Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Efforts to create a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia appear set to move forward in March, when the five countries in the region are scheduled to meet to finalize a common position on the zone treaty, a senior U.N. disarmament official said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 7, 2003).

Representatives from the five Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — were previously scheduled to meet last fall in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent to develop a common response to comments to the zone treaty’s text offered by the nuclear weapons states. That meeting, however, was postponed because of lingering differences among the five Central Asian states.

Tsutomu Ishiguri, director of the U.N. Regional Center for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific, told Global Security Newswire yesterday that the five Central Asian states have now agreed to meet in March in Tashkent. “This is good news,” Ishiguri said.

The March meeting could help move forward the zone’s creation, which was previously expected to have been accomplished by October 2002. Prior to that, the five Central Asian states had envisioned signing the zone treaty in April 2002. The five declared nuclear weapons states cannot prevent the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia, but they have been invited to sign a treaty protocol saying they agree to respect the zone.

Ishiguri said that he hoped the March meeting would also result in a joint statement issued by the five Central Asian states expressing a renewed commitment to signing the treaty and calling on the five nuclear weapons-states to support it. He also said that he hoped a “breakthrough” in the zone creation process occurred before the next review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, scheduled to be held next year.