At the conclusion of a two-day round of talks in France Friday, more than 80 countries agreed to a draft agreement of an international code of conduct designed to help stop ballistic missile proliferation (see GSN, Feb. 8).

The talk’s participants “acknowledge that missile proliferation is a problem” and that “a multilateral approach can contribute to resolving this problem,” said a French Foreign Ministry spokesman.

The code of conduct, which would only be a political agreement and lack the force of a treaty, would have each signatory outline its ballistic missile program once a year and notify other signatories of any ballistic missile tests (Washington Times, Feb. 10).

France said it plans to be able to present the code of conduct for final approval at a conference in Spain and to organize a signing ceremony at The Hague near the end of this year.

The U.S. delegation to the talks only monitored the comments made by other delegations and did not take part in the discussions, the French official said (Agence France-Presse, Feb. 8).

The head of the Iranian delegation to the talks said the issue of ballistic missile proliferation should be examined by the United Nations.

“The issue of ballistic missiles and controlling policies to limit missile proliferation requires a professional discussion which we believe should be conducted by representatives from world countries and under supervision of the [United Nations],” said Hamid Eslami-Zad (Iranian Republic News Agency, Feb. 7, in FBIS-NES, Feb. 7).

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