Global Security Newswire

Delegates at the international Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday said steps must be taken to overcome a long-running gridlock and prevent the U.N. General Assembly from taking away its mandate, the United Nations Office at Geneva said in a release (see GSN, Feb. 1).

The Netherlands' envoy said if the impasse persists it might be best to bring suspend work at the conference, particularly in light of the dire fiscal straits facing a number of nations that support the effort in Geneva, Switzerland.

The 65-member body last negotiated a new arms reduction treaty close to 16 years ago. In 2009, the conference broke a deadlock that had lasted for more than a decade, agreeing to a work program that would focus on achieving a treaty to prohibit the generation of new fissile material for nuclear warheads; preventing the militarization of outer space; nuclear disarmament; and securing pledges from nuclear weapon possessor states that they would never use such arms on nations without atomic arsenals of their own.

Pakistan gave and then quickly withdrew its backing for the work program and has stymied any headway on the agenda in the passing years. Decisions in the Conference on Disarmament must have unanimous support.

The Netherlands, in a statement with South Africa and Switzerland, highlighted the potential for the U.N. General Assembly to shift arms control talks to another multilateral forum if the conference fails in 2012 to put into place a work program.

A number of speakers at Tuesday's general membership meeting supported a proposal offered by the current conference president, Ecuadorian Ambassador Luis Gallegos Chiriboga, that working groups be established to each consider one of the four elements of the 2009 work program. Delegates said the committees should be empowered to decide for themselves what to focus on within that mandate.

There was less consensus on another suggestion by Chiriboga that negotiating a fissile material cutoff treaty be deprioritized for the time being to allow the rest of the agenda to move forward. A number of nations said a FMCT pact was crucial to achieving the overall goal of global nuclear disarmament and thus could not be set aside.

France said it still believed the body could successfully negotiate a FMCT accord. The nuclear power is slated to take over the rotating role of conference president this summer.

Sweden said it was nearly too late to avoid the permanent loss of international confidence in the conference and that all efforts should be taken this year to rebuild that lost faith. Stockholm also voiced the view that a FMCT pact should not be taken off the table.

The conference is scheduled to resume its plenary session on Tuesday (United Nations Office at Geneva release, Feb. 7).