“President Clinton’s decision to defer deployment of a national missile defense is a win for all Americans. I applaud him for his political courage, as well as his eminent good sense.

“The President’s decision gives us time to perfect our political approach to the ballistic missile threat, as well as our technology. The President said: “We should use this time to ensure that NMD, if deployed, would actually enhance our overall national security.” That hits the nail on the head; we should heed his call and work together on this.

“President Clinton has not given up on missile defense. Rather, he has steered clear of the pitfalls we would have faced if we had moved to deploy a system that doesn’t yet work, has yet to gain allied support or Russian agreement to amend the ABM Treaty, and could not be deployed by 2005 in any case.

“We need not reject for all time the idea of a national missile defense. We must not let it lead, however, to new arms races and nuclear proliferation. The President should continue pressing Russia – not only to consider amending the ABM Treaty, but also to work with us on a boost-phase intercept system that would pose less of a threat to Russia or China’s nuclear deterrence capabilities and on getting North Korea to stop developing and selling long-range ballistic missiles.”

One of my favorite descriptions of us Irish – and we have been “described” a lot – one my favorites was in a cartoon; Pat and Mike are sitting in a pub in Galway, and Pat says to Mike, “Don’t you wish we were in a pub in New York, wishing we were in a pub in Galway?”

That’s the way the Irish heart yearns, with a hope that can reach across the seas, yet always bound by history and tradition to look back toward home.

It may be unique to the Irish, that we can be nostalgic even about the future.

And it is not only personal, family history that binds us to Ireland, and to each other, it’s the history of the island itself, which has endured waves of feudal wars and foreign conquests, centuries of economic oppression, famine and mass emigration.

Indeed, the recent economic boom, with boat-loads of workers and immigrants heading into — in many cases, heading home to — Ireland has us all celebrating, to be sure, but not without a measure of confusion; we’re not quite used to it, and in true Irish fashion, we don’t know if we can trust it.

And unfortunately, there is still enough heart-break to remind us of a history that has been so sad and unrelenting, marked by vile discrimination and violent uprisings.

We note one of those uprisings at Easter every year, and in his tribute to its leaders – people he had not previously admired, I might add – William Butler Yeats wrote:

“We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead….

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.”

“A terrible beauty is born” – I have long marveled at that phrase; there is an essential truth to it.

The beauty, it seems to me, is imagination, the Irish imagination; what other nation can claim poets and patriots, saints and scholars, writers and orators – callings all, which depend upon the capacity to dream – what nation can claim such accomplished dreamers in proportion to tiny Ireland?

Yet dreams pursued to the ultimate can also wreak havoc along the way.

And sometimes the dream, as I believe has been the case in our Ireland, the dream gets distorted; once glorious ideals become ignominious pursuits, with all the dignity of the cause consumed by the fires that were intended to nurture it.

Since the troubles began, 3,600 people have been killed, tens of thousands badly wounded, all in six counties of just one-and-a-half million people. In the United States, that would translate into 300,000 dead, two million wounded.

The victims have been Irish, they have been British; they have been Catholic, they have been Protestant; they have been young, they have been old; they have been civilians, they have been soldiers; they have been famous, they have been obscure – and some achieving fame only in their dying.

It’s hard to keep from turning back to Yeats, who seems to have foretold it all, in another haunting phrase from Easter 1916,

“Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?”

If there is a lesson in this long tragedy, it must surely be that the cycle of violence has guaranteed the dreams of no one who cares about Ireland. It has bloodied the beauty for many who love her, and it has moved the place further from, instead of nearer to, resolution, peace and a united nation once again.

There can be, there must be, another way to guarantee Ireland’s future.

Wolfe Tone, a man of great courage, strong convictions and a healthy

wit – a rare combination in any time, any place, in any age – Tone implored the Irish not to, quote, “waste time dwelling on grievances, and abuses that we all feel.”

To take refuge in righteousness may feel good – it may even impart a sense of acting rightly – but it hardly ever accomplishes anything.

