Mr. CRAMER. I have not evaluated your budget, but your budget takes into account those new designs, those new plans, and new facilities, as well?

Secretary PoWELL. Yes. Yes, it does.

EXCHANGE PROGRAMS

Mr. CRAMER. I want to echo some of the remarks of Mr. Mollohan about the exchange programs and the budgets for those. I have cochaired with Roger Wicker a Russian leadership exchange program which I think has gone incredibly well, where we have brought young potential Russian leaders here to the United States, gotten Members of Congress-I think some 20 to 30 Members of Congress that have sponsored those groups that have gone all across our country, settling into our communities, going to church with people, visiting business people, looking at land issues, school issues, all kinds of issues. Now, that program is not funded out of your budget, but it is funded out of another budget, so I think there are ways that we could incorporate these programs. But I also want to emphasize that I think these are programs very much worth of budget increases and budget priorities, as well.

Secretary POWELL. I could not agree with you more, sir. And, as I said to Mr. Mollohan earlier, these programs are terrific, and I had experience with them as a soldier when I met foreign officers back when I was a captain and I followed them throughout their careers and we have both ended up chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our respective services, and they always treasured the time they spent in the United States school. That is the military part of it.

It is the same thing with Fulbright scholars, all your other kinds of programs where you bring people from overseas, have them come, live in our community, go to our schools, meet our families, understand our customs and traditions. This is an incredibly powerful investment.

Mr. CRAMER. And it sure gets us the chance to overcome some of the

Secretary POWELL. Absolutely.

Mr. CRAMER [continuing]. Pre-set ideas of what we are really all about.

Secretary POWELL. Absolutely.

RECRUTIMENT AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

Mr. CRAMER. And also I want to go back to an issue that we discussed last year. You have done an incredible job with recruiting people for the Department, and, as I have had the few occasions to mix and mingle with our overseas State Department employees, I have been most impressed. It is always interesting to understand what family sacrifices they make, and husband-and-wife teams and how they go about settling themselves, especially when a spouse is not a State Department employee.

In your comments you refer to a new web-based recruiting tool, and vigorously asserting the truth. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by those?

Secretary POWELL. We made a major effort last year to let all young people in the United States and not-so-young people in the

United States know that the State Department was looking for quality people who wanted to serve serve in the front lines of democracy, as we called it. And, as a result, we doubled the number of youngsters applying for the Foreign Service exam last fall, and that is why we needed those positions that Congress gave us. No point in having a great recruiting effort you cannot hire at the other end of the process.

We are also concentrating on the Civil Service part of it, as well, not just Foreign Service. We need great civil servants to come into the Department, as well. And so we are putting a lot more of this on the web-how to apply on the web, how to find out information about jobs in the State Department and Civil Service on the web. And so we are trying to make this user friendly, web-based. More and more people have access to the web and get information about the Department on the web.

DIPLOMTIC READINESS INITIATIVE

Mr. CRAMER. And the Department's diplomatic readiness initiative, what exactly is that?

Secretary POWELL. It is a tiger team. It is a bunch of people we have put together in their own little office drawing from assets within the Department, and their mission is diplomatic readinessfinding people who want to become part of the Department, getting them ready to take the exams.

For example, people in my front office-I have a Cuban American in my front office, my executive secretary, and on the weekends she calls Hispanics who have taken the Foreign Service exam, or at least applied for it, and she makes sure that they show up to take it, to encourage them—that kind of direct contact. Our Diplomatic Readiness Task Force works on issues like that, cradle-to-thegrave, bringing people into the Foreign Service, and let them know we have a career path for them. We put out a training program now. They know what is expected of them over time. It just gives total attention to the readiness of our people to do the jobs that we have waiting for them.

Mr. CRAMER. How long has that task force existed?

Secretary POWELL. I inaugurated it and put it in a new office about six months ago.

Mr. CRAMER. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WOLF. I thank you.

Mr. Secretary, we have a vote and we are not going to keep you, so we are going to end in about four minutes.

Mr. Kennedy, did you want to

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

Mr. KENNEDY. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, welcome. I thank you for the job that you are doing on behalf of our country. You are representing our country very well and we are proud that you are our Secretary.

I would like to bring up a question that I brought up last time that you were before this committee, and that has got to do with the International War Crimes Tribunal.

As you know, last time we spoke about it-and I know of our differences on it-there are over 52 countries that have ratified the International Criminal Court, and it was at that time you said that the Administration's position would be to support the ad hoc courts that are already in existence, and yet in your budget you actually have lower-you cut, basically, funding for the ad hoc tribunals in former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. So I would ask you what other multilateral venue do we have to bring the issue of criminal justice to light in an international setting if we do not support the ICC and we do not support the ad hoc?

And let me just say one final thing. I think that the message that has been going around in the Congress about how we cannot get entangled with the ICC because we might end up becoming victims, our young men and women might be held accountable under the ICC statute, but it is not true that we are going to be under the ICC statute whether we ratify it or not. Even if that is the case, would not it make sense to join it, because if we did then we would be able to access the theory of complementarity and be able to have first right to try our own troops before they would ever be called before an ICC? So in essence we have more protections for our troops if we ratify it than if we do not, which is kind of a funny way of thinking about it, wrapping your head around the idea that by joining it you actually have more independence than by not joining it. I would ask you to comment on that, as well.

Secretary POWELL. We still believe that the ICC does not serve our interest and it has some deleterious effects with respect to our ability to conduct our operations around the world and might put at risk some of the Constitutional protections that we expect our soldiers to have and our soldiers expect to have.

President Clinton believed this also at the time he signed the treaty or the agreement, because in the signing statement he as much as said that-that he did not intend to send it up for ratification, and this Administration does not intend to send it up for ratification, either.

With respect to the various international tribunals, we do support them. My ambassador for war crimes tribunals, Ambassador Pierre Prosper, testified before Congress last week that some of these tribunals will be going out of service in the timeframe 2007, 2008, and their workload is decreasing over time, so I do not know what the specific numbers are with respect to specific cuts in any of the tribunals

Mr. KENNEDY. It is four million for Rwanda and 2.5 for Yugoslavia.

Secretary POWELL. I would have to get for the record why those specific cuts are in there, but I suspect it does not reflect-I know it does not reflect a lack of support for these tribunals, but it may reflect the declining workload, but I do not know. I would like to give that to you for the record.

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you.