U.S., Russian Students Talk Treaties at Monterey Conference

An article from the Monterey Herald.
Copyright © Monterey Herald.
URL: http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_12216947
By KEVIN HOWE
Herald Staff Writer
Updated: 04/24/2009 08:25:18 AM PDT

Given the pace of nuclear disarmament talks between the United States and Russia, some students from both countries taking part in a youth conference in Monterey this week may well find themselves across the negotiating table from one another in the future.

More than 70 high school students and teachers from 10 U.S. high schools and 10 schools in Russia's closed nuclear cities have gathered to present their research on eliminating nuclear weapons at "Nuclear Disarmament: Challenges, Opportunities, and Next Steps" held at the Hyatt Regency Monterey.

The conference, sponsored by the Monterey Institute of International Studies' James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, opened Thursday. It is the 12th annual student conference focusing on major international issues sponsored by the center, said Masako Toki, project manager for the nonproliferation studies program.

"It's the culmination of a much longer program," Toki said. Students and teachers study issues related to the conference from the beginning of the school year.

There are a number of schools on a waiting list to participate, said Elena Sokova, assistant director of the James Martin Center.

"Before they come here," she said, the students "have a full semester of activities, and we start training their teachers in the fall."

The center provides materials that give guidance to the conference's topic, and students prepare research papers and programs to present. The topics change each year.

Getting students together from two formerly hostile superpowers is an important contribution to international understanding, Sokova said.

"We believe education is the most sustainable way to accomplish peace and disarmament," she said. "There's no other program like it."

Student presentations at the conference ranged from academic papers and formal panel discussions to interactive video programs. The presentations dramatize the issues of disarmament and retrace the history of negotiations from the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties in 1991 and 2000.

The talks outlasted the old Soviet Union, noted students Boris Samoylenko and Alina Chelysheva of Linguistic Gymnasia 164 in Zelenogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. But the series of treaties did not prevent other countries — India, Pakistan and Israel — from acquiring the weapons, even though 1968's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was supposed to limit nuclear arms to the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Teacher Nelli Porseva of Zelenogorsk has been taking part in the James Martin Center program for the past five years.

While delegations from U.S. schools have numbered up to a dozen teachers and students from a single school, most Russian schools can only send two or three, she said, because of travel expenses. The schools, the center and the students share costs for attending the program.

"It is the climax of a year's work," she said, "their final presentation."

The Russian students come from cities that contain nuclear facilities, she said, and those cities are closed to the public, including Russians. Everyone entering them must get government permission to do so.

The students' parents, she said, are "the technical elite" of Russia.

Porseva said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nuclear cities, along with other national assets, suffered a severe period of neglect.

"But things have changed. Things are getting better," she said.

The students broke into brainstorming groups early Thursday to see if they could thrash out a third Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty (the first was reached in 1972, the second in 1979).

They will reconvene today for the final series of presentations and awards before heading home this weekend.

Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.