Neither does silence; and America, at least official America, was silent too long about the troubles in Ireland; deny him what you will — deny him what you should — but let’s not forget that Bill Clinton changed that. Down to his last foreign trip as President, Bill Clinton made Ireland a priority as it had never been before.

And, along with George Mitchell, perhaps his greatest contribution was the recognition that in our time, as President Kennedy said of arms control in the early 1960s, peace is a process. The process must go on, here and in Ireland, in the design of solutions and methods of implementing them that we all can live with.

Beyond what divides us, there is a world for which we should strive, and dangers we will have to overcome in the course of our striving. We should take an unambiguous view of both.

We Irish-Americans come from a dual legacy of dreamers; dreamers care about other people, dreamers care about the future, and the best expression of that heritage of the heart is our ability to see possibility, to imagine a better way, to ask in the Bobby Kennedy tradition, “why not?”

That’s the American vision, and the American generosity, that through active foreign policy has fueled the restoration of so many nations; that’s the vision and generosity that pushed the peace process of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and all that has been invested since; and that’s the vision and generosity that must continue to be engaged and offered from this country, as the best hope for our dream of a peaceful and ultimately united Ireland.

We Irish have made mistakes, and yes, we have known tragedy, tragedy that has made it a necessity for us to do the work of maintaining the human spirit.

My recently retired colleague, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish, if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”

But who among us would trade for an easier heart, if it also meant giving up who we are, if it meant giving up the capacity to dream.

Above all else, as we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, let us resolve to continue to do the work of maintaining the human spirit – with honest recognition of the dangers, and with steadfast faith in the beauty.

Thank you all for having me.

Thank you for including me in tonight’s event; it is a great privilege just to be here, and of course, a pleasure to share an evening with my old friend, Monsignor Kerr; if you weren’t doing such good and crucial work in Pittsburgh, Monsignor, I would be trying – with whatever political muscle I have, and whatever Irish charm I could muster – to get you back to Washington, to work with us here. You have made, and are making, a remarkable contribution to the future we all share, the future of our children and grandchildren, and there is simply no way to thank you enough for that.

I also want to join in thanking Queen Rania for her interest in, and support of, the work of the Pacem in Terris Institute. Your Majesty — you are too young for me to say this, but of course, we’ve witnessed tonight the unique gifts and powers of youth – in a remarkably short time, you have established yourself as a leader in the universal sense of the word, a leader of practical compassion – from the work of your Jordan River Foundation, to your Child Abuse Prevention Project, and many other efforts, and, of course, as we recognize tonight, your support of the hopes and promise of young people and of education as a force for progress.

We are honored by your presence, and again, we thank you. I am also honored to be in the presence of the other award winners, Dina and Carl, and I join in paying tribute to them, and again, in thanking them for what they have done by their efforts and by their example, an example not only for other business leaders but for all of us.

And I am especially privileged to be on the program with the two speakers who will follow me; I am proud to be in your company. In fact, when Monsignor Kerr’s office sent a copy of tonight’s program, I read it with the feeling of a dream – like a kid suddenly put in the line-up for the Bronx Bombers in a World Series game at Yankee Stadium – or maybe, under the circumstances, Brian, I should say, a kid suddenly put in at quarterback for the Fighting Irish in a game under the golden dome in South Bend.

This award is presented, quote, “for leadership in the service of peace.” If I had to choose a description that I would aspire to, those words would come second only to, “a good father and grandfather.”

“The service of peace,” and fighting the abuse of power, is exactly what inspired me to a career in public service – it is what called to my generation, when we were young, and our minds and hearts were turned to war-torn Southeast Asia.

There is no cause greater than peace; it’s like what Winston Churchill said about courage, which he described as, quote, “the first of all human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

Peace makes all things possible; peace guarantees a future, guarantees our capacity to dream. And it has always been so, that true and lasting peace begins in the hearts — and dreams — of young people. My older son is working in Kosovo right now, helping to rebuild a judicial system, in a place where – as one of our next speakers can attest better than I – justice is needed so urgently.

