The President of Latvia and NATO Secretary-General to Speak at Riga Conference
15.11.2006
RIGA, Latvia— Today in Riga, Latvia, the organizers of the RIGA CONFERENCE announced that the President of Latvia, Dr. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will speak at the conference, as they released the agenda and full list of participants for the senior-level Riga Conference.
The Riga Conference - Transforming NATO in a Global Era, will occur November 27-29, 2006, in Riga during the NATO Riga Summit. The Riga Conference will convene decision-makers who shape, enact, and exercise the policies at the core of NATO’s agenda, for three days of public examination of the most crucial of those issues.
The Riga Conference will focus on NATO’s continuing transformation — on its outreach and new relationships around the world, the question of expanding NATO’s role in global crises, energy security, Afghanistan, the Balkans, its future with Russia, and its own future for enlargement.
Confirmed participants from more than 25 countries and international bodies include heads of state, senior parliamentarians, ministers from throughout the NATO alliance, military leaders, CEOs, leaders of reform, and internationally-respected issue experts. They will take part in an intense program of public and private meetings.
The Conference organizers also announced that The Riga Papers, special and original analyses of these urgent issues, will be released on Monday, 20 November 2006, one week prior to The Riga Conference. The Riga Papers are being prepared by world-renowned policy experts to frame the issues for these debates.
The Riga Conference has been created by a special partnership of three entities committed to productive development of international policy — The Strategic Analysis Commission under the Auspices of the Office of the President of Latvia, the Latvian Transatlantic Organization (LATO), and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).
The partners organizing The Riga Conference also share a commitment to public education on international policy formation, and they will provide all public sessions of The Riga Conference live on the Internet in streaming video and audio. All public sessions will also be transmitted for television live via satellite with a free downlink and unencrypted transmission. Transcripts and complete MP3 audio files of all public sessions will be posted as soon as possible after sessions conclude.
Information for the public and for media about agenda, participants, live web casts, live TV satellite transmissions with free downlink, transcripts, MP3 files and other information about The Riga Conference will be posted as soon as such information is available on the official host country website of the NATO Riga Summit, www.rigasummit.lv and by link from the websites of the organizing partners:
Website of the Office of the President of Latvia: The Strategic Analysis Office in the Office of the President of Latvia
www.lato.lv website of LATO, the Latvian Transatlantic Organization
www.gmfus.org Website of the German Marshall Fund of the United States
Media Contacts
Ms Antje Knorr
GMF/German Marshall Fund of the U.S., TransAtlantic Center in Brussels, Email: AKnorr@gmfus.org
Tel: + 32 2 238 5292
Ms Dagnia Stukena, LATO, Latvian Transatlantic Organization, Riga, Latvia, Email: dagnija@lato.lv , Tel: + 371 701 7754
