Embassy Row

DIPLOMATIC TRAFFIC

Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:

Monday

• Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa of Italy, who meets Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and places a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. He arrived Saturday to represent the Italian government at the Washington Gala of the National Italian American Foundation, where he was the guest of honor.

Tuesday

• Prince Mired Raad Al-Hussein of Jordan, president of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention’s Eighth Meeting of the States’ Parties. He meets State Department officials, advisers to the presidential campaigns of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

• Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress of South Africa. He addresses the Council on Foreign Relations on South African politics and South Africa’s role in the region.

• A delegation from Afghanistan with Ashraf Ghani, chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness; Mohammed Ismail Khan, minister of energy and water; Mohammed Yousef Pashtun, minister of urban development; Obaidullah Ramin, minister of agriculture, irrigation and livestock; and Mohammed Jalil Shams, minister of economy and manpower. They address the U.S.-Afghan Business Matchmaking Conference and Trade & Informational Fair.

• Wolfgang F. Danspeckgruber, founding director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, and Francesc Vendrell, senior fellow at the institute and former special representative for Afghanistan from the European Union. They discuss developments in Afghanistan in a forum at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

• Evelyn Goh of the University of London and Liselotte Odgaard of the Royal Danish Defense College. They discuss post-Cold War Asia in a briefing at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

• Yuri Vavilov, senior scientific associate at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, who discusses Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s conflict with scientists in a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Wednesday

• President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, who meets President Bush.

• Hideki Wakabayashi, a former member of the Japanese parliament, and Masaki Taniguchi, an associate professor of Japanese politics at the University of Tokyo. They address the American Enterprise Institute on the implications of Japan’s current political turmoil on U.S.-Japanese alliance.

• Zhiping Li of China’s Sun Yat-sen University, who participates in a discussion on environmental issues in China at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

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