I mention my son not just because I am extraordinarily proud of what he is doing, which I am, but also because I think his work is a good example of why we are here tonight. Beau could not do what he’s doing without what Robert Kennedy so famously described as “the qualities of youth” – “a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.”

Those are the qualities that change the world. But my son also could not do what he is doing if he had not gone to college and law school, if he had not had a chance to discover and develop his talents.

Education, and the chance it gives you to know yourself, enlivens the qualities of mind and spirit that give young people their unique role in shaping history; education and opportunity make it possible for the “qualities of youth” to express themselves in the world; they ignite the spark of imagination, steel the will, sustain the courage, and guide the great adventure.

For me, from experience, the political and social power of young people is far from abstract. I told you about my older son; my younger son is also engaged in a pursuit of justice as a lawyer and building a better future for his three daughters.

My daughter is in college, learning her own way to make a difference. It was young people in Delaware – and I mean high-school and college students – who got me elected when I first ran for the Senate at the age of 29; those who could voted for me, and the many more who were too young to vote delivered campaign literature and made phone calls and brow-beat their parents and neighbors into voting for me.

The leaders of my youth were young themselves, and together, young people led the movement to stop a war abroad and to end injustice at home.

Today, as I meet with world leaders and their staffs, I can tell you that even though the elder statesmen have the greatest sense of triumph, the young people have the greatest sense of possibility; and frankly, it’s the young people who do most of the real work. So it’s not just an ideal we honor tonight, not just a cause; it’s a proven and practical process – a process by which the unique powers and promise of the world’s youth are given a chance to express themselves, and to exercise an influence — one act, one career, one community, one person at a time.

That’s how we change the world – a process; peace is a process. So I thank you all for this award tonight, in full recognition that I have not earned it yet – but I will try to, with all of you, as part of the process in which we are all engaged, “the service of peace.”

Honoring Peter Jennings and Robin Wright

Recipients of the Edward Wiental Journalism Prize

Good evening.

It is an honor to participate in tonight’s recognition of the work of two extraordinary journalists, Peter Jennings and Robin Wright. It is rare today to find journalists who have both the interest and the rigor not only to explain complex foreign affairs to the American public, but also to convince us why we should care.

I’m told that Bob Gallucci [Dean of the School of Foreign Service] has a saying about the media that goes something like this:

“For the news media, good news, is bad news. Bad news, is good news. And complicated news, is no news at all.”

Using Dean Gallucci’s formulation, it seems to me that for too many of us, foreign news is by definition complicated news.

And that is a shame.

As Secretary of State Powell put it so eloquently at his confirmation hearing:

“There is no country in the world that does not touch us. We are a country of countries…we are attached by a thousand cords to the world at large – to its teeming cities, to its remotest regions, to its oldest civilizations, to its newest cries for freedom.”

So I applaud journalists like Peter and Robin. They are not intimidated by complicated stories. Their persistent efforts to keep foreign news on the front pages and on our evening broadcasts deserves reward, for it helps educate the public that, as Secretary Albright often said, U.S. leadership remains “indispensable” to global peace, security, and prosperity.

What does it mean for the United States to exercise leadership? It does not mean that we do everything ourselves or that we try to dictate solutions to every international problem. Our resources are not infinite.

Leadership also does not mean being “on call” to respond to every 911. We are not in the bi-polar world that dominated the decades of the Cold War when other countries were content to sit on the sidelines and wait for the United States or the Soviet Union to call the shots.

In the era of globalization, the Internet, and telecommunications, when we abrogate our leadership role, someone else will step in quickly to fill the void.

No less than here at home, global politics abhors a vacuum. If Secretary Albright is correct in her view that the U.S. is the one “indispensable” nation, we cannot afford to shirk our unique responsibilities as an international leader:

Leadership that provides a clear strategic vision of our basic national security interests;

Leadership that is reliable, and flows less from reaction to unpredictable events and more by our inner, moral compass that reflects enduring values;

Leadership that makes clear to friend and foe alike what our priorities are in a complex world;

With that in mind, I want to address a critical question about the nature of our foreign policy at this juncture in our history, the core issue of continuity versus change.

