STAFF REPORT ISB: The global anti-matter research outfit General Council of European Centre of Nuclear Research (CERN) has accepted Pakistans application for associate membership at its meeting recently held.
The CERN, one of the worlds leading scientific organisations conducting research on high-energy particle physics since 1954, said Pakistan is the first Asian country to become an associate member of the organisation. The other two associate members of CERN are Turkey and Serbia.
In October 2013, the CERN Council had responded favourably to Pakistans associate membership and as a first step had sent a taskforce of experts to visit Pakistan earlier this year to scrutinise the application in greater detail.
“With the new status of associate membership of CERN, Pakistan looks forward to benefiting from and contributing more intensively to the increasingly innovative and challenging initiatives in science and technology,” says a statement issued here.
Pakistan edges India in this context as the latter is only an observer state and not a full-fledged member or associate member.
The CERN convention was signed in 1953 by the 12 founding states Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and Yugoslavia, and entered into force on 29th September 1954. It was joined later by Austria, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovak, Hungary, Bulgaria and Israel.