this morning to accept this award for international understanding. And our next task is to work a little bit harder on domestic understanding.
Welcome from Secretary Christopher
When I arrived at the State Department this morning, I was met by my good friend Warren Christopher. And I recalled that the last time he was there when we had a ceremony involving an award, his "there" was in Algeria. This morning he told me he had a very important meeting which he had to attend, and I understand that, because a lot's going on right now in Haiti and in other places around the world. But I couldn't forget January the 16th, 1981, when I awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in the presence of all my other cabinet members--he was a sub-cabinet member then--I remarked that he was the finest public servant I had ever known. He was the interlocutor between the White House and Iran, and it was his determination, and his courage, and his ability as a negotiator, his wisdom, that resulted in the release of every American hostage, safe and free. Now those unique human qualities of Warren Christopher are being used in service for another president. I'm very grateful for his willingness to serve in this difficult position.
The Fulbright Prize
I'm honored by this prize, and particularly because it represents an honor at the same time to J. William Fulbright. As a Southerner who came through the civil rights years, there were a few stalwart champions of civil rights, human rights. And J. William Fulbright was one of those. This was when he was not popular in his own state, and I have no doubt that he suffered politically because of his courage at that time. Since then, of course, he has continued to be a symbol of greatness. There are nearly 200,000 Fulbright Fellows around the world, filling positions of great importance in governments in almost every nation. And I know how interested he has been in higher education.
 
I also want to thank Coca-Cola, who have made it--who has made it possible for this foundation to be successful and stable financially. When I was governor of Georgia, The Coca-Cola Company was my State Department. And everywhere I went, on missions of trade and commerce and understanding, when I got off the airplane, the Coca-Cola people would be there with a nice limousine, and the next morning they would arrange a meeting with all the business leaders of that country in its capital, and I would speak to them about the benefits of investing in Georgia and buying Georgia products, one of which, not coincidentally, was Coca-Cola.
And not too long ago I made the address at the annual awards banquet where The Coca-Cola Company, very similar to the Fulbright fellowships, gives college scholarships to outstanding high school kids.
The Carter Center
I receive this award, not for myself, but on behalf of The Carter Center. The work of our people is to fill vacuums. We're very careful to be non-partisan in our approach, and we're very careful not to duplicate what others are doing. If we feel that the United Nations or the U.S. government or the World Bank or Harvard University or others are carrying out a project, we are very careful not to duplicate their effort or to compete with them. My role at The Carter Center, although I am fortunate enough for it to bear my name, is fairly limited. I meet with the heads of state, and I open up opportunities for the fellows who work at our center to do their good work.
Most of our work is unpublicized. We're very careful not to use The Carter Center's name in our projects in the Third World. We have the Task Force on Child Survival and Development. We have the Task Force on Disease Eradication. We have the Global 2000 organization. We have the Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government. We have the International Negotiating Network. Those are the kinds of things that we do, most of the time, deliberately trying to avoid publicity or credit for ourselves, because it's much easier to achieve a goal if the leader of a small country in Africa or South America can take credit for progress made in the fields of health, or education, or human rights, or democracy, or food production.
<Human Rights Throughout the World/font>
I jotted down this morning a list of the most recent places that Rosalynn and I have visited. Nouakchott, in Mauritania; N'Djamena, in Chad; Monrovia, in Liberia; Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia; Asmara, in the new nation of Eritrea; Sana, in Yemen; Tirana, in the newly free country of Albania. These are places where the American news media does not focus attention until a crisis erupts, a war or massive starvation of its people. More recently, we have been to Panama, to monitor a second election, which was very successful. The first one, five years ago, was fraudulent and had to be exposed. And of course, Pyongyang now is well known, but when Rosalynn and I crossed the DMZ and went to Pyongyang and back to Seoul a couple of months ago, we were the first ones who had made that trip in 43 years. And more recently, of course, we have been in Port-au-Prince. These were highly publicized events, but not entirely typical of what The Carter Center has tried to do. The overriding commitment of The Carter Center is to enhance human rights, but we define human rights in the broadest sense. Not only the right to freedom from oppression by despotic leaders, but also the right to food, and to health care, and to shelter. The right to choose one's own leaders in a democratic society, the right to have firewood with which to warm a house or cook a meal, and the right to live in peace. So, our commitment is to human rights. But quite often the mission of The Carter Center is misunderstood. Because we deal with leaders, some of whom are human rights oppressors. And as we encourage them to move toward these goals that I've just described to you--peace, democracy, the alleviation of suffering--we have to relate to those that are condemned by us and others as the violators of human rights. In many cases, it's citizens, their citizens, who need assistance most. If there is a benevolent government, then the people's needs are not so acute. If they are already living under an oppressor, they particularly need a helping hand.
