Any time you talk about world trade, you're involving diplomacy on various levels. And representing the U.S. Department of State we have Paul Aceto. Now, he's been working for the Department of State since 1985; he's been in the Office of Agricultural Trade Policy since '97, and his responsibilities include WTO issues, food aid, and sanctions policies.

Now, his previous assignments were in Korea, Italy, and Taiwan. He's from upstate New York, lives in Virginia with his wife daughters. So, Paul...

MR. ACETO: Thank you for the introduction, and also thanks to Commissioner Combs and her staff for all the work they've done in putting this together.

Perhaps I should really focus my remarks on why the State Department is up here on the table. I'm sure most of you are more familiar with the USDA and USTR, not as familiar with how State fits into the process. Well, the simple and perhaps general answer to that is that, as Mr. Purcell said, we represent the U.S. overseas, and that includes the interests of ranchers and farmers as well; in fact, everyone's interests here in this room. But obviously, for us to do a good job, we have to know what the concerns are of people back home.

On a more specific level, obviously, we're here today to talk about the trade negotiations, and in that effort we will be working very closely with the USDA and USTR on the round. We do have some kind of special assets we think we can perhaps say; to a certain extent, we have troops already out there on the front line in our embassies and consulates and they can act as our eyes and ears during the negotiations. So we can know what other countries are up to, what they want, but also, more importantly, we can get our views across and try and win some countries over to our side in some of the big issues, for example, export subsidies.

I can give, for example, a very good example of where this is going to be important during the round and even beyond the round, is in the area of biotech. Everyone, I think, is very familiar with the problems we've had in Europe lately. But thinking ahead, it's not going to be too long before we start to have problems with Asia, Latin America, and other areas. So we're already planning how we can use our embassies to get our view out on biotechnology. A few of those countries support their embassy kind of setting the standard for Europeans.

So on that, let me close out perhaps say that I hope and expect that the program today will be as rewarding as the pork spare ribs I had last night here in town. Thank you.