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August 11, 2005

The Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world’s lone body for negotiating disarmament treaties, opened its third and final session of 2005 in Geneva on August 11 under the Presidency of Pakistan with statements from Germany, Bulgaria, Norway, Ecuador, Slovakia, Italy, Switzerland, the United States and Russia. All statements from this session are available on our website at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/cdindex.html.

Several Member States once again deplored the impasse in the CD and recommended strategies for overcoming it. Italy emphasized that “the lack of substantive results of the 7th NPT Review Conference makes it even more imperative to make progress at the C.D. especially in the nuclear field.”

In his first statement as the new German representative to the CD, Ambassador Bernhard Brasack reiterated Germany’s support for theA5 proposal, which they “consider …an acceptable comprehensive compromise proposal taking into account the differing priorities and security concerns.” Ambassador Brasack also maintained that “a broader involvement of the civil society” would help the CD deal with the “fundamental (issues) on the international agenda.”

Taking the floor for the first time since 2000, newly re-posted Ambassador Petko Dragonov of Bulgaria urged that he and his fellow diplomats ““…should not just be mere representatives of our respective Governments here; we should also try harder to be contributors to the formulation of our Governments’ policies.”

In his farewell statement to the CD, Slovakian Ambassador Kálmán Petocz reiterated that Slovakia would like to see negotiations on aFissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) commence soon, though he did not specify if he supported starting the negotiations with a mandate for verifiability or without preconditions. However, understanding that the CD must overcome its stalemate in order to begin these negotiations, he wondered “whether all [its] complex considerations can be squeezed into a closed box of the CD programme of work, isolated from the outside world and limited in time by a rigid interpretation of the rules of procedure.” Previous delegations have suggested that the rules of procedure, which require the CD to operate by consensus, may be preventing the body from adopting a program of work.

Substantively, Italy expressed its support for the “food for thought” non paper and made several procedural suggestions for overcoming the deadlock, including: longer terms for each presidency; inviting Foreign Ministers to address the CD again; and thematic debates akin to those initiated under the Norwegian Presidency during the Second CD Session. Italy noted that these debates, which correlated to issues in the A-5 Proposal, “were not a substitute to negotiations but they were a good opportunity to verify positions in particular after the NPT Review Conference.”

While expressing support for the Six Party Talks and disappointment in Iran’s decision to resume uranium conversion activities, Italy “firmly believes that multilaterally agreed norms provide the basis for non proliferation efforts,” but said nothing of disarmament.

Incoming Ambassador Juan Carlos Faidutti Estrada of Ecuador expressed his country’s support for non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament work, to which the Andean countries had committed themselves by setting up a regional nuclear free zone agreement. Ecuador urged Member States to display clear evidence of political will and refreshed determination.

Although the CD is world’s lone body for negotiating disarmament treaties, the issues that block consensus here continue to be discussed in other international disarmament fora. Norway took the floor to draw attention to the Seven Nations Initiative, which he called a “truly cross regional initiative” that is “balanced and consensus-oriented”. The Foreign Ministers of Australia, Chile, Indonesia, Norway, Romania, South Africa and the United Kingdom submitted a declaration and a joint proposal for the draft Outcome Document of the UN Summit concerning non-proliferation and disarmament to UN General Assembly President Jean Ping. (Other resources on the Millennium+5 Summit, including the latest draft outcome document, an analysis of its changes, NGO language suggestions and a letterto governments advocating strengthening its disarmament language, are available here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1comindex1.html#M5)

On behalf of Switzerland and France, Switzerland made a statement to highlight the importance of protecting critical infrastructures from terrorists, which requires regional cooperation, referring his colleagues to the Geneva Center for Security Policy for more information.