The conference seeks to take a fresh look at the geopolitical consequences of a major shift to natural gas in the coming decades; indeed by most estimates global consumption of gas will double by 2030. But in the ares of highest projected demand - North America, Europe, China, and South and East Asia - demand is expected to outstrip indigenous supply. This implies the need for a huge amount of investment in the expansion of cross border gas transport infrastructure to bring gas from supply centers - particularly Russia and the Middle East.

What are the geopolitical implications of a more gas-intensive world? What can the history of cross-border gas infrastructure investment tell us about the political, economic, and legal issues we are likely to face as we become more dependent of natural gas? Is there a "resource curse" for gas? What is the likelihood that gas producers form a cartel to control prices - a Gas OPEC?

Hosted by former Secretary of State James Baker, the Geopolitics of Gas: From Today to 2030 conference will bring together experts from industry and academia to discuss these questions and more. PESD and the Baker Institute will present results from historical case studies of major cross-border gas infrastructure investments and results from the first integrated global gas trade model; keynote speakers include the Minister of Energy and Mines for Algeria.

Leffler is the Edward R. Stettinius Professor of History at U.Va. He joined the faculty in 1986, after teaching at Vanderbilt, and chaired U.Va.'s Corcoran Department of History from 1990 to 1995. One of the country's leading authorities on modern U.S. foreign relations, he won the Bancroft Prize for his book A Preponderance of Power in 1993.

Leffler was a senior fellow at the Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo during 1993 and 1998, where he lectured on the Cold War. He served as president of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1994.

In 1990, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to a joint Soviet-American symposium on the Cold War in Moscow and Washington. He served in the office of the Secretary of Defense during the Carter years, where he worked on arms control, confidence-building measures, and contingency planning as a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP by 12:00 p.m. Monday, May 3 to Debbie Warren at dawarren@stanford.edu. Douglas H. Paal is the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial instrument for U.S. relations with Taiwan. Previously, he was president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center (APPC), a nonprofit institution in Washington, DC, which advocated bipartisan policy in the promotion of trade and investment, as well as defense and security ties across the Pacific. Prior to forming the APPC, Mr. Paal was special assistant to President Bush for National Security Affairs and senior director for Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, where he also served in the Reagan Administration. Mr. Paal has worked in the State Department with the Policy Planning Staff and as a senior analyst for the CIA. He also served in the U.S. Embassies in Singapore and Beijing. He studied Asian history at Brown and Harvard Universities and the Japanese language in Tokyo. He has published frequently on Asian affairs and national security issues.

Hawke will investigate SOE restructuring issues in the context of attracting foreign investment, through the prism of IMC's experience attempting to buy into Chinese companies on the nonperforming loan lists. IMC Global is the world's largest producer of phosphate and potassium fertilizers, about to merge with the fertilizer assets of Cargill to form a new company.

Prior to joining IMC in 1997, Hawke was a director at Salomon Brothers responsible for investment banking in China and, before that, a vice president of Citibank and Citibank's chief representative in China.

A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP by 12:00pm, Wednesday, April 21 to Rakhi Patel. In the last three years, partly as the result of the efforts of a burgeoning conservative movement, the issue of human rights in North Korea has attained greater prominence in the statements and policy positions of the U.S. government. The administration connects this shift in emphasis in U.S. policy to its calls for greater moral clarity in foreign policy. At the same time, the administration has clearly enunciated its desire for regime change in North Korea, and the human rights issue has served as a method of cultivating public support for this policy, both domestically and internationally. Toward this end, the administration has revived a Cold War foreign policy approach from the 1970s and 1980s that connected human rights to economic and security issues--exemplified in the Jackson-Vanik amendment linking trade to emigration levels for Soviet Jews and the inclusion of human rights issues in the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The application of this model to North Korea demonstrates a failure to understand the differences between Eastern Europe and East Asia in general and the nature of civil society under Soviet communism and North Korean juche. It also fails to draw any useful lessons from the experience of the European Union and South Korea in dealing with Pyongyang on human rights. The unquestionably dire human rights situation in North Korea--and the character of its government and society--requires a set of policy approaches that need updating from the Cold War period and adaptation to the North Korean and East Asian context. John Feffer's most recent book is North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003). He is also the editor of the Foreign Policy in Focus book Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Policy after September 11 (Seven Stories, 2003). His other books include Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options (Hill & Wang, 1990) and Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions (South End, 1992). His other edited collections include Living in Hope: People Challenging Globalization (Zed Books, 2002) and (with Richard Caplan) Europe's New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 1996). His articles have appeared in The American Prospect, The Progressive, Newsday, Asiaweek, Asia Times, TomPaine.com, Salon.com, and elsewhere. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal and has worked for the American Friends Service Committee, most recently as an international affairs representative in East Asia. He serves on the advisory committees of FPIF and the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea.