• Promote greater diversity of locations, languages and subjects involved in teaching, research and study abroad to ensure that the United States maintains a broad international knowledge base;

• Significantly increase participation in study abroad by American students and support visas and employment policies that promote increased numbers of international students;

• Enhance the educational infrastructure through which the United States produces citizens with a high level of international expertise and builds a broad knowledge base that serves the United States.

This is not an agenda to constrain local control of education or place additional power in Washington. Curricular and program decisions should and will remain with the institutions and the states. We do not seek replication of the large, federally funded programs of the 1960s and earlier. What is necessary at the federal level is leadership. We ask President George W. Bush to articulate the national interest in international education, set goals for our nation and call us together-federal officials, governors, educators, exchange professionals, business leaders and foundations-to discuss these goals and commit ourselves to do our part to achieve them.

Last year, former President Bill Clinton issued an executive memorandum on international education. The memorandum instructed federal agencies to work together on a coherent approach to international education. One of the fruits of that memorandum was the nation's first-ever "international education week." For a week last fall, schools across the country engaged in special international education activities.

Bush should again proclaim an international education week this year and work to make it bigger and better. Much more remains to be done. Bush should broaden and implement an international education policy appropriate for the world in which we live and the world we share. He should make this agenda a high priority overseen by a high-level White House official.

Senators and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle recognize the importance of international education. This is one issue on which the president can achieve the bipartisan support that he seeks from Congress. We look forward to working with him.

Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.