Tokyo, Thursday, 26 August, 1999
From: Mahdi Elmandjra <elmandjr@maghrebnet.com>
FOR INFORMATION
On 19 July 1999, I received an invitation from Unesco's International Research Center for Human Sciences to attend the Symposium organized for the Launching of the "International Year for the Culture of Peace" (Byblos, 14-16 Sept. 1999). Here are extracts from my reply of the 24th of July 1999 to that invitation:
"Many thanks for your message dated 19 July concerning the Symposium to be held in Byblos on the occasion of the launching of the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace on 14 September...
... For quite some time now I have systematically refused all invitations of any gathering organized by an inter-governmental organization of whatever kind it may be. This is for reasons which are mine. Before I can give you an answer of principle please send me the list of participants (with their nationality) at the Symposium and inform me as the governmental officials from the host country or elsewhere who will be attending..."
I was told that they would be no officials and the only name that was given to me was that of Johan Galtung (a good and respected friend). On the 24 th of July, I wrote to the organizers,
" ... I really don't know why I accepted your invitation. To tell you the truth, my only wish it that the bureaucrats at Unesco do not follow up on it".
Today, I received an email asking me to check my CV in a document which included the CV's of the three other main speakers at the Symposium : Perez De Cuellar, Johan Galtung and Alejandro Bendana (former Ambassador of Nicaragua to the U.N). Here is the answer I sent to the organizers this morning. The Asian environment has forced me to be a little calm and to abuse of the British understatement,
"... having read the CV's, it is difficult for me to participate in a meeting devoted to peace with people who have not been very respectful of its basic principles and whom I have systematically criticized in my writings. The culture of war is not my "Culture of Peace" ... Good luck !!!"
Mahdi Elmandjra
See the letters I sent to the then Secretary General of the UN on 1/01/91 & 16/02/91 and have remained unanswered to this day in :
URL – http://www.elmandjra.org/livre3/ANNEX1SG.htm