More than two months into the new administration, President Bush hasn’t told us much about his strategic vision. A steady stream of foreign leaders have been to town trying to get a read on the new administration.

Eventually, we’re going to figure out whether President Bush’s foreign policy will be marked by continuity or change, engagement or disinterest, coordination with allies or a tendency toward unilateralism, or, as seems likely, some combination of all of the above.

President Bush came to office without any significant foreign policy experience and understandably needs time to get his team in place and become more comfortable with the complex challenges facing our nation.

But no American President in the 21st Century can long ignore, or ever hope to escape, the web of interests which binds our future to that of the global community.

Nowhere is this truth more self-evident, and nowhere are the stakes higher, than on the Korean Peninsula. Secretary of State Powell said at his confirmation hearing that we would find, “much that is traditional and consistent,” about President Bush’s foreign policy. But already there are troubling indications that this Administration may abandon the path of engagement on the peninsula followed by President Clinton.

Any objective observer of the recent summit meeting between President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea and President Bush would have to conclude that we got off to a rough start.

It is dumbfounding to me how we could send our strategic ally – a Nobel Peace Prize winner – home to South Korea more confused about our intentions than when he arrived.

A day before the summit, Secretary of State Powell, sensibly, indicated that the Bush Administration would take up where Clinton left off in pursuing engagement with North Korea. The Clinton policy, the product of a year-long review by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, was making real progress in the months before Clinton left office. It enjoyed strong support from our allies South Korea and Japan, and had won bipartisan support in Congress.

Without warning, the very next day President Bush reversed Secretary Powell’s positive prediction, announcing that he had no intention of continuing negotiations with the North Koreans, claiming that they could not be trusted. The President cast doubts on North Korea’s adherence to the Agreed Framework, and said he would engage with North Korea “at a time and a place of our choosing.”

As I stated before, we do not have the luxury of engaging when and if we choose to engage. If we don’t, someone else will, and they may not share our interests. Indeed, in the absence of U.S. leadership, the Europeans have decided that perhaps they had better send a negotiating team to North Korea.

With all due respect to our European Allies, I don’t want them negotiating our security interests on the Korean Peninsula.

The Bush Administration cloaked its reluctance to engage North Korea now in tough language about the difficulties of verifying an agreement with North Korea. It is hardly a secret, however, that verification is one of the most difficult aspects of an agreement to nail down. But the difficulty of the challenge is not an excuse not to seek an agreement in the first place.

Had such fear paralyzed President Clinton, he would never have engaged North Korea and the Agreed Framework would never have been negotiated.

North Korea, in all likelihood, would now have enough fissile material to make dozens of nuclear bombs.

It is worth remembering just what the Agreed Framework has, and has not, accomplished.

In exchange for 500,000 tons per year of heavy fuel oil deliveries paid for by the United States and two light water reactors paid for by South Korea and Japan, North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze its graphite moderated reactors and related facilities and eventually dismantle those reactors and facilities. The North further agreed that throughout the freeze, the International Atomic Energy Agency would be permitted to monitor its facilities.

Moreover, the spent fuel from the reactors – enough to produce dozens of bombs if reprocessed – has been safely canned and put under round-the-clock IAEA supervision in preparation for its eventual removal from North Korea.

The cost of implementing the Agreed Framework probably will exceed $6 billion by the time the reactors are completed – perhaps even more. For us, it is a relative bargain: South Korea and Japan are paying for the reactors, which will account for roughly 90 percent of the total costs.

The Europeans, the Australians, and other friends are helping us meet the cost of the heavy fuel oil deliveries.

It’s a great example of how U.S. leadership and burden-sharing can go hand in hand.

So, with all the above in mind, permit me to be blunt: There is no evidence that North Korea has violated any of the essential elements of the Agreed Framework.

