Former top United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will deliver the annual Bartels Fellowship Lecture Thursday, March 2, at 8 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, on the Cornell University campus. Brahimi's talk, "Iraq: The Present Crisis and its Implications for Stability in the Middle East," is free and open to the public.

Brahimi is former special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Algeria's former minister of foreign affairs. For more than 10 years he served as the United Nations' top envoy in such hot zones as Haiti, South Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004 he was appointed special adviser, advising Annan on a wide range of issues, including the prevention and resolution of conflicts.

Brahimi won praise for his efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq after the allied invasion. His 2000 report on past U.N. peace operations is highly influential in world affairs.

For a biography visit http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/activities/bartels.asp.

The Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship was established at Cornell by the Bartels in 1984 to foster a broadened world perspective among students by bringing distinguished international public figures to campus. The Bartels are both members of the Cornell Class of 1948.

The Bartels lecture is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. For more information, contact Heike Michelsen (607) 255-8926, hm75@cornell.edu.