The founder and editor of a newspaper in Azerbaijan, a Macedonian attorney, the head of a parliamentary caucus in Kosovo and a Slovenian realtor, along with scholars, activists and political leaders from Romania, Russia, Kyrgyztan, Georgia, Croatia, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, spent a November morning trailing tours of schoolchildren through the Skirball Cultural Center.

The outing was one of the final activities for the group of 18 political and cultural leaders from the new democracies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, who visited Los Angeles under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

This year marks the 14th anniversary of the joint program, Promoting Tolerance in Central and Eastern Europe.

"In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we, along with the Naumann Foundation knew we wanted to contribute to the development of new democracies," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of International Jewish Affairs for the AJCommittee. "We wanted to identify future leaders in culture, education and politics and show them the types of programs and projects in America for promoting diversity and pluralism."

Since the program began, in 1992, many of its participants have gone on to become foreign ministers, members of parliament and heads of nongovernmental organizations, he said.

Exposure to Jewish life in America is a key part of the program. The group dined in the homes of committee members, attended Shabbat services and met with Jewish leaders throughout the country. This year, for the first time, there was one Jewish participant, from Moscow, but most have little or no knowledge of Judaism.

The program extends far beyond the Jewish community.

"We know that we can't focus on the safety of American Jews in isolation. We need the protection of laws for all minorities," Baker said. "We started out looking at the African-American experience, but now we also look at Asians, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities, and the homeless."

As the Skirball tour wound down, Ambassador David Shahnazaryan, co-founder of the Armenian National Party, admited that he would miss the group's next stop while he embarked on his own adventure in media and tolerance. He was about to be picked up, along with his friend Elchin Shikhlinskiy, founder and editor-in-chief of the Ayn" and Zerkalo newspapers of Azerbaijan, so they can speak on an Armenian television show broadcast from Glendale.

Both men emphasize that the appearance of an Azerbaijan editor on an Armenian show is quite extraordinary; the two countries have been engaged in a long conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in southwestern Azerbaijan, where there has been an active secessionist movement, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, despite a ceasefire in 1994.

The trip has forged many important liaisons, in addition to opening eyes to unknown worlds, says Giorgy Khutsishvili, founding director and chairman of International Center on Conflict and Negotiation based in Tbilisi.

"I knew of the American Jewish Committee," he said, "but I didn't know the scope of their work. This is a program that while promoting a Jewish perspective encourages diversity and tolerance everywhere there is ethnic tension. It is very much in line with liberal democratic values for peace and human rights. These ideas should be successful in a country like mine, where we have to integrate huge minorities and include them in democratic society."

The group left the Skirball to go to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in West Hollywood for the final presentation of their trip -- a luncheon and discussion on the media with panelists representing the NAACP, GLAAD (Gays and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination) and the Korean American Coalition.

"I think of the United States' experience as inspiring, but it is also important for us to realize that it has been going on for over 200 years and, of course, there are still problems," said Dr. Gjylnaze Syla, her parliament's caucus leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo.