CHEVY CHASE, Md., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a newly posted website book, Jeremy Stone is revealing detailed accounts of efforts since 1999 to resolve conflicts involving Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

In particular, the book shows that:

a). ON RUSSIA: A Russian Prime Minister proposed to President Clinton, in a private meeting in the Oval Office, that both sides reduce deployed nuclear offensive weapons to 1,000 each, with the United States being permitted, as a bonus, to build a small anti-ballistic missile system. This reduction is far below the levels now being negotiated.

This grand bargain proposal, designed and catalyzed by Stone, was turned down for political reasons. Underlying this, Stone believes, was an unwillingness to fight with the Defense Department over "extended deterrence"-a still current policy of maintaining the dangerous and unusable option of launching disarming nuclear attacks on Russia.

b). ON CHINA: In Taiwan, the Chen Shui-bian Administration formed a secret exploratory committee on the feasibility of building nuclear weapons. After the U.S. National Security Council was alerted, the Chen Administration put out an equivocal denial. There is reason to believe that Taiwan's latent nuclear program has never been dismantled.

c). ON NORTH KOREA: Sustained efforts were made to deter North Korea from selling fissionable material by catalyzing, from several quarters, a warning to North Korea that its fissionable material could be identified and North Korea's role uncovered.

d). ON IRAN: Unsuccessful efforts were made to persuade the Iranian Government to make good on its claims to have enunciated a fatwa against nuclear weapons by embedding it in Iranian legislation.

In an introduction lauding his activities, Morton H. Halperin, former Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, says that Stone's influence "has been as great as that of all but the most senior figures of government".

This second life memoir can be found at www.catalyticdiplomacy.org, where it is posted along with his first life-memoir, "Every Man Should Try: Adventures of a Public Interest Activist" (PublicAffairs, 1999).

About the Author:

Stone is 73 years old and, for 30 years, was the President of Federation of American Scientists (FAS). He has been President of Catalytic Diplomacy since 1999. Stone's biography can be found in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Stone.

SOURCE Catalytic Diplomacy

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