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The first necessity is a broader-based participation within the Executive Branch. During the last four years, there were many delicate initiatives that required a high degree of secrecy and concentration of effort. Crucial foundations were laid. Now we need to build on these foundations a more permanent structure that we can pass on to succeeding Administrations. Durability in foreign policy is achieved in the final analysis through the deep and continuing involvement of the dedicated professionals of the State Department and Foreign Service, who will manage our foreign affairs long after this Administration has ended. Thus one of my principal responsibilities as Secretary of State will be to infuse the Department of State with a sense of participation, intellectual excitement and mission.

As you know, the President has asked me to retain my position as Assistant to the President if I am confirmed as Secretary of State. I believe this will benefit the coherence and effectiveness of our foreign policy. The Secretary of State will be clearly the principal foreign policy advisor to the President. The locus of authority and the chain of authority will be unambiguous. Bureaucratic friction will be minimized. As the President said in announcing my appointment, the unity of position will underline the traditional principal role of the Department of State in the policy-making process.

There must be, as well, a closer relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches. It is the President's objective to make policy more accessible to the scrutiny and the views of the Congress. This is the fundamental answer to the question of executive privilege. As you gentlemen know, over an extended period of time when I was fully covered by this principle, I met regularly with the members of this Committee, both individually and as a group, and most frequently with the Chairman. I did so partly because I valued this association on personal grounds, but also because of my conviction that this nation faced no more urgent requirement than to promote mutual respect where a consensus was unattainable.

In my new capacity, I shall be prepared to testify formally on all my activities. In other words, I shall testify with respect to all matters traditionally covered by Secretaries of State and on my duties as Assistant to the President concerning interdepartmental issues. I will not claim executive privilege in either capacity except for the one area customarily invoked by Cabinet officers, that is, direct communications with the President or the actual deliberations of the National Security Council.

We will, of course, need to determine together which subjects should be treated in public and which in executive session.

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In short, as a result of my combined position, the Committee should receive substantially more information than it has in the past. We will have acted positively on one of your most central concerns.

This process of greater cooperation will not be confined to formal testimony. If confirmed, I will propose to meet immediately with the Chairman and the ranking member to work out procedures for enabling the Committee to share more fully in the design of our foreign policy.

I will follow a similar approach with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the leaders of both branches of Congress as well as with other Congressional groupings of proper jurisdiction.

This prompts the question, what do we mean by bipartisanship? We do not ask for rubber stamping and we cannot expect unanimity. Serious people obviously will continue to have differences. Where profound disagreements exist, it would be self-defeating to paper them over with empty formulae. We in turn cannot give up basic principles, nor can we promise to act only when there is bipartisan agreement, though this will be our preference. But we shall work to shape a broad consensus on our national goals and to confine differences to tactical issues. When our views differ, we shall strive not to press the debate to a point that tears the overall fabric of the national consensus. We will seek to maintain a climate of mutual trust so that arguments can center on methods, not motives. We hope that this restraint will be mutual. In this manner, our foreign policy debate can avoid the extremes of civil war and sterile accord for its own sake.

If our foreign policy is to be truly national, we must deepen our partnership with the American people. This means an open articulation of our philosophy, our purposes, and our actions. We have sought to do this in the President's Annual Reports to the Congress on foreign policy. Equally, we must listen to the hopes and aspirations of our fellow countrymen. I plan, therefore, on a regular basis, to elicit the views of America's opinion leaders and to share our perspectives freely.

Mr. Chairman, I have sketched an agenda for seeking a more durable peace abroad and a cooperative climate at home. Both objectives point to the urgent need for reconciliation. Americans have recently endured the turmoil of assassinations and riots, racial and generational confrontations, and a bitter, costly war. Just as we were emerging from that conflict, we were plunged into still another ordeal.

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These traumatic events have cast lengthening shadows on our traditional optimism and self-esteem. A loss of confidence in our own country would inevitably be mirrored in our international relations. Where once we ran the risk of thinking we were too good for the world, we might now swing to believing we are not good enough. Where once a soaring optimism tempted us to dare too much, a shrinking spirit could lead us to attempt too little. Such an attitude -- and the foreign policy it would produce -- would deal a savage blow to global stability.

But I am hopeful about our prospects. America is resilient. The dynamism of this country is irrepressible. Whatever our divisions, we can rally to the prospects of building a world at peace and responsive to humane aspirations. In so doing, we can replenish our reservoir of faith.

This is our common challenge:

- To distinguish the fundamental from the ephemeral.

- To seek out what unites us, without stifling the healthy debate that is the lifeblood of democracy.

- To promote the positive trends that are the achievements not just of this Administration but also of those who came before.

- To shape new initiatives that will serve not just the next forty months but also the decades to follow.

A few years before he died, one of our most distinguished Secretaries of State, Dean Acheson, entitled his memoirs "Present at the Creation." He chose that title because he was one of the leading participants in the creation of the post-war international system. The challenge before our country now is whether our generation has the vision -- as Dean Acheson's did more than two decades ago -- to turn into dynamic reality the hopeful beginnings we have made toward a more durable peace and a more benevolent planet.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, I am confident that working together we can speed the day when all of us will be able to say that we were "present at the creation" of a new era of peace, justice and humanity.

Thank you.

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