U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Remarks at the Opening Ceremony for the Global Classrooms D.C. Model United Nations Program

John D. Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State
Washington, DC
April 28, 2008

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QUESTION: My name is Carla (ph). I go to Benjamin Banneker. My question is: What are your biggest challenges negotiating?

DEPUTY SECRETARY NEGROPONTE: What are our biggest challenges negotiating? Well, I think perhaps today, I might as well talk -- let's talk about the priorities of this Administration. I would say probably the biggest challenge we face at the moment is the ongoing effort to disarm the Korean Peninsula. You may have read about the negotiations, the so-called Six-Party talks between China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and ourselves to disarm, to take away the nuclear capability of North Korea and that is an ongoing negotiation and if that is successful, it will be a very, very important development towards ending, finally, the Korean War, which still is technically not ended, and removing a very, very dangerous situation. So I would say that's probably one of the most challenging negotiations that exist at the moment.

And one other example I would mention as a very difficult international negotiation that's going on -- it's a global negotiation -- and that is the World Trade Organization negotiations that are going on right now, so-called -- it's called the Doha Round of negotiations to come up with a new global trade agreement. And we're hoping that that might be accomplished by the end of the Administration.

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QUESTION: Hi, my name is Sierra Tony (ph) and I attend Benjamin Banneker Academic High School. And my question is I'm really -- when you were talking about a lot of the jobs that you can acquire in the international -- in the field of international affairs, I noticed that you said there were some for economics and some for, you know, like, languages and things like that. I'm not really that interested in economics, but were there any other jobs you could suggest for students that, you know, are passionate about languages, like outside of translating and transcribing?

DEPUTY SECRETARY NEGROPONTE: Yeah. Well, I mean, economics is just one of the many different areas that we work on. As I mentioned, consular work -- what we mean by consular work is people who issue visas and passports to foreigners who want to come to the United States or -- passports to Americans -- who worry about Americans who get in distress elsewhere in the world.

I started out my career as a Vice Consul in Hong Kong and I worked on consular matters, and it included things like attending to American seamen who had gotten put in jail, and we had to defend their interests in Hong Kong. It was very much of a people-related kind of work. So that's one area of work. There's cultural diplomacy. We've got cultural events that we promote around the world, and people help set those kinds of things up. We arrange for scholarships for foreign students to come and study in the United States, so that's another example of the kind of work we do.

I think there's -- I've always been struck by the tremendous variety of work that exists in our business working abroad for the United States. It's not just one thing; it's a whole variety of different areas of activity.

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