February 10t, 2001

CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT: CONSULTATIONS REPORT
BY THE CD PRESIDENT,
AMBASSADOR CHRISTOPHER WESTDAL
AT THE THIRD 2001 PLENARY SESSION

Now might the search for a consensus work program be advanced?

On tough, shifting terrain, with key fundamentals of future global security at stake, above all the course of future nuclear attitudes, postures and arsenals, we are seeking text for a CD work program with every word of which every one of the sixty-six diverse states here is prepared to live every word, every state. Consensus in this Conference is powerful and valuable, our goal highly ambitious.

CD/1624 is good, but not good enough. We're close, but in a quest for consensus, a miss is as good as a mile - and, face facts, we're still missing.

As President, as mandated and in the tradition of my predecessors, I am naturally compelled to explore change in the work program or the accompanying Presidential statement which might find consensus support. To this end, I have informally assessed the textual gaps to be closed and taken quite thorough pains to clarify a broad range of national positions and gain insight and counsel from colleagues, exploring the potential for further progress, for at least some further productive refinement of CD/1624 as a continuing basis for further work, if not quite yet full consensus.

Meanwhile, though, a few hard facts intrude. First, success depends critically on the will of the parties. In this exercise, like my predecessors, I can change more words than wills. We've brought water to the horses and horses to the water. The drinking's up to them.

Second, for key players, for the United States (currently engaged in germane policy reviews) and for others (naturally concurrently engaged), multilateral arms control and disarmament talks and negotiations, including the work program of our Conference, must be assessed in broader security equations. our work always derives from that over-arching context of security analysis and action. Despite our best efforts, causation in this relationship is not much at all the other way round. I will keep you posted.

To what worthwhile use might the Conference be put while that search continues?

It should come as no surprise, after all we have been through, that without an agreed program of work, the Conference can do little real work.

It is generally agreed, for example, that thrashing about meeting and talking for the sake of meeting and talking# say would gain this house little credit. It could indeed be counterproductive, particularly if it served to emphasize and deepen differences, as would, almost certainly, rehearsals of well-known national postures on CD/1624.

In one important dimension, of course, despite the absence of an agreed work program, the Conference can be fully used. Its platform can be used by parties to inform and to influence. This forum provides means of engagement which, well used, have some power to shape perceptions and policy analyses.

So far this year, though, many states are hesitating, reticent. For one thing, they are little inclined to simply rehearse what they've said before about our enduring impasse (not least lest they harm prospects for its resolution). But more, I sense, delegations don't want to resort to make-work here. They don't want to pretend. There is too much at stake for makebelieve.

Beyond valuable formal plenaries, though, our prospects for useful work thin fast. Last week's developments were highly instructive about the real potential of many suggestions made over the years that we might seek substantive progress in informal discussion. The proposal that this week's first plenary be replaced by an informal meeting was immediately resisted by parties variously unwilling to launch discussions without concurrent negotiations and/or unwilling to agree to informals without an agenda - and the quest for an agenda, of course, would complete the circle right back to where we are and have been for years, seeking consensus on content and balance in our work. In sum, I see few if any useful informals on our immediate horizon.

What, then, lies ahead?

There will come a time, make no mistake, when we will either approve a program based on CD/1624 and get on with the ton of work in it - or, with natural reluctance, given all the time and effort we've invested in the attempt, abandon that draft and start the search again the search for consensus on the content, allocation and schedule of our work, whether discussion, exploration or negotiation.

Impatient angst notwithstanding, that decision is not yet ripe, that time not yet come. It is true that delegations are not all yet ready to accept CD/1624 - but nor are they at all yet ready to abandon it as, at least, "a basis for further intensive consultations."

In these impacted circumstances, I will carry the search for consensus forward, despite the awkward timing, on simple grounds that CD/1624 is not yet good enough. Our fundamental Conference responsibility, to create and sustain a credible multilateral option for states seeking security here, has not yet therefore been fulfilled. Whenever states find themselves ready to dispose of CD/1624 one way or another we need to ensure that it really is our best shot. As national statements have made plain and my consultations have confirmed, that shot still needs work. I'll do it, as much as I can.

At this stage, I am considering CD/1624 as the basis of a session of timely, valuable exploration of multilateral alternatives to further resort to arms.
As this search for consensus continues, we will have formal plenaries as required - without fretting and fussing about our fate too much or too noisily. That said, I reiterate my hope that national statements might worthily fill our early plenaries, as they have today's.

As well, we should go on trying hard to conceive worthy work we might get done, despite our inability - which we know may well persist for some time - to bring the long discussion of CD/1624 to a conclusion.

Meanwhile, of course, all delegations are at all times free and welcomed to bring their best ideas for solutions forward. That use, to serve its members as a platform and forum, this Conference will always have.

The timing, I repeat, is awkward for me, for my successors, for all of us. Indeed, for all parties making suggestions about the way forward, I've noticed, timing is a vexed question. For example, the German suggestion we accepted last week makes obvious good sense that, without work program agreement, we should get back to basics, to agenda consultations. Where else would there be to start anew, after all, but with the agenda?

But when would we take that step? Germany thought not for the time being, so as to allow my consultations to continue, but perhaps after my Presidency. The thing is, though, that parties will then still be waiting and seeing. Indeed, circumstances may well not be ripe for decision on a fully fledged long-term work program throughout several Presidencies to come.

As to other suggestions for worthy work meanwhile, both timing and content are inherently problematic. Any proposal for substantive work - whether for informals, for expert study groups or for the"appointment of special coordinators to elaborate mandates, as examples - must contend with our lack of an effective agenda. In each case, consensus would be precluded by precisely the same differences between parties about priorities, emphases and balance that go on precluding work program agreement. There is no getting around this problem. It has to be solved.

I seek your sustained understanding and support as I work on to try to clear a path through these various densities to refreshed purpose and good work as soon as possible for this valuable institution.