Partisan feuding is undermining America's ability to use our leadership in science in technology to advance U.S. foreign policy and competitiveness.

That was the message delivered today in Menlo Park by a panel of stellar scientists and political leaders, including president emeritus of CalTech and Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore and former Secretary of Defense William Perry.

Some of the most important work done on nuclear security happened far from the negotiating table through unofficial scientific diplomacy, and it's time to revitalize those unofficial channels. "We tunneled beneath government bureaucracy," Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, told the group in describing his meetings in 1992 through 1994 with Russian nuclear scientists. Those meetings led to a program to keep track of nuclear fissile material during the years the USSR was dismantling and the Russian economy was collapsing.

Perry said scientists working in similar scientific exchanges will be key to the success of future foreign policy endeavors.

The panel applauded President Obama's move to appoint three science envoys to begin work in Muslim-majority countries. Their mission is to use American expertise in science to support technological development and create new jobs in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Baltimore likened contact in the Muslim world today to the early days of opening China.

It was not lost on anyone that the meeting was held in Silicon Valley, which leads the nation and the world in scientific endeavors, but, Hecker said, demonstrates little interest in participating in international security issues.

Partnership for a Secure America, a coalition of scientific and governmental leaders, organized the event with funding from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and the support of CRDF and AAAS.