The Special Co-ordinator of the Stability Pact, Mr Bodo Hombach, will pay his first visit to the new Administration in Washington on 26 and 27 April. He is scheduled to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as well as other high-ranking officials. Bodo Hombach will also hold meetings at the World Bank, which is one of the Stability Pact partner organisations. The Special Co-ordinator will give a keynote address to the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (venue is open to media; at Jefferson Hotel, 1200 16th Street, NW – 26 April, 6:30 p.m.). Prior to his visit to Washington, on Wednesday 25 April, the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government will present Mr Bodo Hombach, Special Co-ordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. The event, entitled Future Challenges in Southeastern Europe and the Role of the West, will take place in the Bell Hall of the Kennedy School at 4:00 p.m. Eighteen months ago, the Stability Pact was created as an attempt to better co-ordinate and multilateralise international assistance to Southeastern Europe, a region also known as the Balkans. The Stability Pact is a political declaration of commitment and a framework agreement on international co-operation to develop a shared strategy among more than 40 countries, organisations and regional groupings for stability and growth in Southeastern Europe. Among its partners are the European Union member states and the European Commission, the countries of the region, the United States, Canada, Japan, Turkey, Norway, Switzerland and Russia, the UN, NATO, OSCE, OECD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At the helm of these efforts, Mr Bodo Hombach of Germany serves as Special Co-ordinator of the Stability Pact. Prior to this appointment, Mr Hombach served as Minister for the Economy, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Technology and Transport of North-Rhine-Westphalia, and later on as Federal Minister for Special Affairs and Chief of Staff in the Office of German Chancellor Schroeder in Berlin. The Kokkalis Program was established in 1997 with the aim of building bridges to and from Southeastern and East-Central Europe. The program is an integrated network of educational and research activities that aim to support the transition to democracy now underway in the Balkans. Among its many activities, the Kokkalis Program sponsors scholarships for graduate study at the Kennedy School of Government, executive training programs for senior level policy makers, large-scale conferences, lectures by academicians and scholars, and cultural events.