Without the Agreed Framework, North Korea would almost certainly have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and begun to reprocess spent fuel from its reactors for use in nuclear bombs.

Without the Agreed Framework, there would be no IAEA inspectors on the ground in North Korea today.

Without the Agreed Framework, we would have faced the stark choice of bombing North Korea’s nuclear facilities or watching helplessly as they steadily built a nuclear arsenal.

Critics of the Agreed Framework point out that North Korea is not currently in full compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Specifically, they say North Korea has not permitted the IAEA to conduct the special inspections necessary to establish the past operating history of North Korea’s graphite-moderated reactors.

That’s true. The critical compromise of the Agreed Framework can be found in Annex 3, paragraph 7, in which North Korea agrees to come into “full compliance” with its IAEA safeguards agreement, including allowing special inspections, when “a significant portion of the light water reactor project is completed, but before delivery of key nuclear components” of the reactors.

In other words, before they can turn on the reactors, they have to take all steps deemed necessary by the IAEA.

So North Korea is in compliance with the Agreed Framework, but not yet fully in compliance with its nuclear safeguards agreement.

Why is this detail important? Because it goes to the heart of the question about why this administration is reluctant to engage North Korea.

The President says it’s because North Korea can’t be trusted. And yet, six years into the Agreed Framework, North Korea has remained faithful to all the essential elements of the deal.

It’s no secret that many Europeans, and even some Americans, fear that the real impetus for President Bush’s decision to discard engagement with North Korea is a quasi-theological belief in the need for a U.S. national missile defense system.

If North Korea were to agree to curb its missile program, so this theory goes, it would profoundly undermine the rationale for NMD, or at least eliminate the urgency to deploy a system in the near term.

I hope these skeptics are wrong, and that the administration realizes it would be foolish not to explore whether North Korea is prepared to end its development and export of long range missiles in exchange for a more normal relationship with the United States.

The broad elements of a missile deal are pretty clear.

North Korea has reportedly offered to end its export and development of long range missiles in exchange for third country satellite launch services, financial compensation (which might include food aid or agricultural assistance), sanctions relief, and normal diplomatic relations with the United States.

As Dean Gallucci knows, the devil will be in the details. Verification procedures, limits on what kinds of satellites we might assist North Korea to launch, the form of any compensation – none of this will be easy.

But these difficulties argue for action, not inaction.

I think President Bush made a mistake when he told President Kim that he would not engage North Korea any time soon.

The reason he cited to justify his inaction – that he did not want to be “naive” about North Korea – risked, I thought, being interpreted as disrespectful to President Kim.

The President implicitly accused Kim – this 70 year old survivor of two assassination attempts and a long imprisonment…this statesman who has been living under North Korean artillery threat for 50 years – of being naive.

South Korea’s Sunshine Policy is many things. Naive it is not. It has nothing to do with trusting North Korea.

It is about pursuing security with hard-headed negotiations – and exposing the North to the changing world. As Justice Brandeis once wrote, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The Sunshine Policy is designed to push open the doors of the cloistered Korean state — and to test its commitment to peace while reducing tension on the peninsula. Neither we nor South Korea have given away anything in terms of our considerable deterrent posture.

I am beginning to worry that the Korea summit is just one example of a lack of strategic vision and an inclination toward unilateralism on the part of this administration.

Let me be clear. I’m not a fan of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. He runs a dictatorial communist state. But there is every indication that Kim Jong-il knows he has no alternative but to try to integrate North Korea with the world.

Many believe a verifiable missile deal with North Korea is impossible, choosing to place their faith in an unproven, strategically destabilizing, and hugely expensive national missile defense scheme.

And plenty of people in this town are opposed to any effort to engage North Korea. Before you accept the arguments of the nay-sayers, however, study the record.