On Behalf of Carter Center Fellows
And I'm privileged to serve another role as The Carter Center's leader. In addition to meeting with heads of state, I get the credit for what others do. In closing my remarks, let me just give you three examples of people who work with me at The Carter Center and who deserve the credit that I'm receiving this morning--this afternoon now.
William Foege
First or all is Dr. Bill Foege, who I hope will soon be the new leader of UNICEF. He's responsible for our task forces on child survival and development and on disease eradication. He was the head of the Centers for Disease Control and has been responsible for helping to coordinate the efforts of the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Rockefeller Foundation, United Nations Development Program, and the Rotary Clubs in fighting polio and immunizing children.
And those five agencies that formerly worked without adequate cooperation came to Dr. Foege at our Center and said help us put together a task force so we can work in harmony as a team. At that time they only had been successful in immunizing twenty percent of the world's children. But under the inspired leadership of Dr. Foege, in five years that team effort increased the number of children immunized to eighty percent, from twenty percent to eighty percent, without any substantial increase in personnel or funding.
He also heads a task force on disease eradication. Only one disease in the history of humanity has been eradicated totally from the face of the earth, and that was smallpox almost twenty years ago. We've now targeted two more diseases. One is well known in this country--polio. We'll never again have another case of polio in this hemisphere. In South America, Central America, the Caribbean and North America, polio has been eradicated. We still have a long way to go in Africa and in some parts of Asia.
The other disease is one relatively unknown here, and that's Guinea worm. And I would say that with the exception of Sudan, where we can't go into some villages afflicted, it will be totally eradicated by the end of next year, under the inspired leadership of Bill Foege, who became the head of CDC primarily because he was responsible for the eradication of smallpox. That's the kind of person who deserves this honor.
Norman Bourlag
Another one is Dr. Norman Bourlag, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in the Green Revolution in India and Pakistan, and who has launched, working with The Carter Center under the heading of Global 2000, a green revolution in Africa. We now have 150,000 small farmers in Africa, most of whom don't quite have two acres of land, working in this program. And they can easily and habitually triple their production of basic food grains. Corn, which they call maize, plus millet, sorghum, wheat, and in some cases other crops. We just came back from Ethiopia, where we went to three farms with the president of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, and saw a remarkable development which was orchestrated by Dr. Norman Bourlag. On a type of soil called vertisol, which in the past had never produced more than half a ton of wheat per hectare, the farmers were producing between four and five tons of wheat per hectare, eight or ten times as much as before. The president of Ethiopia was astounded, and so was I, because there are 12,500 hectares of this kind of soil in Ethiopia, and it's never in the past been productive and can now produce high quality, high yields of wheat and other grains. That's what our fellow, Dr. Norman Bourlag, has been able to contribute.
Robert Pastor
And the last one I'll mention is Dr. Robert Pastor, a young man, an expert on Latin America, who was my national security advisor for Latin American affairs when I was president, for four years, and now is a fellow at The Carter Center. We realized that as an outgrowth of a human rights policy, that the nations south of us were prepared to move toward honest elections and democracy. It was Bob Pastor who put together the procedure for our monitoring elections, extremely successful elections, in Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti. We helped in Suriname, in Guyana, and Paraguay, the last country in South America waiting to hold an honest election. We also had an observing team in Mexico during the election recently, which was basically a good election, with very few problems. Bob Pastor went to Haiti with us. He was our scholar and gave Sam Nunn, Colin Powell, and me constant advice. He was the one who understood the history of Haiti, the character of the leaders there, both those for and against President Aristide. He was the one who put together the election monitoring role that resulted in President Aristide's election in 1990. And to a great degree, when a new parliamentary election is held in December, and a new successful presidential election is held about a year later, it will be Dr. Robert Pastor who has been primarily responsible.
could name the other fellows at The Carter Center, but I won't. You can see that my understanding of foreign people in foreign countries comes from fellows like this. I'm grateful for this award, which I accept on their behalf.
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