Embassy Row

‘Modern-day prophet’

Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon hailed Martin Luther King as a “modern-day prophet” when he honored the slain civil rights leader in a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy.

“We gather this evening, as we have for the last 20 years, to pay homage and tribute to the life and work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mr. Ayalon said at the reception last week in advance of today’s annual commemoration of King’s birthday.

“Rev. King was a modern-day prophet, a veritable reincarnation of Jeremiah or Isaiah, as well as an American patriot,” he said, comparing King with the ancient Israeli prophets.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also spoke at the reception, said blacks and Jews have shared historical suffering.

“We have both known slavery. We’ve known exile. We’ve known the hand of God as the key to survival,” he said.

Mr. Ayalon also honored Carolyn Goodman, whose son, Andrew, was among three civil-rights activists murdered in 1964 in Mississippi, and Richard Womack, a civil-rights official with the AFL-CIO.

Diplomatic traffic

Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:

Tomorrow

• Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, who meets with President Bush. He also addresses the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is accompanied by Didier Reynders, deputy prime minister and finance minister; Karel de Gucht, foreign minister; and Vincent van Quickenborne, state secretary for administrative reform.

• Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo of the Philippines, whose meetings include talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a weeklong visit.

• Park Jae-kyu, former South Korean minister of unification, who speaks at a forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Wednesday

• Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert of the Netherlands, U.N. force commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Steve Edwards of Britain’s Scotland Yard; Ambassador Michael Sahlin, the European Union’s special representative in Macedonia; Col. Jan-Inge Svensson of the Swedish Military Academy; and Brig. Gen. Gordon Mzwandile Yekelo of the South African armed forces. They speak at a forum on global-information operations sponsored by Open Source Intelligence.

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