WP: Changes in U.S. Diplomacy Sought

[kskiska]

Efforts to Influence Islamic World Inadequate, Panel Says

Even though it has staked much of its foreign policy future on the Islamic world, the Bush administration is doing a poor job of influencing Muslim and Arab public opinion, an administration advisory group said yesterday in calling for fundamental changes in the U.S. public diplomacy program.

"In this time of peril, public diplomacy is absurdly and dangerously underfunded," wrote the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. "The entire system of public diplomacy urgently requires a broad and deep transformation."

(snip)

The State Department, said panel Chairman Edward P. Djerejian, has only 54 staff members who have tested at the "fully professional or bilingual" level of Arabic, and some are posted outside the Arab world. He said five employees are capable of appearing effectively on Arab television.

"The situation with other languages common in the Muslim world is worse," said the report, which said it is "imperative" to recruit qualified linguists, especially first-generation Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30805-2003Oct1.html