Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday visited CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva on the French-Swiss border, as part of a two-day state visit to Switzerland aimed at boosting scientific cooperation between the two countries.
Founded in 1954, CERN is dedicated to bringing nations together through science.
Earlier, Peres had a working lunch with the President of federal Switzerland, Micheline Calmy-Rey, with whom he discussed ongoing unrest in Arab countries. According to the Swiss news agency ATS, the Israeli president said the Arab nations would also need to embrace technological advancements in order to achieve greater pluralism, giving the example of South Korea's transition to democracy.
Monday evening, Peres launched a 10 million dollars joint Israeli-Swiss research fund in which the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) will cooperate in the sphere of brain research.
On Monday, a pro-Palestinian Swiss NGO said it has filed a complaint with the attorney general against Peres.
The group slammed Israeli policy in the West Bank as being “contrary to Switzerland’s humanitarian principles” and tantamount to “crimes against humanity.”
On Tuesday, Peres will travel to London where is due to meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron and address government leaders, prominent politicians from the opposition and outstanding figures from academia and the media at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House. The event will mark 60 years of bilateral ties between Britain and Israel.
He is also due to meet leaders of the Jewish community, the second largest in Western Europe.