Contact: Sammy McDavid
A two-member delegation from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will visit Mississippi State University and Jackson next week. They are special guests of MSU's Janos Radvanyi Chair in International Security Studies and the colleges of Arts and Sciences and Business and Industry.
Ambassadors Ginte B. Damusis and Robert Serry will lead a Wednesday [Nov. 17] campus seminar for students and faculty titled "NATO's Mission in the Post-Cold War Era." The program begins at 10 a.m. in 125 McCool Hall. While on campus, they also will tour several defense-related research units.
On Thursday [the 18th], they will be featured speakers for Jackson's Executive Lecture Forum. Topics for the 11:30 a.m. luncheon program at the University Club are "The New, Enlarged NATO" and "NATO's Peacekeeping Role in the World."
Joining ELF members at the event will be state and local government officials, as well as Jackson-area university and college students and law enforcement specialists. Following the luncheon program, the diplomats will lead a seminar, also at the University Club, titled "NATO's Role in the Fight against International Terrorism."
Damusis heads the Lithuanian mission to the defense association that was established in 1949 initially to provide a collective response by major Western European and North American nations to perceived world communist threats. When the North Atlantic Council was opened to new allies from Eastern Europe in 2003, she became the first female ambassador in NATO history.
Serry is deputy assistant secretary general for crisis management and operations at the organization's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Born in India, he is a cum laude political science graduate of the University of Amsterdam, Holland.
Prior to the Jackson luncheon, the diplomats are scheduled to meet with Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck; Maj. Gen. Harold Cross, adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard; and Leland Speed, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority.
Megan Minnion, NATO's acting U.S. information officer, will accompany the diplomats on their Mississippi visit.
While programs involving the NATO representatives are not open to the general public, members of the news media are invited to attend any or all that may be of interest. Because of limited space at both the MSU and Jackson locations, reporters planning to attend are asked to contact the Radvanyi Chair office in advance by telephone at (662) 325-8406.