On 20 January 2003, the IISS hosted a conference which gathered some 120 senior government official, parliamentarians, journalists, members of the business community, and other opinion-makers from Europe, North America and Asia, to explore concrete recommendations for sustaining and building on the G8’s Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Materials of Mass Destruction, which was announced at the June 2002 G8 Summit. It was also the occasion for releasing the four-volume report, An Action Agenda for the Global Partnership.
The conference was part of the Strengthening the Global Partnership project, which is sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The project is led by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and brings together a consortium of 15 European, North American, and Asian policy research institutions, including IISS, to examine national and multilateral programmes to assist Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and related materials. The coalition assesses the implementation of the commitment made by G8 leaders at their June 2002 summit meeting to devote $20 billion over the next 10 years to prevent the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The objective of the project is also to identify future priorities, engage policy-makers and encourage further political and public support for expanded threat reduction efforts.
The conference opened on the morning of 20 January with welcoming remarks by Dr John Chipman, Director of IISS. This was followed by opening statements by Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, and US Senator Sam Nunn, Co-Chair of NTI. Martti Ahtisaari, Chairman of the Crisis Management Initiative and Former President of Finland, in the afternoon gave the keynote remarks. Among the prominent speakers were also Michèle Flournoy, Co-Director of the Strengthening the Global Partnership Project and Senior Adviser at CSIS, Salome Zourabichvili, Director of International and Strategic Affairs at the French Secretariat General pour la Defense Nationale (SGDN), Yukiya Amano, Director General for Arms Control and Scientific Affairs at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peter Ammon, Director General for Economic Affairs at the German Federal Foreign Office, Allan Poole, Senior Coordinator of the Global Partnership Program at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Mikhail Lysenko, Director of the Department for Security and Disarmament Affairs at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rocco Buttiglione, Italian Minister for European Policy, Marit Nybakk, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Defence of the Norwegian Parliament, Roland Wiederkehr, member of the Swiss National Council, Christoph Bertram, Director of Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Bruno Tertrais, Senior Research Fellow at Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, Carlo Trezza, General Director of Multilateral Political Affairs at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Henry Hyde, Chairman of the Committee on International Relations of the US House of Representatives. Participating in the panel which offered Russian perspectives were Vladimir Orlov, Director of the PIR Center for Policy Studies in Russia, Igor Sergeev, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Zinovy Pak, General Director of the Munitions Agency of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Kuchinov, Director of the Department of International Relations at the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy, and Sergey Netesov, Deputy Director General of the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR).
The report An Action Agenda for the Global Partnership, which was launched at the conference, provided a detailed action agenda to reduce the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. It also offered the first nation-by-nation assessment of what is currently being done to address the threat, identified gaps in existing non-proliferation assistance programmes in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union, made specific recommendations for future priorities, and proposed mechanisms for enhancing coordination.
