On Monday 10 October 2005 Ambassador Wali-ur Rahman, Director of the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs in Dhaka, Bangladesh, will be leading a discussion on "Rites of Passage: Rise of Religious Extremism in Bangladesh and its Regional Implications". This event will take place between 2-4pm.
Ambassador Rahman served as a Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Bangladesh Government, as well as the Special Envoy of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, from 1997-1998. Earlier, he served as Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Italy, Switzerland and Tunisia, and as Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. Having joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1966, he resigned to set up the Bangladesh Permanent Observer Mission to the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva, and served as its first Head of Mission from 1971-75.
In 1993, Ambassador Rahman was a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford. He has addressed the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Nuffield College at Oxford and the National Defence College at Dhaka, among others, on South Asian security issues. He has several publications on Bangladesh’s foreign policy to his credit as well as translations of contemporary Bangla poems into French, the latter sponsored by the Bangla Academy.
Please RSVP (confirmations only) to Kathleen James at 020 7395 9109 or James@iiss.org 
