The EastWest Institute’s lauunched a new initiative to eliminate weapons of mass destruction at its 2008 Annual Awards Dinner on October 23, 2008. In line with the theme of the evening, the dinner honored the following distinguished guests for their tireless efforts to secure the world from the threat of such weapons:

• Former Secretaries of States Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, for their advocacy towards a nuclear-free world.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General, Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, for tirelessly working to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
• Joseph E. Robert Jr., Chairman of Business Executives for National Security (BENS), for galvanizing support in the private sector for new approaches to national security issues.

EWI has been working since December 2006 to establish a new East-West dialogue on WMD proliferation and security that better reconciles Asian views with those of the Euro-Atlantic community.

Over the past year, EWI’s work has produced a soon-to-be completed Joint Threat Assessment on Iran authored by U.S. and Russian arms control experts; high-level talks in Reykjavik and Washington between Americans, Russians, Indians, Pakistanis, Swiss and Japanese representatives on regional missile threats; and several high-level Track II discussions between China and the U.S. on WMD issues.

EWI’s long-term goal is to mobilize for a WMD global summit in 2012, building on its unrivaled record of bringing opposing parties together.