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ASIA-PACIFIC COLLEGE OF DIPLOMACY

Fast Forward to the Past? The Line in the Sand from Iraq to Iran

Professor Ramesh Thakur
Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (UNU)

and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations

Wednesday 24 May 2006, 6.15pm

Coombs Lecture Theatre, Building 8a, Fellows Road
The Australian National University

This lecture is free and open to the public

Ramesh Thakur was Professor of International Relations and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Professor and Head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra before joining UNU in 1998. He was a Commissioner on the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and one of the principal authors of its report The Responsibility to Protect , and Senior Advisor on Reforms and Principal Writer of the UN Secretary-General's second reform report. Educated in India and Canada , he has served on advisory bodies on peace and disarmament to the governments of Australia and New Zealand and currently serves on the advisory boards of several research institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America . He is the author/editor of some twenty books, the most recent being The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press). He also writes regularly for the national and international quality press.

This talk will build on Professor Thakur's well attended and well received public lecture on the Iraq War at the ANU in April 2003. In this talk, he will look at the implications of the war for the UN, show how the goals being pursued in Iraq have been undermined by the means, and argue that the liberation of the people from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime was a collateral benefit amidst much damage to principles, institutions and relations. His thesis is that the Iraq War has complicated the international community's efforts to fashion a robust collective response to the nuclear challenge posed by Iran .

For further information, please contact:

Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies, T: 6125 4982, E: CAIS@anu.edu.au

Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, T: 6125 7983, E: ExecutiveOfficer.APCD@anu.edu.au

Acceptances appreciated