Edward A. Bruley, USA

Edward Bruley served as a chief advisor to Congressman David Bonior, the Democratic Whip of the United States Congress. For 26 years, Mr. Bruley served as part of Bonior’s chief administrative team, setting policy, running the Congressman’s office, hiring and training staff. During Mr. Bruley’s tenure, Congressman Bonior rose from a freshman member to the powerful Rules Committee to Whip, the second-ranking member of Congress. Bonior served as Democratic Whip for 10 years, the longest anyone has held that position in history. Mr. Bruley was the chief staff person in Bonior’s office responsible for formulating foreign policy positions. He played a major role in advising Bonior and helped him gain a reputation for progressive policy initiatives in the Middle East, South Asia and Central Europe. In the course of his career, Mr. Bruley has traveled widely, visiting India, Pakistan, and Kashmir. He served on a Congressional delegation to observe the elections in Kosovo a year before war broke out, visited Basra and Baghdad, Iraq in October of 2003 and most recently participated in a study trip to Jeddah and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Greater Detroit area is home to the largest Arab-American community in the United States and has a great diversity of Christian and Muslim Arab religious communities. Mr. Bruley served as liaison to these communities for Bonior’s congressional office. To this day, Mr. Bruley continuous to be a speaker and participant in mosque and church community activities. He has also been a speaker and participant at the yearly gathering of the Islamic Society of North America. For more than 15 years, Mr. Bruley participated in the official U.S. Congress - Bundestag staff exchange program.

Sarmad Hussain, Pakistan / Germany

Since 2001, Sarmad Hussain has been the foreign policy advisor and Chief of Staff to am Klaus-Werner Jonas, an SPD-party Member of the German Parliament. Before that, he was at the speechwriting section of the President of the German Parliament and the Committee on European Affairs. He worked also at NATO in Brussels the German Permanent Mission to United Nations in New York and the European Parliament. His recent publications include pares about the CFSP and the relation between NATO and EU as well as a booklet about Parliamentary terminology written for the German Parliament. He is fluent in German, English, French, Urdu and Hindi. He holds an MA in Political Science and International Law from the Unviersity of Bonn and is a PhD candidate at the University of Bonn, Germany. His research topic is the EU common foreign and security policy and the European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). Sarmad is a fellow of the 2000 Manfred Woerner Seminar. His most recent TV appearance was an interview in CNN-International on "The New Immigration Law in Germany" in October 2002.