Dick Lugar: “I appreciate your assurances. Mr. President, I would like to made a few additional comments on the Congress-Bundestag…”

“I appreciate your assurances. Mr. President, I would like to made a few additional comments on the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program. For the past 15 years, some 11,000 young students from Germany and the United States have participated in these exchanges. German and American families have hosted these students in their homes and communities and formed enduring friendships and nurturing the ability to see each other through the other's eyes. The earliest of these participants are mature adults now and have assumed responsible positions in their communities. I'm impressed that senior members of the German Government, including Chancellor Kohl and the President of the German Bundestag, Rita Sussmuth are personally involved in the program. Many others have invited American students to work in their offices, invited them into their homes and arranged for specific events on their behalf. Our German counterparts value this program very highly and promote it with enthusiasm. In the end, we should support this program because it is in our interests to do so. It is one of our smallest international exchange programs but it reaps substantial foreign policy benefits. We should be sending more American students to Germany on this program. The German Government wants to increase the number of students they send here. I should add that most of the American students selected for this exchange program are juniors or sophomores in high school. The standards are high.”