Bordallo Attends Speech by U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral William Fallon

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—April 5, 2006—Washington, D.C.—

Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo attended the Peter Tali Coleman Lecture in Pacific Public Policy at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., today which featured Admiral William J. Fallon, United States Navy.  Admiral Fallon is currently serving as the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) which is headquartered at Camp HM Smith in Honolulu, Hawaii

Admiral Fallon’s lecture focused on the “Challenges in the Pacific Region.”   

“Admiral Fallon’s lecture was informative and timely.  With U.S. military realignment on the forefront of impending changes for the Pacific Region and our island, this lecture emphasized the importance of Guam to the U.S. military in providing for stability in the region,” Bordallo stated.

The Coleman Lecture, which is a part of the Georgetown Pacific Project administered jointly by the Foreign Service School’s Center for Australia and New Zealand Studies and its Asian Studies Program, honors the memory of the Peter Tali Coleman, the first appointed governor and then first elected governor of American Samoa, who graduated from Georgetown University and its school of law in 1949 and 1951, respectively.  Coleman’s daughter, Aumua Amata attended today’s event.

Notable guests at today’s event included the following:

§         Honorable Roy Ferguson, Ambassador of New Zealand

§         Honorable Dennis Richardson, Ambassador of Australia

§         Honorable Albert Del Rosario, Ambassador of the Philippines

§         Honorable Evan Paki, Ambassador of Papua New Guinea

§         Evan Garcia, Deputy Chief of Mission of Mission, Embassy of the Philippines

§         Pete A. Tenorio, Resident Representative of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

The Georgetown Pacific Project was established in the School of Foreign Service in 1998 with the assistance of the Pacific Basin Development Council, The Micronesia Institute and the Council of Micronesian Chief Executives.  An endowment was created through major donations from the governments of Guam, American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as Duty Free Shoppers, Ltd., and Mr. Robert W. O’Connor, a business executive with commercial establishments on Guam and Saipan.

Today’s lecture was the third in the Coleman series.  The inaugural lecture took place in 2002 by the Right Honorable Misa Telefoni Retzlaff, Deputy Prime Minister of Samoa and Chairman of the World Bank’s Small States Forum.  Mr. Matthew Daley, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and the Pacific, delivered the second lecture in 2004.

“Having prominent national leaders speak about the Pacific region in our nation’s capital to an audience of both influential policy makers and future leaders at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service is a value that cannot be understated.  The Pacific region is of growing strategic, economic and cultural significance. This annual speech acknowledges this importance and honors the legacy of a great man, Peter Tali Coleman, who recognized the value and the wonder of the Pacific so many years ago,” Bordallo concluded.

The U.S. Pacific Command is a part of the unified combatant command structure of the U.S. Armed Forces overseen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is one of the original three unified commands formed by the Department of Defense at the end of World War II.  The U.S. Pacific Command encompasses the largest geographic and most populated area of responsibility of any of the five geographic unified commands.  Admiral Fallon highlighted in his lecture today the growing importance of Guam to the ability of the United States to project force in the Pacific and East Asia Regions.

Photo of Congresswoman Bordallo greeting Admiral Fallon

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Contact:  Alicia Chon in Washington, D.C. at (202) 225-1188 or Joseph E. Duenas at (671) 477-4272/4.

www.house.gov/bordallo

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