CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT HEARS STATEMENT BY UNITED STATES ON LANDMINES AND FISSILE MATERIAL
Conference Starts Third and Last Part of its 2004 Session

The Conference on Disarmament today heard a wide-ranging statement by the United States in which it said, among other things, that the United States would pursue in the Conference the negotiation of an international ban on the sale or export of persistent landmines and it reaffirmed its commitment to negotiation of a legally binding treaty banning the production of fissile material but believed that an effective verification of an Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty was not achievable.

The statement by the United States also spoke about Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea allegedly pursuing nuclear weapon programmes, prompting denials by the two countries.

On the United States position on landmines, Canada said it had adopted different approaches to that of the United States regarding the need for a global ban on anti-personnel mines and had explained the difficulties that the proposal created for States parties to the Ottawa Convention. Finland said the Conference must look at the implications of the United States proposal on the work of the Conference. The United Kingdom said that it encouraged States which had not yet done so to join the Ottawa Convention. France asked what the consequences of the United States proposal would be on existing efforts.

On the comments by the United States on the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT), Algeria said that it represented the best way of combating any attempts to produce nuclear weapons. The Netherlands said it was happy that the United States had finalized its review of this issue and looked forward on a substantive debate on concerns on the verifiability of the Treaty. Pakistan said that the United States initiatives were important and required very close examination by his delegation.

On other issues, Belgium urged the Conference to pursue agreement on the Five Ambassadors proposal as a means of bringing the Conference closer to agreeing on its programme of work; Sri Lanka spoke about her country’s accession to the Conventional Weapons Convention; and the Russian Federation announced that it had recently ratified the Conventional Armed Forces Treaty in Europe.

This was the first plenary in the third and last part of the 2004 session of the Conference on Disarmament. The Conference will conclude its annual session on 10 September.

The next plenary of the Conference will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 5 August 2004.

Statements

DAMIEN ANGELET (Belgium) expressed his country’s concern that the Five Ambassadors proposal (A5) had not yet been adopted and re-committed his delegation’s efforts to achieving that in order to enable the Conference to begin its work again. An agreement on the A5 proposal could be pursued as a means of bringing the Conference closer to agreeing on its programme of work. Mr. Angelet added that the time had come to be aware of these ideas and expressed his delegation’s desire that informal meetings take place on this matter during the current session of the Conference.

SARALA FERNANDO (Sri Lanka) said her country would be acceding to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects. The formal instrument for accession would be deposited at the Treaty Event 2004 to be held in New York during the fifty-ninth session of the United Nations General Assembly. While acceding to this Convention, Sri Lanka would also become Party to the Amended Protocol II on Mines, Booby Traps and Other Devices, Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons and Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons. Moreover, Sri Lanka would be submitting a report on a voluntary basis under Article VII of the Ottawa Convention on Land Mines, in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 58/53.

Since the signing of the peace agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in February 2002, the Government of Sri Lanka had embarked on a comprehensive humanitarian mine action programme with the goal of making Sri Lanka a mine free country by 2006. As a result of these programmes, the number of mine related incidents had dropped by half and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons had been resettled in their homes, Ms. Fernando said.

LEONID SKOTNIKOV (Russian Federation) referred to the signing by the President of the Russian Federation of a new law on 19 June this year thus enabling the ratification of the Conventional Armed Forces Treaty in Europe. The Russian Federation had become the fourth State to ratify the Treaty which would hopefully encourage other States to do the same as a way to jointly ensure an improved system for monitoring arms in Europe. The entry into force of the Conventional Armed Forces Treaty should be accompanied by filling in the “grey areas” which existed, he said. Moreover, accession to the Treaty would be an additional contribution to European security in general.

Mr. Skotnikov called on European States to act in accordance with their purposes and principles and in the interest of all States by ratifying the treaty. The Russian Federation believed there were no alternatives to the rapid accession of this Convention, he added.

