BASIC held a roundtable in Istanbul, on October 24 and 25, 2012, in support of the 2012 conference on a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.
The Track II event, held in coordination with the office of the conference facilitator, Jaakko Laajava of Finland, was attended by expert and government representatives from the region and beyond.
Read the final report from the roundtable: here.
A flurry of media reports in the past week have sounded the alarm over purported advancements in Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme and Israel’s willingness to launch a first strike to prevent Iran obtaining a bomb. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak have raised the stakes in the full knowledge that the U.S. is less than three months from a presidential election.
The United Nations Association of the UK has submitted evidence to the BASIC Trident Commission, seeking to address two of the Commission's main questions that it is investigating.
Today is the 67th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear explosion test, known as “Trinity”, which used a plutonium core. It was unnecessary for the first use of a nuclear warhead, on Hiroshima three weeks later, as designers were so confident about that form of HEU ‘gun-type’ warhead.
Deeper nuclear cooperation between the UK and France is possible but constrained by a number of factors, including the close relationship between the UK and US, and could lock the two nuclear futures together and prevent unilateral steps towards disarmament, according to a new expert report by French researcher Dr Bruno Tertrais for the BASIC Trident Commission.
BASIC's executive director, Paul Ingram, was featured in an article on NorthJersey.com by Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov, and Jonathan Tirone. The article covers the E3+3 (P5+1) discussions with Iran in Moscow, which ended on June 19th without any breakthroughs. Ingram was quoted as saying, “The nuclear crisis will only be resolved when Iran's role within the region is fully addressed…a conversation about Syria and Bahrain is part of that.”
Read the full article on NorthJersey.com:
Paul Ingram, executive director of BASIC, was quoted in an article by Jonathan Tirone, Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer on Bloomberg Businessweek about the E3+3 (P5+1) talks with Iran in Moscow this week. Political tensions are high as there has been much preparation for this meeting on Iran's nuclear program.
Diplomats at the 2012 NPT Preparatory Committee have been discussing an extraordinary range of issues, but the highlight of this week’s agenda was Jaakko Laajava, Finnish Ambassador and facilitator of the 2012 Conference on a WMD free zone in the Middle East, on Tuesday morning giving his first official presentation of his consultations throughout the past seven months.