Years ago when I used to work in Washington as a Senate staffer, I remember a young foreign service officer telling me the difficulties he was having getting any kind of appropriate attention for a visiting president of Kiribati. No one, not even his boss, the assistant secretary of state, knew where Kiribati was, much less how to pronounce the name. He had to catch a taxi to the then-National Airport to meet the president and take him, again by taxi, to his hotel. With a population far below that of even the most sparsely populated U.S. state, Kiribati simply fell off the Washington radar screen, no matter that it had a vote in the U.N. General Assembly and one of the world's largest maritime exclusive economic zones.

In a quarter century, little has changed. So this year, the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders (PICL), a program the East-West Center supports and facilitates, brought its meeting to Washington. The idea was that by acting in concert, the island leaders could get a level of attention that none could achieve coming alone.

When the East-West Center first broached the concept of bringing the PICL to Washington, the response in the Department of State and the Congress was very positive. Those who knew the island region also knew that the governments of other big countries — China, Japan, and France — regularly bring the leaders of the independent Pacific island nations to their countries. And they knew this would not happen in Washington unless the East-West Center did it.

The PICL is unusual in international diplomacy in including not only the leaders of independent nations, but also the governors of Hawai'i, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and their counterparts in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, both parts of France.

To the Pacific leaders and the East-West Center this seems very logical, since all the islands share similar challenges relating to small populations, geographical isolation, protection of fragile environments and patrol of large maritime zones. Thus they have a lot to bond over, irrespective of political status.

For official Washington, however, the PICL fell "outside the box." Protocol officers at the Department of State, for example, first explained that only leaders of independent countries could walk into the building on the red carpet or have their flags displayed. But in the end, we were able to erase the protocol distinctions with everyone except the Secret Service. They insisted the presidents and prime ministers of independent countries needed special protection and thus their own limousines and police escorts rather than a VIP bus in which island leaders sit together in the informal island way.

As the United States is not a member of the PICL, Gov. Linda Lingle acted as the U.S. host and a valued guide within the group into the intricacies of U.S. politics.

The chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Global Environment, Congressman Eni Faleomavaega, a Hawai'i-educated representative of American Samoa, worked with the Hawai'i delegation to host the leaders on Capitol Hill. He arranged a roundtable with congressional leaders, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel.

Faleomavaega, together with Congressman Neil Abercrombie and Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, also shepherded a special House resolution welcoming the island leaders and thanking the East-West Center for bringing them to Washington.

Hawai'i's senior senator, Daniel Inouye, wrote to the Pacific island leaders, offering "warmest greetings to the outstanding PICL." Inouye, a long-time advocate of increased national attention to the islands, reiterated that he is "a very strong supporter of this vital program."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed the leaders to a day at the Department of State. The department had arranged an incredibly informative series of briefings on U.S. programs of relevance to the island nations, including such defense and security issues as the operation of the Coast Guard in the North Pacific and the implications of the transfer of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Environment, trade, educational and foreign assistance programs were also discussed.

The Department of State designated 2007 as the Year of the Pacific, to show renewed interest in the island region. That has yet to be demonstrated, but it clearly was a Week of the Pacific in Washington. Some 1,200 people, including Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Sen. Daniel Akaka and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined the island leaders at Pacific Night, an evening of Pacific island music, dances, and food. And in another event, the Global Environment Facility, which is supported by two U.N. programs and the World Bank, announced a $100 million proposal to help protect Pacific island resources.

Even the PICL acronym helped. One official from the U.S. Trade Representative's Office told me that he could never forget an organization with the name "pickle."

It is clear the island leaders will need to visit Washington on a regular basis, something they tasked the East-West Center to help make happen, to deepen the dialogue and increase support for a region of comparatively small populations but huge marine resources.

In underscoring the Pacific's significance, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill observed that the Pacific spans one-third of the globe, and in terms of voting strength in the U.N. General Assembly, has 12 votes compared to the single vote cast by the United States. In light of these observations, it is in the interest of both the U.S. and the Pacific nations to strengthen their engagement. The historic 2007 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders helped establish the foundation for building an even stronger Asia Pacific community.

Charles E. Morrison is president of the East-West Center. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.