London
BASIC co-sponsored a workshop in Ankara in collaboration with USAK, ACA and the Hamburg Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy on NATO’s nuclear posture. A summary of the meeting is here, and papers arising from the meeting will soon be published. One of the sessions was chaired by BASIC’s Research Director Ian Kearns, and Paul Ingram, Executive Director, presented a paper entitled “Reducing reliance on nuclear weapons: Options for the new Strategic Concept and beyond”. The following day we organised a delegation to Parliament, the Defense and Foreign Ministries. Turkey, a host of US sub-strategic nuclear weapons, plays an important role in the debate over the future of deployed nuclear weapons in Europe, and this seminar and delegation initiated an important process that could encourage the Turks to play an active and positive role in this debate.
BASIC and the Top Level Group convened a seminar in Parliament that attracted a number of senior Parliamentarians with a wealth of experience at the heart of government, who discuss in detail Britain’s nuclear weapons options. Participants congratulated us for organising such an informed and open-minded discussion on the issues facing the British government today.
Cairo
Anne Penketh, our Washington Program Director, travelled to Cairo where she addressed a regional nuclear security conference on the WMD-free zone in the Middle East. She explained why sponsors of the 2012 conference on establishing a WMD-free zone need to step up to the plate to avoid a fiasco. Her intervention was praised at the end of the conference by one of the organisers, Mohamed Shaker of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs who is a living legend of non-proliferation.
This October we have had several media hits. See for example:
British Budget Collapse Foreshadows Cuts to Come in U.S. Defense Budget
Talk Works interviews Paul Ingram on Trident
Leading Experts on NATO’s Nuclear Policy and Turkish Security [JTW Interview]
“NATO’s Deterrence Posture & Turkish Security” Seminar Held at USAK
Looking forward – 15-16 November – BASIC alongside NATO Watch, ISIS-Europe and Bertelsmann Stiftung are organizing the Shadow Summit II: Civil Society Perspectives on the Lisbon Summit and NATO’s New Strategic Concept, in Brussels. For more info and to register click here.
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