IRC 2018 - SESSION II

Chair

Amb (Retd.) Satinder Lambah

Chairman, Ananta Aspen Centre, India;
Former Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of India

Ambassador Satinder Lambah joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1964. He was the Deputy Secretary General of the 7th Non Aligned Summit held in New Delhi and later Coordinator of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments meeting in India (1983).

His specialization includes the Indian neighbourhood and economic diplomacy. He opened the Indian Embassy in Bangladesh after liberation and has a long experience in dealing with Pakistan and Afghanistan. He served as the Indian ambassador to Hungary, Germany and Russia, and Consul General of India to San Francisco. He also served as the High Commissioner to Pakistan.

After retirement from the Indian Foreign Service he has been the Special Envoy to the Prime Minister of India (Rank of Minister of State from 2010 onwards), co-Chairman of the Task Force on National Security (2011-12), President of Association of Indian Diplomats (2005), Convener of the National Security Advisory Board (2004-05), President of the Federation of Indo-German Societies in India (2004-14), Special Envoy of the Government of India for Afghanistan, and led the Indian delegation to the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan (2001-02).

Speakers

Vice-Admiral Anup Singh (Retd.)

Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command, India

Vice Admiral Anup Singh (Retd) is engaged with the seminar/dialogue circuit, his areas of specialisation include Maritime Security, China's Maritime Activism and the Law of the Sea. He is visiting faculty at the National Defence College (NDC) and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), New Delhi. Associated with some Think Tanks in an honorary capacity, he is Director (Strategic Studies) at the Society for Indian Ocean Studies (SIOS). In the recent past, he has been a member of IDSA's Executive Council; and Member of the India-Indonesia Eminent Persons Group (EPG).

He has also been Advisor (History) to the Indian Navy.

Dr. Shrikant Paranjpe

Department of Defence and Strategic Studies,
Savitribai Phule Pune University

Dr. Shrikant Paranjpe is currently Honorary Adjunct Professor in the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India.

He was a Jawaharlal Nehru National Fellow (ICSSR) and Professor in the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, and Director Yashwantrao Chavan National Centre of International Security and Defence Analysis (YCNISDA), Savitribai Phule Pune University.

He was a Fulbright Fellow (Post-Doctoral, Research) at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. and a Visiting Professor at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. He has published several books and articles in the area of security studies and international relations.

Amb (Retd.) Rakesh Sood

Former Ambassador to Nepal and France,
Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

Ambassador Rakesh Sood joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976 and has served in the Indian missions at Brussels, Dakar, Geneva and Islamabad in different capacities and as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, later in his career. He set up the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division in the Foreign Ministry, which he led for nine years till the end of 2000.

During this period, he was in charge for multilateral disarmament negotiations, bilateral dialogues with Pakistan, strategic dialogues with other countries including US, UK, France and Israel (especially after the nuclear tests in 1998), non-proliferation related export controls and dealt with India’s role in the ASEAN Regional Forum, as part of the 'look East' policy.

He then served as India’s first Ambassador – Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva. Subsequently, he was India's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to early 2008, Ambassador to Nepal from 2008 to 2011 and to France from 2011 to March 2013. In September 2013, Ambassador Sood was appointed Special Envoy of the Prime Minister for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Issues; a position he held till May 2014.