SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT'S ADOPTION OF WORK PROGRAMME

Secretary-General welcomes Conference on Disarmament’s adoption of Work Programme

Palais des Nations, Geneva

On 29 May, under the Presidency of Ambasador Idriss Jazaïry of Algeria, the Conference on Disarmament adopted by consensus document CD/1863, which contains a Programme of Work for 2009. This action has successfully ended over ten years of efforts to resume the substantive work of the Conference, which came to a halt in 1999.

In New York, a statement by the Spokesperson of the Secretary-General said that the Secretary-General welcomed the adoption of the Decision by the Conference on Disarmament to establish a Programme of Work for its 2009 session, particularly following his address to the members the previous week, when he had underscored their special responsibility to demonstrate the Conference's essential role as the main pillar of disarmament and non-proliferation. For the first time in more than a decade, the single multilateral disarmament negotiating body could now engage in negotiations and substantive discussions on strategic disarmament and non-proliferation issues.

In his address to the CD on 19 May, the Secretary-General had also told the members that business as usual should not prevail. It was time to break more than 10 years of stalemate. The Conference had before it a document that could achieve consensus and that addresses all substantive and procedural issues.

The Programme of Work now adopted provides for the establishment of four Working Groups: (1) to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons on the basis of the document CD/1299 (the Shannon report); (2) to exchange views and information on practical steps for progressive and systematic efforts to reduce nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of their elimination; (3) to discuss substantively all issues related to the prevention of an arms race in outer space; and (4) to discuss substantively with a view to elaborating recommendations dealing with all aspects of negative security assurances, not excluding those related to an internationally legally binding instrument. The Conference will also appoint Special Coordinators on other agenda items, including new weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons; radiological weapons; comprehensive programme of disarmament; and transparency in armaments.

The Conference on Disarmament (CD), established in 1979 as the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community, was a result of the first Special Session on Disarmament of the United Nations General Assembly held in 1978. The terms of reference of the CD include practically all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems. The Conference conducts its work by consensus. The CD and its predecessors have negotiated such major multilateral arms limitation and disarmament agreements as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

http://www.un.org/disarmament/HomePage/ODAPublications/ODAUpdate/2009/June/index.html#0L

Penulis : Drs.Simon Arnold Julian Jacob