JACKIE SANDERS (United States) recalled that earlier this year, President Bush announced a series of new initiatives to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction and to stem the tide of proliferation of dangerous materials into the hands of terrorists and outlaw regimes. These proposals were prompted by the threats that were faced in the post-9/11 world and were directed at improving and modernizing non-proliferation laws restricting the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies and equipment, closing loopholes in existing non-proliferation regimes, and expanding efforts to secure and destroy weapons and materials of mass destruction. While the United States’ efforts had met with recent successes including Libya’s renunciation of weapons of mass destruction programmes, there remained much work to be done. The fact that Libya’s weapons of mass destruction programme was not known to the Conference less than a year ago underscored that it still did not fully appreciate the scope of the threats facing the world by weapons of mass destruction. Ambassador Sanders called on the international community to redouble its efforts to combat these threats.

Ambassador Sanders said her Government was working with its colleagues to bring Iran back into the community of civilized nations and to cease its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes as well as its ballistic missiles programme. The United States was also working with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to convince Iran to honour its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and IAEA obligations and cease its covert nuclear weapons programme. Moreover, the United States was working through the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Biological Weapons Convention to convince Iran to end its chemical and biological weapons efforts.

The United States Government was working through the multi-lateral six-party talks process to convince the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to discontinue its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Ambassador Sanders said, and expressed her Government’s gratitude to China’s to advance these talks. The United States called on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to cease all routes it was pursuing to produce a nuclear bomb, both the plutonium route and the uranium enrichment route, and to dismantle its nuclear programme.

Ms. Sanders said the United States Government was proposing to eliminate the threat of all persistent land mines which caused between 12,000 and 16,000 deaths per year and which remained dangerous for many decades after any military use. The United States had chosen to replace its persistent mines with non-persistent, self-destructing, self-deactivating mines to reduce the threats to innocent civilians from the hazards generated by persistent land mines. Moreover, the United States had decided to pursue in the Conference a negotiation of an international ban on the sale or export of persistent land mines and would continue its efforts through the CCW to bring anti-vehicular land mines under control.

Concerning fissile materials, Ms. Sanders said a ban on such material for nuclear weapons or explosives would enhance global non-proliferation strictures against nuclear weapons. In that regard, the United States reaffirmed its commitment to negotiation in the Conference of a legal binding treaty banning the production fissile material. The United States had not produced fissile material for weapons purposes for over 15 years and was working today to dispose of its stockpiles; some 200 tonnes of fissile material had been removed from its military stockpile. Ms. Sanders added that the United States had also reaffirmed its moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear explosives and called on all States to make similar pledges. The United States believed that an effective verification of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) was not achievable and would be presenting its views during the current session of the Conference.

After nearly eight years of inactivity the Conference needed to focus its efforts on achievable goals that addressed the security issues of today, Ms. Sanders said. In concluding, Ms. Sanders said a team of technical experts would soon visit the Conference to brief its members on the United States position on the FMCT

PAUL MEYER (Canada) said he hoped to see during this session, now that policy reviews in certain capitals had been completed, a series of discussions focused on the key elements of the proposed work plan with a view to reaching a compromise. Canada had suggested that a stream-lined version of the Five Ambassadors proposal consisting of a renewal of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty under the agreed Shannon mandate, coupled with the establishment of Ad Hoc Committees to discuss nuclear disarmament and the prevention of an arms race in outer space, would represent a solid, initial programme to get the Conference on Disarmament back into an operational mode, he said.

Concerning landmines, Mr. Meyer said Canada and the United States had worked as partners in this effort in many regions, not least in their own hemisphere where remarkable progress had been made. Canada and others had also worked constructively with the United States in landmine-related issues in other fora, notably in securing an agreement last year on the CCW Explosive Remnants of War Protocol. That partnership was continuing with regard to the United States’ proposal for a CCW protocol on anti-vehicle mines, where Canada was one of some 30 co-sponsors of that initiative.

