Jayantha Dhanapala (; born 30 December 1938) is a Sri Lankan diplomat who serves as member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and was a governing board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Dhanapala is also a distinguished member of Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka and he is the Senior Special Advisor on Foreign Relations to President Maithripala Sirisena, and was Sri Lanka's official candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations, before withdrawing from the race on 29 September 2006. From 2007 he has been the President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Early years in Sri Lanka Dhanapala was born in Sri Lanka on 30 December 1938. His family hails from the town of Matale. Dhanapala was educated at prestigious Trinity College in Kandy. He gained a reputation as an all rounder as a schoolboy and was awarded the Ryde Gold Medal in 1956. At the age of 17 Jayantha Dhanapala won a contest with an essay titled "The World We Want" and travelled to the US where he met Senator John F. Kennedy and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Diplomatic career He entered the Sri Lankan diplomatic service and served in London, Beijing, Washington, D.C., New Delhi and Geneva. Dhanapala was appointed Ambassador in Geneva (1984–87)—he was also accredited to the UN and was appointed Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the United States of America based in Washington D.C. from 1995-97. Dhanapala was widely acclaimed for his Presidency of the 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, a landmark event in disarmament history, because of his crafting of a package of decisions balancing the twin objectives of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and the concerns of the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states which was adopted without a vote. The New York Times observed that Jayantha Dhanapala 'was a diplomat mostly unknown outside the arms-control world until he was elected to preside over this conference.' Under-Secretary-General at the UN Dhanapala was hand picked by UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan to take on the challenging job of Under Secretary General to re-establish the Department of Disarmament after the UN reforms of 1997 (1998–2003). During his tenure he piloted the UN role in arresting the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, anti-personnel landmines, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction while reinforcing existing norms and