Members of Luxembourg Forum Supervisory Council to Search for New Solutions on Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Members of the Supervisory Council:

- Viatcheslav Kantor, President of the Luxembourg Forum;

- Hans Blix, Ambassador, former Director General of the IAEA, Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission;

- Igor Ivanov, Professor of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, former Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation;

- Nikolay Laverov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), former Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Science and Technology;

- Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, former Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, Senator;

- William Perry, Professor at Stanford University, former U.S Secretary of Defence;

- Roald Sagdeev, Director of the East-West Center at the University of Maryland, Academician;

- Rolf Ekeus, Ambassador, former High Commissioner on National Minorities at the OSCE;

- Gareth Evans, Convenor of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Honorary Professorial Fellow of the Australian National University (former co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Australia).

Members of the Supervisory Board will review the Forum’s activities over the previous year, analyse the existing situation with nuclear arms limitation and reduction and nuclear non-proliferation, and set objectives for 2012. The meeting is expected to be attended by Deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation Anatoly Antonov, Deputy Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Nikolay Spassky, and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of the RF Federal Assembly Mikhail Margelov.

In the current year, the Luxembourg Forum pursued its dynamic course of activity. On June 13-14, 2011 in Stockholm, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Forum Working Group held a joint meeting on perspectives of nuclear proliferation and disarmament after the entry into force of the new START Treaty. In the meeting’s final document, the Forum’s members advised immediately progressing to the next stage in Russian-U.S. negotiations within the framework of further action plans upon the new START Treaty’s entry into force, starting early consultations on non-strategic nuclear weapons without reference to other disarmament matters, and resuming negotiations on conventional forces in Europe.

To create the groundwork for further cooperation in development and deployment of anti-ballistic missile defence systems, the Luxembourg Forum’s members advised reactivating the project to create a joint data centre for missile warning and launch notification systems and ABM information systems and recommencing joint Russia-NATO ballistic missile exercises and field training.

The Forum’s members demanded that Iran fully comply with its safeguard obligations to the IAEA, sign the Convention on Nuclear Safety and promptly ratify the Additional Protocol (1997) to the IAEA Safeguard Agreement. The final document also contained a warning addressed to North Korean leaders to withhold from triggering a crisis on the peninsula and from expanding their missile and nuclear programmes.

Members of the Luxembourg Forum called for an intensive dialogue among experts in their efforts to develop new ideas and search for solutions to facilitate the process of disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The Supervisory Council of the International Luxembourg Forum will continue its work in Moscow looking for new solutions in arms control and non-proliferation with consideration of the current status of relations between Russia and the U.S./NATO, key provisions of the IAEA Report on Iran’s nuclear programme and the intentions of certain countries to acquire nuclear power. Following the two-day meeting, members of the Supervisory Council of the Luxembourg Forum will submit their recommendations to heads of state, political leaders and the heads of international organisations dealing with nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.