At the same time, Canada had recognized that it had adopted different approaches to that of the United States regarding the need for a global ban on anti-personnel mines and had explained the difficulties that the United States proposal tabled created for the Conference members party to the Ottawa Convention. Against this background, Mr. Meyers said, Canadian officials had sought in discussions with their American counterparts to suggest a range of possible alternative courses of action, whereby it might be possible to advance some of the purposes of the United States proposal tabled today.

SALAH DEMBRI (Algeria) said the Conference began discussing the adoption of its programme of work this year on 22 January 2004, and it was now with only a few weeks left in the current session that the fear of not reaching an agreement was becoming greater. For eight years the Conference had been seeking common ground on this matter as a means to address matters of international concern. Today, never had the Conference been so active and imaginative in order to come up with compromise solutions. Solutions were needed to move towards a synthesis rather than a restatement of national concerns, Mr. Dembri said. Moreover, the Five Ambassadors proposal for Algeria was the most appropriate instrument to respond to the tasks before the Conference. The work of the Conference reflected the concerns of humankind including the fears of a nuclear holocaust and the military use of weapons and the proliferation of nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Dembri said that given the announcement by the United States there was now a glimmer of hope with regard to the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and represented the best way of combating any attempts to produce nuclear weapons. In concluding, Mr. Dembri said the weeks to come should focus on the programme of work before the closure of this year’s session.

HAMID ESLAMIZAD (Iran) said the statement by the United States had made unnecessary and false accusations which his country denied. The statement claimed that Iran had not ceased its nuclear weapons programme, but Iran had done so. He recalled that Iran was an active member of all major international instruments dealing with such weapons and encouraged the United States to recognize that fact.

MARKKU REIMAA (Finland) said the informal discussions held by the Conference on its programme of work were useful and should duly be reflected in its annual report to the General Assembly. Reacting to the statement by the United States, he said the Conference must look at the implications of the American proposals on the work of the Conference. While expressing his delegation’s concerns for the innocent casualties caused by landmines, Ambassador Reimaa recalled the recent meeting of the Convention on Conventional Weapons experts who made recommendations and discussed, among other things, the ban and transfer of anti-personnel mines.

JANG IL HUN (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), responding to the statement by the United States, said that at the six-party talks his country had made it clear that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had ceased its uranium-based nuclear programme. The insistence by the United States that it had such a programme was harmful to the progress made at the talks and was another attempt to stifle his country. He added that the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula was his country’s goal and had the United States not proceeded with its policy the problems in the region would not have continued as they had. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea had made a proposal at the six-party talks to solve the problem peacefully.

DAVID BROUCHER (United Kingdom) said his country was fully committed to combating weapons of mass destruction and looked to the Conference to play its part in this regard. In this connection, the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty should be the main task of the Conference and the United Kingdom welcomed the confirmation by the United States to support this aim. The United Kingdom would approach the United States proposal with an open mind. Concerning landmines, the United Kingdom was a signatory to the Ottawa Landmine Convention and had already enacted legal prohibitions on such bans. Moreover, the United Kingdom encouraged States who had not yet done so to become a party to the Convention.

FRANCOIS RIVASSEAU (France), recalling the proposals made by the United States, said there was a consensus in principle concerning a notion of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, in particular, and that France had given its support to related negotiations. It was France’s view to re-launch this negotiation process. As to persistent mines, the question was what would be the consequence of the American proposal on existing efforts.

CHRIS SANDERS (Netherlands) said his country attached great importance to the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and was happy to hear that the United States had finalized its review of the treaty and looked forward to a substantive debate on the concerns that had emerged on the verifiability of the Treaty. On the mines proposal, the Netherlands had given priority to dealing with the anti-vehicle mine issue. Recalling what the Canadian representative said concerning the issue of the programme of work, Ambassador Sanders said his delegation believed the Five Ambassadors proposal was the basis to achieve a programme of work.

SHAUKAT UMER (Pakistan) said the United States’ initiatives were important and required very close examination by his delegation. On another matter, the representative said the Conference must be very careful with what it reflected in its annual report to the General Assembly.

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