27 July 2011 - Statement on behalf of the Non Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI) - Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations

Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations

New York

Permanent Mission address: 150 East 42 Street, Level 33, New York, New York 10017 - Telephone: 1 212 351 6600 - Fax: 1 212 351 6610

Statement on behalf of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI) at the Follow-up to the high-level meeting held on 24 September 2010: revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward multilateral negotiations, 27 July 2011

H.E. Mr Gary Quinlan
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations

(Check against delivery)

Mr President,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI), of which Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are currently members.
I sincerely thank you for convening this debate, as well as for your personal efforts towards the revitalization of the work of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), illustrated, among others, by your visit to Geneva in March of this year.

This debate comes at an appropriate moment. Scheduled upon the conclusion of the second part of the CD’s annual session and sufficiently ahead of the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, it is an excellent opportunity to jointly assess the developments that have taken place since last September’s High Level Meeting and exchange views on how to facilitate the resumption of substantive work in the Conference on Disarmament. We should capitalize on a “reflective momentum” that has, over the past months, prevailed in New York and Geneva, and to which the “High Level Meeting” itself was a constructive stimulus.

Mr President,

The NPDI was established in order to build upon the renewed momentum in disarmament and non-proliferation resulting from, inter alia, the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. At their second Foreign Ministers meeting in Berlin on April 30, 2011, member states reaffirmed their joint intention to work towards achieving nuclear disarmament and strengthening of the international non-proliferation regime. Recognizing the danger to humanity posed by the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons and the necessity to address increased proliferation risks, to decrease nuclear arsenals, to strengthen nuclear security and to improve nuclear safety, we continue to consider the urgent need to reduce nuclear risks and achieve tangible progress on the path towards a world free of nuclear weapons. In Berlin, NPDI Foreign Ministers reiterated their determination to support and help drive implementation of the consensus outcomes of the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

NPDI members have welcomed, sometimes lead, and actively participated in, various initiatives in the first and second part of the CD’s 2011 session to facilitate work on the CD’s current core issues. At the same time, however, we note with deep regret that the CD has not been able to profit from broader positive trends in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation. The CD has so far not implemented the three actions in the 2010 NPT Review Conference’s Action Plan which pertain to its work – Action 6 on establishing a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament, Action 7 on substantive discussions on negative security assurances and Action 15 on Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) negotiations.

We also have to acknowledge that, instead of making progress, the CD has actually made a step backwards from its consensus adoption of a Programme of Work (CD/1864) in May 2009. We are convinced that the use of the consensus rule to prevent the start of FMCT negotiations, as well as substantive discussions on the other three core issues, not only harmed the CD’s already diminished credibility but also seriously undermined the entire multilateral disarmament process and, in the long run, the security interests of the entire international community.

Mr President,

The CD has been unable to fulfil the task assigned to it by the international community – the negotiation of disarmament and non-proliferation instruments – for more than a decade. In light of this situation, we reiterate that the CD must immediately start negotiations on an FMCT. However, while patience is a virtue, continued passivity is not. Therefore, if an agreement on launching FMCT negotiations continues to elude us in the third part of the CD’s session, we are determined to ask the 66th UN General Assembly to address the issue and consider ways to proceed with the aim of beginning FMCT negotiations.

We acknowledge that FMCT negotiations will be challenging from both a political and a technical point of view, no matter what venue is selected. In our view, these two aspects are closely intertwined. While we continue to view the earliest commencement of negotiations on an FMCT as the priority, we consider that the establishment of a Group of Scientific Experts with the assignment to examine technical aspects of an FMCT could facilitate and contribute to the start of negotiations. We are willing to discuss this idea with interested parties.

The NPDI’s concerns are by no means limited to one specific aspect of the CD’s work. In order to reshape the CD into an effectively functioning institution whose composition reflects the realities of the 21st century, not the 20th, its current working methods need to be critically examined, its membership reviewed, and its interaction with civil society increased.

While we consider the CD’s return to substantive work to be the most urgent task, our interest in revitalization extends beyond the CD. The UN Disarmament Commission constitutes another theoretically important, but practically increasingly irrelevant pillar of the UN disarmament machinery. It would greatly profit from a review of its current work and from well-calibrated structural reform.
Furthermore, we call upon the UN General Assembly’s First Committee to increase its practical relevance for disarmament and international security. Given the objective of today’s debate, we particularly appeal to it to move forward the FMCT and other disarmament core issues.

Overall, the General Assembly should, in our view, continue to play an important role in gathering the expectations of the international community towards the multilateral disarmament machinery and identifying possible solutions to persistent problems. We look forward to this, as well as possible future debates on the highly relevant issue of making progress on multilateral disarmament negotiations.