CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT
REMARKS BY CD PRESIDENT, AMBASSADOR WESTDAL
AT THE 866th PLENARY SESSION, FEBRUARY 15, 2001

My Presidency of this Conference ends tomorrow with my mandate unfulfilled. To be honest, I am not surprised, but I am still disappointed that I have not found it possible to end our impasse, to achieve work program agreement during my term.

I sought to prepare a recommendation for immediate programmed work on the basis of CD/ 1624. I calibrated its mandates and added text to the accompanying statement to try (counter-productively, it turned out) to present the proposal as programming that might conceivably commence and be of value in current circumstances. But neither any effort of mine over the past weeks - nor any other text aired regionally last week - has gained consensus support. Given that words evidently cannot now describe an agreement between parties on the PAROS mandate in CD/1624, work program consensus is not achievable. Formal programmed work is not on our immediate horizon.

Further, my call in our Consultations - a week ago for suggestions to help close the gap between CD/1 624 and consensus provoked not only the rehearsal of PAROS mandate problems but also the reiteration of widespread support for a stronger mandate for the AdHoc Committee charged with nuclear disarmament. After our meeting, I reviewed text on how we might address specific steps in dealing with nuclear disarmament with some key parties. They were variously unwilling to consider any change or consider any isolated change whatever. The broader context in which change in the nuclear disarmament mandate and/or other mandates in CD/ 1624 might be effected consensually will naturally be a subject of intense inquiry for my successors.

Though my efforts have not produced any breakthrough toward consensus, they may have advanced the process of discovery set in train by my predecessors. Among other lessons, we have learned since our opening Plenary a month ago that the tight linkages with which we have bound subject to subject and mandate to mandate in CD/ 1624 are doubly costly. Not only would none of the formal work begin until all of it began, but now, because negotiations and talks are integral parts of CD/ 1624, and because some parties don't want talks without any negotiations, the linkages in our long-pending proposal threaten to preclude any unprogrammed treatment whatever of any of its subjects, leaving us in the awkward position of wanting to treat substance credibly - without touching fissile material, nuclear disarmament or the prevention of an arms race in outer space. We clearly have more than one knot to escape.

As I said two weeks ago, I think we've learned as well that delegates don't want to pretend here. There is too much at stake for make-believe. Even while they regret that the Conference is restrained by the state of current major power relations, most delegations nonetheless value the CD's marriage to reality and do not want it freed through divorce, through any sort of make-work. Nor do they want much replication here of what they can and do do elsewhere in the Disarmament Commission, the First Committee or treaty bodies.

I think we have also learned over the past month that, given current circumstances in major power relations, dominated as they are by doctrinal upheaval and related security declarations and gestures of great sweep, CD work program agreement is not currently possible. Read the papers, if only the headlines. There can be no informed surprise that these are not proving good weeks or months at all to be trying to get major powers to agree to start negotiating a ban on weapons material production, say, or to deal with such currently charged subjects as PARO S and nuclear disarmament - or to launch all the rest of CD/ 1624.

And nor, we know, will work program agreement prove possible tomorrow morning - or for some time to come. While we will want our President to carry the search forward, ever alert to Possibilities to improve CD/ 1624 as a basis for further intensive consultations, we may decide the time has come to address the role and work of the Conference in the absence of an agreed work program, which would mean to seek and define value the Conference might add to members' shared interests while the search for agreement on a formal work program goes on.

That search for value will preoccupy my successors and all delegations. It will no doubt involve soulsearching, however public, for it must address and credibly answer a string of natural questions:

- In light of its origins, history and evolution, what roles can the CD play in the search for multilateral security? Negotiation, yes, when parties are willing and ready - but what roles work when they aren't?

- What do we mean by "pre-negotiations ... preparations for negotiations ... exploration ... discussion" and other such terms of engagement? What are the prerequisites for success, for valuable work in such treatments of elements of our substantive agenda?

- What is the political role of the Conference? How might its platform be enhanced to increase the influence of its work and the extent of effective engagement it provides?

- What is the public, informational and educational role of the Conference - as distinct from the outreach of its assembled delegations?

- What value do we recognize in the obvious CD function of assembling and crossgerminating a unique concentration of NACD expertise? For that role alone, what benefits - for the UN, for treaty bodies and other endeavours - ought be credited to this house?

- Might our group system be made more transparent (lest it hide cheap, anonymous vetoes) and fruitful (with wider sharing of the benefits of group consideration)?

- Though they would not, likely promise to be decisive, might procedural and structural reforms be usefully pursued to facilitate negotiations once our global context permits their resumption?

- Finally, does it have to be all or nothing around here? Need fallow seasons be such hard times? The rule of consensus is congenital and forever, we know that; major players will not forsake the brake its veto gives them. But when that rule is combined with the regular insistence that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and when we encounter as we do these days a resistance to address any substance informally so long as it pends in CD/ 1624, the closest thing we have to an agreed program of work - well, then, our prospects are straitened indeed. How might they be enhanced?

- In sum, if the CD is not to be used for negotiations for a while, what would constitute a reasonable CD stewardship program?

Ambassador Vega, I do hate to leave such tough questions to you and your successors ... but it's not as though I picked off any easy ones myself. There's no low fruit on this tree.

Delegations, our world is changing before our eyes as we get over the Cold War and face a more complex nuclear future. Real change like today's in our thinking is full of the discomfort of the destruction of wellestablished assumptions, very hard on old liturgy, but it is also full of new perceptions, possibilities and responsibilities. Certainly, if only for the sake of comprehension, such change is full of work for the likes of us. We need be energized here, summoned to duty by change and challenge in our field.

I have shared my view of our duty here with you from the start - and, to finish, I urge again that together we use this unique institution as we can to build human solidarity, enough at least, and in time, to avoid forever what would be the last major no-holds-barred war of our kind. I urge that we use this forum as we can to express the health and dignity in us, to respect our natural duty to control, contain and eliminate nuclear arsenals. I urge that we use this Conference as we can to seek common ground, to serve interests we all share, weapon and non-weapon state alike, NPT party and non-party together, states from all the groups and regions, all as one, eye to eye here, gathered to try to serve our security in this Conference with community, trust and verified multilateral action - so that we might all feel much less inclined to try to serve it elsewhere with arms.

I am very grateful to all those who have helped me try my best to do my own duty as

President well here. I thank all you delegates for your unfailing courtesy, your patient counsel and all the good will and encouragement you have shared with me. I thank Vladimir Petrovsky, Enrique Roman-Morey, off to such a fine start, and Jerzy Zaleski and the rest of the Secretariat team for their thorough professionalism and constant competence. I thank the translators who make more good sense of what we say than we probably deserve. I thank the officials who gave me time and advice here, in New York and in the capitals I visited. I thank Petko Dragonov and Juan Enrique Vega, with both of whom it has been a pleasure to cooperate. 1 owe an enormous debt to my constant colleague, Marc Vidricaire, and I thank him, Anouk Larnarre, Johane Coulombe, Nancy Belair and the rest of the Canadian team here and at home for their solidarity and support.

And I thank my good fortune. Despite the tight straits, presiding over this Conference of you delegates has been an honour I shall treasure among my memories for the rest of my life.