"On the road to a new, integrated Europe, she said, "it is no longer politically necessary nor advisable to divide countries into the 'good' and the 'bad' ones. The road to an integrated Europe will be easier and faster not by criticism and exaggeration of faults but by co-operation, by pooling of resources and forces able and willing to address the existing problems. I wish her words had been printed on all the material we received leading up to the conference. They would have concentrated our minds on the challenge before us -- and when I say "us" I address myself too and speak as one of what I shall call the Western countries. The challenge is to help people in Central and Western Europe and in the former countries of the USSR -- the journalists and the people - establish free media in places that for a long time were not free. I wish that we had all come to this conference more ready to co-operate and less concerned to score points. I wish we had shown ourselves more open-minded, and especially more open-hearted - I wish we had been a little more modest about our accomplishments and a lot more encouraging to our fellow journalists in the new democracies. If we came to Warsaw hoping to persuade them to see freedom of the press the way we do - - and clearly we in the West do not agree among ourselves on how we see it -- we would have been far more likely to succeed if we had started out not from where we are but from where they are. "Start from where the client is," social workers say. It's an inelegant phrase, but it's wise. Dr. Karol Jakubowicz gave us the cue in his key-note speech and again whenever he spoke in the discussion groups. "It is clear " he said, "that CSCE participating states can only now for the first time be engaged in a full, substantive and nuance discussion of the dilemmas they face, "free from ideological posturing or an undercurrent of defensiveness, suspicion and hostility." This gives us a chance, he said, to see how the ideals of free media could be more fully put into practice. "It is up to all of us gathered here today," he said at the start of the seminar, "to seize that chance." We didn't, and we are disappointed. But I hope we will next time we meet. And we will meet again. What happened this week had to happen. We had things, as we say in English, that we needed to get off our chests in public. It is good for the soul, and it clears the mind: I hope that next time we meet we will, therefore, be able to concentrate our minds on practical solutions to the problems that journalists face in Central and Eastern Europe and set up further initiatives -- to add to those already taken by many European and U.S. organisations -- to offer practical help. But if we are going to do that, we need to try harder than we have this week to understand the client. "As you look out the window," Dr. Jakubowicz said in one of the groups, "you see a society reinventing everything. That," he said, "takes time." Yes, and patience, especially when we see journalists in these countries reinventing their worlds in ways we don't think perfect. If we are interested in helping countries like Poland reinvent themselves, if we are interested in influencing the way they do it, we have to let them approach it in their own way. We have to let them determine the priorities. In the delightful words of a Norwegian delegate, "We can bring know-how on how democratic institutions are built and function. But beneficiary countries must do the plumbing." I want to suggest that next time we meet under these auspices we focus the debate on practical considerations. In the words of my colleague Keith Spicer, "these guys need help now." What they need is help in modernising their media. They need a pool of resources matched with a directory of needs. This could be a role for the CSCE, to bring people together to set up a sort of clearing house where those who need help and those who would like to help can come together." Before we meet again, we should determine -- by asking the journalists of Central and Eastern Europe - what their priorities are and then come prepared to help them meet those priorities by working with them in tightly focused groups, one on training, one on regulations, one on technical matters, and so on CSCE ODIHR BULLETIN Vol. 2, No. 1 36