9 May 03 - Conference: War in Iraq and Black Sea Regional Security
On 9 May 2003 the Russia and Eurasia Programme hosted a one-day international conference entitled ‘War in Iraq and Black Sea Regional Security’.
The conference was organised with the Harvard University Black Sea Security Programme. Conference participants included senior officials from the Ministries of Defence, National Security Councils, Foreign Ministries and Parliaments as well as representatives of think-tanks and academic institutes from eight countries of the Black Sea Region: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.
In addition to regional participants, the conference was attended by IISS senior experts, representatives of the UK government, members of London-based think-tanks and selected press representatives.
The conference presented an opportunity for representatives of the Black Sea region countries, British and other participants to assess the impact of the US-led military campaign in Iraq on Black Sea regional security, focusing particularly on US relations with Turkey, geo-political and security challenges for the South Caucasus and implications for major regional infrastructure projects (such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline). In addition, the conference analysed the impact of the Iraq crisis on NATO’s future role with reference to the NATO enlargement process following the NATO summit in Prague, as well as NATO’s relations with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
Conference speakers included
Professor Michael Clarke, Director of the International Policy Institute, King’s College London
Jonathan Stevenson, Senior Fellow for Counter-terrorism, IISS
Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform
Dr Shirin Akiner, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University
Eric Povel, NATO
Omer Tuzel, Head of Disarmament Section, MFA (Turkey;
Movses Akopian, Advisor to the Minister of Defence (Armenia)
Elman Agaev, Deputy Head of Security Affairs Department, Ministry of Defence (Azerbaijan
Colonel Mitko Zapryanov, Defence Information Service (Bulgaria)
Major-General Tudor Munteanu, Deputy Secretary of State (Romania)
Boris Andresyuk, Deputy Chair of the National Security and Defence Committee, Ukrainian Parliament
Colonel Sergei Gutsu, Ministry of Defence (Moldova)
Mamuka Kudava, MFA (Georgia).
Agenda - [22 KB]
Download the Agenda in MS Word format
