"Afghanistan: Beginning of the Endgame?" will be the topic of a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson School at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, March 29, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. A public reception will follow the discussion in Shultz dining room.

Panelists will include Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD); Ambassador Robert Finn, Lecturer of Public and International Affairs,
Research Associate, LISD and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan; Lt. Col. Christopher J. Ireland, U.S. Air Force officer with the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell at the Pentagon; and Ambassador Francesc Vendrell, former EU Special Representative to Afghanistan; and Daoud Yaqub, Visiting Research Scholar Collaborator at LISD/WWS, Princeton University.

Danspeckgruber is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University and has been teaching on issues of state, security, self-determination, diplomacy, and crisis diplomacy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Politics since 1988. He is also founder and chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium on European and International Affairs, a private diplomacy forum in Liechtenstein. In 2006, during Austria’s Presidency of the European Union he served as academic advisor to the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations. Since 2001 he has visited Afghanistan, China, India (Kashmir), Israel, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and has been involved in related private diplomacy. He recently dited the “Petersberg Papers on Afghanistan and the Region” an LCM Report available from LISD.

Ambassador Robert Finn currently has a dual appointment in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. From 2003-2005 he was the Ertegun Visiting Professor in the Near East Studies Department of Princeton University. He served as the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from March 2002 until August 2003. Previously, he had also been the Ertegun Professor at Princeton, following service as the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 1998 until July of 2001. His other diplomatic postings include Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in Turkey, Lahore in Pakistan and Zagreb, Croatia. He opened the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1992.

Lt Col Christopher J. Ireland is an 18-year US Air Force officer currently assigned to the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell of the Joint Staff, and is stationed at the Pentagon.  A career aviator with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he most recently returned from Afghanistan in early March following a brief tour at the Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force in Kabul.  While there, he conducted planning to support the Afghan government in reintegration activities.

Ambassador Francesc Vendrell, was the former EU Special Representative to Afghanistan (2002-2008), a Senior Visiting Fellow at LISD and the Frederick H. Schultz '51 Professor of International Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School during the 2008-2009 academic year. Prior to this, he was Special Adviser to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs during Spain’s EU Presidency. From January 2000 to December 2001, he was Personal Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA). Between 1993 and 2000, Vendrell served as Director for Asia and the Pacific Division in the UN Department of Political Affairs.

In 1992, Ambassador Vendrell served as Senior Political Adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Haiti and Director for Special Political Assignments, including serving as the Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Between 1987 and 1992, he was Director for Europe and the Americas in the Office of the Secretary-General and the Secretary General’s Deputy Personal Representative for the Peace Process in Central America, including the Guatemalan, El Salvador and Nicaraguan peace negotiations.

Daoud Yaqub is a Visiting Research Scholar Collaborator at LISD/WWS, Princeton University. He holds the degree of Juris Doctor, and previously served as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Foundation in Washington DC. After participating in the 2001 Bonn Conference, he returned to his native Afghanistan and worked for the Afghan Government in a number of capacities, including as a senior director in Afghanistan’s National Security Council.

This event is co-sponsored with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination. It is free and open to the public.