MS. NULAND: Good morning, everybody. As you know, this Saturday, July 9th, the Republic of South Sudan will celebrate a ceremony to mark its independence, culminating a six-year peace process. The U.S. presidential delegation to the ceremony will be led by our Ambassador to the United Nations, the Honorable Susan Rice. And the delegation will travel to Juba to attend this historic event today. We are very pleased this morning to have Ambassador Rice as well as several members of the delegation to talk to you about this trip.

This week is a very important week for the United States Government in both honoring Presidents Kufuor and Lula and in taking forward the United States Feed the Future Initiative, an interagency initiative led by Secretary Clinton, which includes all parts of the U.S. Government that have come together to reassert our leadership on food security and global hunger in a way that we hope lives up to the legacy and the demands of Dr. Norman Borlaug. During this week, we will have a consultation to get input and guidance from research institutions and universities from across this country, which will build on an e-consultation we've already done to hear, and we've had more than 2,000 comments come in on how we should prioritize our investments in agricultural research, science, and technology for the purpose of alleviating hunger and global poverty.

But you know, the work we do in global development is at a really special and unique time. We've never had the chances that we have today to bring together the technologies, the innovations, the partnerships and the solutions that now exist to tackle extreme hunger, extreme poverty, the lack of health opportunity that exists for hundreds of millions of people around the world, and to do so in a manner that generates really specific results.

In that sense, the meeting that brought us to town, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, is just an absolutely outstanding example of, in my mind, the future of development policy and implementation. GAVI is an alliance that brings together private vaccine manufacturers, private philanthropists and corporate partners, governments from around the world to address a common goal – and that is the goal of making sure that every child everywhere has access to a basic package of life-saving vaccines.

With the strong support of Secretary Clinton and the intellectual leadership of our friends in Congress and those here today, the President launched Feed the Future: an international effort aimed to break the cycle of food aid, famine and failed states in a select number of target countries. Thanks to strong bipartisan support from Congress, I'm proud to announce today, that in fiscal year 2011 our Administration intends to devote over $1.15 B on food security. The majority of that money-$950 M will be spent across all Feed the Future countries. An additional $90 M will be spent on strengthening our nutrition programming.