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| Ambassador Richard Butler
Former Executive Chairman, United Nations Special Commission;
President, Economic and Social Council of the United Nations;
Diplomat-in-Residence, Council of Foreign Relations International Leadership in the Control of Biological Weapons Published proceedings Raw transcript Next speaker |
Professional Biography
Richard Butler is Diplomat in Residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York. From 1997 to 1999, he was Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with the disarmament of Iraq. For five years prior to that appointment, he was Australian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York. In the earlier part of his foreign service career, he was posted to the Australian Embassies at: Vienna, where he was the Deputy Permanent Representative of Australia to the International Atomic Energy Agency; United Nations, New York; Singapore; Bonn and, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris. In 1983, he was appointed Australia?s first Ambassador for Disarmament. In that role he led the Australian Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and was charged with conducting all Australian disarmament negotiations, both in United Nations institutions and, directly, with individual countries. In 1989, he was appointed Australian Ambassador to Thailand and, simultaneously in 1991, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia to the Supreme National Council of Cambodia. He was deeply involved in the negotiation of the Cambodian peace agreements. In 1992, the General Assembly of the United Nations elected him Chairman of the United Nations Preparatory Committee for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, commemorated in 1995. In 1994, he was elected President of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. In that role, he established UNAIDS – the global AIDS program. He was also Vice Chairman of the World Summit on Social Development, held in Copenhagen in March 1995. In November 1995, the Prime Minister of Australia appointed him Convenor of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. In 1996, he managed the adoption by the United Nations of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He holds degrees from the University of Sydney (economics) and the Australian National University (international relations) and, in May 1996, he was made a Doctor of the University by the University of New England, Australia. On Australia Day, 1988, he was made a member of the Order of Australia "for Services to International Peace and Disarmament". His book, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security was published in 2000. | 
