Like others, we appreciate hearing from the High Commissioner about his recent activities and future plans and, especially, about his strategic vision for work with the Council of Europe and others.

Mr. High Commissioner, we hope that you will continue to develop and strengthen contact between your office and the Government of Japan.

We are pleased to hear of your continuing interest in Central Asia. Concrete projects there can be a useful way for us to work as partners with Central Asian states to address minority concerns in a constructive fashion.

With respect to Macedonia, we continue to be interested in your efforts to support Albanian language instruction. We understand that one important project currently undertaken by your projects office is a program to improve the college entrance scores of those Macedonian students whose primary language is Albanian.

We believe projects such as this underscore the importance of the program office.

My government was pleased to support the efforts of this office by seconding an American citizen to work with you as a member of the staff. We will continue to look for ways to assist your efforts in the future.

In this respect, like others, we continue to await anxiously the distribution of the Roma Report. We hope this report can help focus OSCE states on practical, concrete efforts to better the condition of Roma.