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By James Morrison

DIPLOMATIC TRAFFIC

Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:

Monday

• Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, who discusses European efforts to deal with the global financial crisis, in a briefing at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

• Brian Lee Crowley, founder of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Canada. He discusses the Canadian experience with national health insurance in a briefing at the Hudson Institute.

Tuesday

• Anatoly Gromyko, son of Andrei Gromyko, Soviet foreign minister during much of the Cold War; Ilya Gaiduk, senior staff scientist of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Alexander Panov, chancellor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of Canada and the USA of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They participate in a forum about the senior Mr. Gromyko's impact on U.S.-Soviet relations. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak are also scheduled to speak at the forum, which beings at 9 a.m. at the Russian Embassy. The event is open to the public, but reservations must be made by e-mail to dmitry_vetrov@yahoo.com.

• Franjo Stiblar, a professor at the School of Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He discusses democracy in former communist countries in Europe in a briefing at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Wednesday

• Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak of the Slovak Republic, who holds a noon news conference at the National Press Club to discuss the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which brought down communism in the former Czechoslovakia. Mr. Lajcak also addresses a forum on the anniversary at the Heritage Foundation. Branislav Lichardus, Slovak ambassador to the United States from 1994 to 1998, also will speak at the Heritage forum.

• Former Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, a retired lieutenant-general of the Israel Defense Forces, who discusses a plan for Middle East peace in a briefing at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

• Aseel al-Awadhi, a member of the Kuwaiti parliament and one of four women elected to the legislature in May; Ziad Baroud, interior minister of Lebanon and a founding member of the Democratic Renewal Movement; Musa Maaytah, minister of political development of Jordan; and Nouzha Skalli, minister of social development, family and solidarity of Morocco. They participate in a forum on democracy and the Middle East sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.

• Gareth Jenkins, an analyst of Turkish affairs based in Istanbul. He addresses the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

• C. Raja Mohan, a professor of South Asian studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He joins a panel discussion on U.S.-India relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Thursday

• Luis Amado, minister of foreign affairs of Portugal; Gunilla Carlsson, minister of international development of Sweden; and Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. They participate in a panel discussion entitled, "Responding to the Obama Agenda," at Washington Forum of the Paris-based European Institute for Security Studies.

• Romano Prodi, former prime minister of Italy. He addresses the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

• Chin-hao Huang of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who discusses China's deployment of troops for U.N. peacekeeping operations in a forum at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@ washingtontimes.com.