• The nay-sayers argued that North Korea would never sign the Agreed Framework;

• The nay-sayers told us North Korea never would permit continuous International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring of its nuclear facilities;

• The nay-sayers were sure North Korea never would shut its reprocessing plant;

• The nay-sayers said North Korea never would let U.S. military personnel search for the remains of servicemen missing from the Korean War;

• The nay-sayers said North Korea never would permit inspections of a suspicious underground tunnel complex;

• The nay-sayers said North Korea never would adopt economic reforms, never permit monitoring of food aid deliveries, and never permit travel across the DMZ.

They were wrong on all counts.

Now, those opposed to testing North Korea’s commitment to peace are telling us that North Korea will never curtail its missile program. Well…guess what?

The only way they can be certain they won’t be wrong again is by never engaging North Korea in the first place.

Let’s not forget how much progress the Clinton Administration had made on the missile front. Indeed, if not for the uncertainty surrounding the outcome in Florida and the competing demands of the Middle East peace process, it is possible that Secretary Albright, or even President Clinton, might have been able to complete an agreement before leaving office.

Certainly President Kim of South Korea thought that an agreement was within reach. He repeatedly urged the President to travel to North Korea and close the deal.

It is unfortunate that President Bush so badly bungled the visit of President Kim to Washington.

As Tom Friedman noted in a recent column, for a President who pledged to repair alliance relationships, President Bush is not off to an auspicious start with key allies in Asia and Europe.

But it’s not too late. There is no need to arrive prematurely at any conclusion – especially given the poor track record of the prognosticators – before making an honest effort to determine if the carrot may work as well as the stick.

Perhaps we can make the world a little bit safer for future generations through the exercise of patient diplomacy, backed by deterrence.

But that will not happen until the President makes clear his strategic vision of our role and priorities in the world and enunciates clearly his view of our basic national security interests.

When he does that, I know we can count on journalists like Peter Jennings and Robin Wright to help us understand the implications: for ourselves, for our allies, and for generations of Americans and others to come.

Thank you, and good night.

Carol, after that wonderful introduction, I think I may say thank you and sit right back down!

I really do want to say “thank you.” I want to start with a special “thank you” to Lynn Rosenthal for inviting me and organizing this annual meeting of the Network. I applaud her tireless efforts, year in and year out, in the fight against domestic violence.

You are lucky to have her here in Washington representing all of you.

I also say “thank you” to all of you representing state domestic violence coalitions who are here from all around the country. A special “thank you” to the “Brothers Against Domestic Violence,” in from Milwaukee — their volunteer security services in helping battered women go to court and performing security checks on women’s homes are a welcome addition to the movement.

And a warm welcome to the survivors — you are why we are here.

As you know, we just celebrated Mother’s Day this past Sunday. Here in the U.S., Mother’s Day was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She wanted to create Mother’s Day as a day dedicated to peace.

Let’s think about that — a day dedicated to peace. Peace . . .

How many mothers try every day to find peace and safety? How many mothers can only wish that even on Mother’s Day — one day a year — she and her children can find that peace?

So today – as on every day, actually — women are calling for help. And this is where you come in.

I can push and cajole and push some more in Congress, but without all of you in the field, putting the Violence Against Women Act into action – it would all be just words on paper.

Every time I get the least bit frustrated at having to fight uphill to get my colleagues to enact the Violence Against Women Act or reauthorize it as we did last year. . . or continue every year to fight for funding . . .

Any time I get the least bit frustrated, I meet one of you or a woman comes up to me on the street or in the train station and tells me a story of how we’ve impacted – even saved – her life.

So, my first message is one of guarded optimism.

We have made progress over the last ten years.

We have more shelters for battered women and their children than ever before.

We have better trained police officers, prosecutors, and judges than ever before.

But we cannot rest now.

Last week, a man in a very rural part of my State - in a town called Laurel, Delaware - was arrested for making a bomb that he intended to use to blow up his house with his wife and children. He had abused her for years. She finally made up her mind to leave. He said you won’t get out alive. Fortunately, she did. On a tip from a neighbor, police got to the house in time. She got to a shelter with her children.

Where do we go from here?

We keep the pressure on this Administration to fully fund the Violence Against Women Act of 2000.

