CD Press Release, 17 March

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

17.03.04

Press Release

FOREIGN MINISTER OF NETHERLANDS ADDRESSES CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands told the Conference on Disarmament this morning that the new century’s number one security risk was nuclear weapons.

The Minister, Bernard Bot, said such weapons amounted to a double threat, as more countries aspired to acquire the technology for them at the same time as there was an increasing risk of terrorists laying their hands on them, and having no scruples about using them. “What we are fighting is a multi-headed monster”, Mr. Bot said. “So we have to fight at various levels.”

It was crucial to have strict and effective enforcement of countries’ existing obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), he said. Strengthening control mechanisms for safeguards and adding verification measures at the national, regional and global levels were of the greatest importance. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needed the full support of the international community, both politically and financially, and it was vital that all countries join the Additional Protocol as part of their safeguards obligations. The Minister said he was heartened by the fact that Iran and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had recently joined the international community in this line of thinking. The NPT in itself was not enough to deal effectively with non-proliferation, Mr. Bot said. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) must enter into force to limit improvements to nuclear weapons and to put an end to the development of new types of nuclear weapons.

The next logical step on the road towards nuclear disarmament would be a treaty that would cut off the production of fissile material for military explosive purposes, Mr. Bot told the Conference. In the run-up to next year’s NPT Review Conference, he called on countries to take further measures as defined in the 13 steps of the NPT 2000 Final Document, and urged nuclear weapons States to report on their progress in implementing article 6 of the NPT and to provide information about the size of their arsenals and their stocks of fissile material. Last year, together with Belgium and Norway, the Netherlands had presented a working paper on this issue with the aim of providing language that had a chance to bridge gaps in negotiations. The Biological Weapons Convention was another area in which effective multilateralism was much needed, he said.

The Foreign Minister also said in his address that nations reviewing their positions on the Conference on Disarmament’s stalemate over a programme of work should take a favourable look at the “Five Ambassadors” proposal; that countries should address humanitarian concerns to make more effective the additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) on Explosive Remnants of War; that nations that had not yet acceded to the CCW to do so without delay; that the Netherlands considered it crucial to look ahead to United Nations Conference on Small Arms in 2006, and that a concrete goal should be to have an instrument in place on the brokering of small arms; and that the Netherlands supported Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for a High-Level Panel which would focused on responses to fundamental, global threats and the institutional changes needed to deal with them.

Minister Bot expressed his Government’s condolences over the recent terrorist attacks in Spain.

The next plenary of the Conference will be at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 18 March. An address by the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka is scheduled.

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