4 September 2007

During today's session, CD President Ambassador Hamoui welcomed incoming Ambassador Hans Dahlgren of Sweden, who is replacing Ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier.

Meanwhile, China announced that starting this year, it will report China's basic military expenditures to the UN Secretary-General annually, in accordance with UNGA Resolution 1644. In addition, China said, "in light of the fact that a certain country has stopped providing data on its illegal arms sales to the Taiwan Province of China to the UN Register of Conventional Arms, China decides to resume providing annually the data of its imports and exports of conventional arms in the seven categories to the Register from this year."

Today's plenary focused on the adoption of the annual report of the Conference on Disarmament to the UN General Assembly. Algeria,Pakistan, New Zealand, Italy, the United Kingdom, Iran, and Turkey made statements concerning the content of the draft report.

Last year, the CD had difficulty adopting its annual report to the UN General Assembly. Governments debated the content of the report and its references to a timetable of substantive discussions proposed by the 2006 P6 and the development of a program of work in 2007. Read more in-depth in last year's CD Report here.

Now, at the end of the 2007 session, the question of how to accurately represent the progress that the CD has made this year, as well as the current lack of consensus on the L.1 package, makes the adoption of this year's report a particularly sensitive issue.

Pakistan circulated its proposed amendments in the formal plenary, which it hoped would make the report more balanced. It emphasized the need for the report to "reflect equal treatment to all issues."

New Zealand commented on the Pakistani amendments, saying that one of the changes Pakistan suggested would involve the omission of one of the only references in the draft report to the future work of the CD. The reference states the Conference's belief that it should continue to build on the work of the 2007 session, harmonize views on main priorities, and keep the momentum created to move the Conference out of its present stalemate. "It would be extremely unfortunate if that sentiment was removed from the document," Ambassador Mackay said. He added that he hoped that the draft report would not be "gutted" to the point that it no longer reflected the "flavor" of the progress the CD has made this year.

The UK took the floor in support of the draft report. Ambassador Duncan expressed his concern that while there is no desire to attribute blame, those countries which have not joined consensus should not seek to hide the fact that they've exercised their legitimate and sovereign right not to join the consensus.

Hopefully, the Conference will reach consensus on the annual report in the informal discussions that followed todays plenary and have the report circulated in time for the last formal plenary session. The next formal plenary meeting will be Tuesday, September 14 at 10am.

- Katherine Harrison, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom