By Kay Scrimger
July 16, 2007

The International Affairs Committee met on Friday, June 22 and discussed building Sister City relationships, elimination of nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare throughout the world, initiatives to improve travel and tourism to the United States, and the crisis in Darfur.

Patrick Madden, Executive Director of Sister Cities International since March 2007, encouraged mayors to continue to strengthen their existing Sister City relationships and offered the assistance of his organization as cities work to build new city-to-city partnerships. Madden noted that Sister Cities is a “powerful citizen diplomacy network with 700 U.S. members and more than 2,500 partnering communities in 134 countries.” (website: www.sister-cities.org)

Hiroshi Sasaki, newly-appointed Executive Director of the Japan Local Government Center in New York City, brought greetings from the mayors of Japan to the committee. Sasaki pointed out the changes in local governments in Japan in recent years, characterized by increased devolution of responsibilities from the national to local governments. (website: www.jlgc.org)

Peter Marcus is an attorney in Los Angeles, who also chairs Community Action and Response Committee of Jewish World Watch, a coalition of more than 50 synagogues in Southern California that work together to combat egregious human rights violations, including genocide. Marcus described his work with the offices of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa to help facilitate “targeted divestment” policies with respect to companies doing business with Sudan.

“Recognizing that our ultimate goal is to protect the victims in Darfur, it has been important that these divestment efforts be implemented in a way that will maximize the impact on the Sudanese government and its policies while minimizing any adverse impact on the innocent Sudanese people we are trying to help,” Marcus said. (websites: www.jewishworldwatch.org and www.sudandivestment.org)

Zagreb, Croatia Mayor Milan Bandic, serving his seventh year, described special economic and environmental challenges he faces as leader of Croatia’s largest city of more than a million inhabitants. In particular, he focused on major environmental concerns of insufficient level of treatment and coverage for municipal wastewater, uncontrolled dumping of solid and hazardous wastes, lack of proper disposal sites, and control of air pollution emissions in industrial areas to meet current legal limits.

Aaron Tovish, International Manager of the 2020 Vision Campaign, Mayors for Peace, outlined major initiatives of his organization, including the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, a program to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. Mayors for Peace has enlisted a total of 1,651 in 120 countries and regions around the world. Tovish thanked The U.S. Conference of Mayors for its long-term and continuing anti-nuclear stands. (website: www.mayorsforpeace.org)

The committee approved the following resolutions:

• Increasing International Travel to the United States Through Visa Reforms, Entry Improvements and Promotion.

• Implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

• Urging the Bush Administration to Enter into a Bilateral Agreement to Expand Leisure Group Travel from China to the United States.

• Responding Effectively and Immediately to the Human Rights Tragedy in Sudan.

• Calling on All Nations and All World Powers to Prohibit the Use of Any Weapon of Mass Destruction Against Cities and Other Civilian Targets and Encouraging Them to Embrace the Concept of Peace.