The Possibilities of Dialogue
January 2007
Banner photo: Herby Sachs/version-foto.de
Dialogue on War, Peace and the Nuclear Threat Published
The English-language edition of A Quest for Global Peace--Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat was published in October 2006. The dialogue between the late Sir Joseph Rotblat (1908-2005), Nobel Peace Laureate and emeritus president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda was published by I. B. Tauris of London. Dr. Rotblat and Mr. Ikeda met twice and collaborated on the dialogue via correspondence. It was first published as a series in the Japanese monthly magazine, Ushio.
The dialogues cover fundamental issues of war and peace, the ethics of nuclear deterrence and Joseph Rotblat's career from the Manhattan Project to the Pugwash Conferences and his Nobel Prize. Rotblat's lifelong mantra was that scientists have a moral responsibility to save lives, not destroy them.
Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century, a dialogue between former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Mr. Ikeda, has recently been published in Icelandic, the ninth language into which it has been translated. Speaking at a symposium at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik on October 20, Mr. Gorbachev stated that the book serves as witness to the importance of the kind of dialogue he has been advocating for many years. The symposium was held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the historic summit meeting between then Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik in 1986.
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