Nuclear Age Peace Foundation president David Krieger was in Europe from July 2nd to July 9th. He was there to attend meetings of the International Council and Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES), where he serves as deputy chair of INES, and to give several talks. He gave the keynote address at the 40th anniversary meeting of the International Peace Research Association, spoke to some 150 participants from throughout Europe at the International Summer Academy of the Schlaining Peace Center, and gave a talk to the International Institute for Peace in Vienna.
Two of the speeches by David in Europe (“Nuclear Disarmament in a Time of Globalization” and “US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament”) can be found on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s web site at www.wagingpeace.org.On July 7th, David went to the Schlaining Peace Center, which is housed in an old castle in the Austrian countryside. His speech there the next morning was on “The US Peace Movement in a Time of ‘War against Terrorism.'”That afternoon he was taken to Vienna , where he did a radio interview and then spoke in the evening at the International Institute for Peace on “US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament.” He was introduced by the president of the Institute, Erwin Lanc, a former Foreign Minister of Austria.The main topics of the INES workshop were: Responsibility and Education (The Duality of Science and the Social Responsibility of Scientists; Ambivalence of R & D in Modern Biotechnology; Peace Education; Whistleblowers); War and Weapons (New Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Strategy; Uranium Weapons); Peace and Sustainability (Energy and Peace; Water and Peace; Climate Change and Energy Conflicts); War Politics and Peace Promotion (Nuclear Targeting and the Non-Proliferation Treaty); Disarmament (International Control of Nuclear-Usable Materials; Chemical Disarmament); and a session focusing on problems specific to Europe (Space Militarization from a European Point of View; Environmental Problems in the Danube Area; Europe under Construction; and Problems of Chemical Safety in Europe).Following the two-day INES Council and Executive Committee meetings, INES put on a two-day workshop that ran parallel to the meeting of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), which allowed for networking with many members of this worldwide association. David gave the keynote address to IPRA on “Nuclear Disarmament in a Time of Globalization.”The INES meetings were held in Sopron, Hungary , a small town near the border of Austria. The participants in INES are a strongly engaged group of scientists and engineers, and their work supports and complements that of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. There were representatives at the meeting from throughout Europe as well as from Russia and Latin America. Future plans of INES include organizing for the International Einstein Year 2005, in which it is playing a leading role. Starting this November, INES will begin a series of meetings on Einstein’s views on peace, disarmament and social responsibility. In 2006, INES plans to focus on the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl , looking at the continuing dangers of nuclear power. In 2007/2008, INES will organize another major international congress. These activities are in addition to their ongoing work on ethics in science, the prevention of nuclear proliferation, their opposition to both missile and missile defense developments and a variety of other projects.