Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering has praised the Israeli and Palestinian students who participated in l999's "Seeds for Peace" program for "starting down a road that many of your friends back home may not yet have chosen or even thought about."

When they return home "full of summer excitement and the warmth of new friendships," Pickering told them at an August 16 State Department reception, "sear these memories deeply into your minds. Then, when difficult times come, maybe years from now, you can truly be a seed for peace, speaking against hatred, standing for friendship, remembering what you have learned here this summer with all your new friends."

"Seeds for Peace" is a special conflict resolution program in which Palestinian and Israeli students live and work together at a summer camp in Maine.

Participants are encouraged to share their individual experiences, perspectives and prejudices, thus promoting greater mutual understanding and respect. The hope is that when they return home, they can share what they have learned with their peers, improving the climate for mutual tolerance and the predisposition for a peaceful resolution of the Middle East crisis.

Following is the State Department text:

(Begin text)

August 16, 1999

It is a true pleasure to join Secretary Albright in welcoming you to the Department of State. We share a great enthusiasm for Seeds of Peace and I think you can see why after listening to the moving words of those four students.

I want to express my gratitude to all who make this extraordinary program happen:

-- My deep thanks to you, John, and to Lindsay Miller and all the dedicated Seeds of Peace staff and supporters.

-- I would also like to thank all our distinguished guests, diplomats, and private citizens who are so strongly interested in Seeds. You honor us with your presence, and affirm our shared vision of a peaceful Middle East. That dream has called us each to a unique vocation -- whether as citizens, students, or diplomats -- in pursuit of a common goal.

-- My thanks as well to the families of this year's Seeds of Peace students. They have supported your decision to come here, making their own courageous statement in doing so. Although they are far from us, in Yemen, Tunisia, Qatar, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, I salute their commitment to peace and the hope they have imbued in you, and I thank them for sharing you with us this summer.

-- Most importantly, I want to thank you, the Seeds of Peace, for participating in this program with open minds and hearts -- and, if all went as planned, in open dialogue. I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Seeds of Peace camp in Otisfield, Maine, and know that that ground is being made sacred season after season as the Seeds of Peace gather, explain, argue, break bread, have fun, and build friendships.

Those of us in this room represent the vast number of people, throughout the world, who long for an enduring peace in the Middle East, the cradle of civilization for all of us and the birthplace of three great monotheistic religions.

As we meet today, hopes are again rising.

Yet, as we all know, the process is long and in many ways and at certain times, bumpy. It is especially in bumpy times that we will need your help. When you go back home, full of summer excitement and the warmth of new friendships, sear these memories deeply into your minds. Then, when difficult times come, maybe years from now, you can truly be a seed of peace, speaking against hatred, standing for friendship, remembering what you learned here this summer with all your new friends.

Historians can tell you what makes us all different; writers and artists know the fires, fears, hopes, and loves that all human beings share. This summer, you have learned the lessons of both the poet and the historian. It is from this understanding of what we have in common and how we differ from one another that an enduring peace can be built.

Life presents us with choices, with different roads to travel. You have started down a road that many of your friends back home may not yet have chosen or even thought about. I urge you to stay on it.

The journey began in the State of Maine. Nearby, in Vermont and New Hampshire, one of the great American poets wrote about the roads we take and those we forsake. I leave you with Robert Frost's words:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If you stay true to the promises you made to yourselves and each other this summer, if you stay on the road less traveled, you will be the ones who will make all the difference, who help build and consolidate an enduring peace.

Thank you again.

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