The Administration may say it wants to fund the Act — but we don’t want any “smoke and mirrors.”

It is easy to ask for what Congress has already authorized.

Yet, even here, the Administration should not seek to fully fund the law enforcement side of combating violence against women without also seeking full funding for the services – like shelters and housing – that help women escape to safety. One does not go without the other.

Moreover, the key to protecting the funding we should have is to restore the Violence Crime Reduction Trust Fund, which has funded the Act’s grants and programs until this fiscal year. I believe that extending the Trust Fund is critical.

Remember, none of this costs a single dime in taxes. It’s all paid for by reducing the number of federal government employees. The paycheck that was going to a bureaucrat is now going into the Trust Fund. So I will continue to work to extend the Trust Fund to ensure that programs combating domestic violence actually receive the funding we have authorized.

And if the funding dries up — make no mistake — the number of domestic violence cases and the number of women killed by their husbands or boyfriends who profess to “love” them — will increase.

Where else do we go from here?

We have some serious provisions in this new law to strengthen full faith and credit of protection from abuse orders across state lines, to open new shelters and to provide transitional housing afterwards, to extend legal assistance to victims, and to protect immigrant women.

But again, words on paper unless we are dogged in our determination to make sure Attorney General Ashcroft keeps this as a priority – as Attorney General Reno and Bonnie Campbell did when they led the effort over these past years.

That brings up the need for a permanent Violence Against Women Office within the Department of Justice. If the responsibilities of this Office get swept into another office, we will lose the focus of this issue – mark my words.

That’s why I have a bill in Congress which would make the Office a permanent and separate component of the Justice Department. With the news that the White House’s Office of Women’s Initiatives and Outreach has been closed, it is imperative not only that the current functions of the Office be preserved but that its status be raised as well.

My bill says that the Director of the Office shall be presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed and report directly to the Associate Attorney General. All of this gives the Office the solid foundation it needs.

But even protecting the Violence Against Women Office will mean nothing if President Bush packs the federal courts with ultra-conservatives. We have to keep our eye on the ball as to whom he nominates. We can win the battle on educating the police and the prosecutors and funding the shelters but lose the war if you do not have judges who “get it” — who understand what stalking is, who understand what violence against a woman does to her and to her family and to everyone in this society.

How many of you have counseled a woman to take all the right steps in protecting herself — call the police, get to a shelter, speak with the prosecutor and then go to court to try to obtain a restraining order only to come before a judge who thinks she’s being too emotional, that she must be over-reacting, that she should keep her family together despite the violence, that these are his kids too, that the presence of firearms does not matter and worse of all, that this mother herself can be charged with a “failure to protect” or with neglect because somehow it is she — and not he — who has exposed the children to violence. Basically, the state is asking her to manage the violence of her abuser.

You know, these backward attitudes start far too young. There’s a study by the Rhode Island Rape Crisis Center, which surveyed 1,700 sixth through ninth graders and here’s what it found:

• 25% of the schoolboys and 17% of the girls said it was okay to force sex on a woman after “spending a lot of money on her” — which 12 year-olds define as $10 to $15.

• Over half of the students thought that “if a woman dresses seductively and walks alone at night, she is asking to be raped.”

This is why we have the Violence Against Women Act. We need education, education, education. We need to get the good word out. We need to continue to get the word out to governors, state attorneys general, doctors, nurses, business leaders, judges and police – about what’s in the new law and how it will help them.

Just as I did when the first Act passed in 1994, I have issued more than 800 of these manuals nationwide. All the other 99 U.S. Senators, all 50 governors, state attorneys general, domestic violence advocates, state domestic violence coalitions, non-profit agencies have got one. If you don’t have one, I have brought copies with me, so please take one.

So, keep up the fight. We are making progress in our efforts to help women and children escape the cycle of domestic violence and abuse.

I promise you, as long as Delawareans keep electing me to serve in the United States Senate, I will continue to work for women and children who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Thank you for your continuing support. I could not do it without you.