10Th U Thant Lecture on 14 October Will Consider the Role of the UN Secretary-General

03 October 2005

MR/E28/05

10th U Thant Lecture on 14 October Will Consider “The Role of the UN Secretary-General”

H.E. Mr. Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, will deliver the 10th U Thant Distinguished Lecture at 2:30 PM on Friday, 14 October, at UN House in Tokyo. The topic of Mr. Anand’s lecture will be “The Role of the United Nations Secretary-General: The Past as Prelude to the Future”.

Mr. Anand’s lecture is being jointly organized by United Nations University (UNU) Centre, UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), and the Science Council of Japan (SCJ); it is co-sponsored by the U Thant Institute (UTI) and the Embassy of Sweden in Japan. This event is being held on the occasion of the Dag Hammarskjöld Centenary, as 2005 marks the centenary of the birth of former United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. In his lecture, Mr. Anand will reflect on the professional lives and careers of former United Nations Secretary-Generals, including Dag Hammarskjöld (1953–1961) and U Thant (1961–1971), as well as elaborate on the report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that he chaired last year.

During his distinguished public service career, Mr. Anand has served Thailand in a number of high-level posts: Prime Minister, Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Ambassador to the United States. He also served from 1991 to 2002 as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saha-Union Public Co. Ltd.. More information about Mr. Anand, including a complete biography, is available online at http://www.anandp.in.th/.

Following his lecture, Mr. Anand will participate in a panel discussion with H.E. Dr. Bernhard Zepter (Ambassador and Head of the European Delegation to Japan), Prof. Peter Wallensteen (Hammarskjöld Professor of International Organizations at Uppsala University, Sweden), Beatrice Pouligny (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI/Sciences-Po/CNRS)), Akiko Fukushima (National Institute for Research Advancement), and Prof. Ramesh Thakur (Senior Vice-Rector, UNU). The topic of their discussion will be “Reforming the United Nations: A Panel Discussion on the Outcome of the World Summit”. A question and answer session will follow. Members of the public who wish to attend may download a registration form from http://www.unu.edu/uthant_lectures/lec10/Anand-reply.doc. For those unable to attend, the event will be “webcast” live (and archived) at http://c3.unu.edu/unuvideo/?73.

The U Thant Distinguished Lecture series is a forum through which eminent thinkers and world leaders speak on the challenges facing the world’s peoples and nations in the twenty-first century. Previous lecturers have included a prime minister, four current/former presidents, and four Nobel Laureates. Additional information about this lecture series and its speakers is accessible online at http://www.unu.edu/uthant_lectures/index.htm.

Media representatives are cordially invited to attend the 10th U Thant Distinguished Lecture. Simultaneous English–Japanese interpretation will be provided for the event. For more information, or to reserve a media space at the event, please contact Naoko Yano, UNU Office of Communications (tel: 03-5467-1311; e-mail: ).