CD:  Outgoing Ambassadors Criticize Geneva Forum’s Stalemate

By Greg Webb

Global Security Newswire

Two senior diplomats yesterday bitterly lamented the longtime standstill in the U.N. Conference on Disarmament and its failure to agree on what to discuss (see GSN, Jan. 24).

Ambassadors Christopher Westdal of Canada and Henrik Salander of Sweden criticized the forum’s inactivity as they each delivered their final address to the body after serving four-year postings in Geneva.  Yesterday’s meeting marked the end of the second of three sessions the group holds each year.

The Conference on Disarmament is the only multilateral negotiating body dedicated to disarmament issues.  While it has seen some success — including the successful negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992 and the drafting of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 — the 66-nation forum has not agreed on a negotiating agenda since 1997.

In prepared remarks yesterday, Westdal said, “We seem further from action now than we were when I arrived.”

“We’ve gained no traction, had no work of substance here, nothing to negotiate, nothing even to ‘deal with’ (whatever that means).  This cloud of discomforting facts has steadily darkened over the course of my assignment,” he said.

Salander echoed those complaints, saying, “The sinister truth is that this international institution, created with an enormous investment of ingenuity and constructivity, has achieved nothing in about seven years now.  And worse, its membership, as an indivisible collective, has not even given itself the possibility to achieve anything.”

“The inactivity, the passivity, is staggering.  No ideas are forwarded.  No solutions are proposed,” Salander added.

The blame, Westdal said, should not be directed at the forum itself.

“This conference we’re in is a tool of proven value, a shop that’s delivered the goods before, global public goods, and can do so again,” he said.

Rather, he said the participants are responsible.

“One hard fact of our time and chance here is that major powers have left our order book empty, our work program in dispute.  We have led horses to water and brought water to horses, but they have not drunk for years now — and they still don’t look thirsty to me,” Westdal said.

“The reasons why we have had nothing to negotiate are no mystery,” he said, without specifically mentioning the United States and China, two of the nations who have resisted different possible negotiating agendas.

Salander concurred, saying, “A large majority, a very large majority, of members would be able to start work tomorrow,” but the “remarkably rigid position” of a few nations is preventing progress.

“Some parties here don’t want to take the next logical step toward nuclear disarmament. … Some clearly want more fissile material than they now have, not out of oft-repeated and unsurprising resentment of those with mountains of the stuff, necessarily, but rather to make more nuclear bombs.  Meanwhile, some here don’t want to ban weapons in space.  Some don’t want to deal with nuclear disarmament here, even to ‘study’ it (as some would say), let alone negotiate to that end.  And some here don’t want to negotiate negative security assurances,” Westdal said.

Nevertheless, Salander expressed some optimism.

“There is always a glimmer of hope somewhere,” he said, challenging conference members to “come up with something better” instead of merely rejecting constructive efforts.

Back to top

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP