Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space

New Zealand Statement

13 February 2007

Preventing the weaponisation of outer space is fundamental to safeguarding our ability to access space resources, both now and in the future. It is in all our interests to preserve space for the development of peaceful technologies and scientific exploration.

Preservation of a weapon-free space is rightly a core issue for this Conference. It is highly relevant for all States, including those without space programmes. The commercial and scientific applications of outer space are continually expanding for an increasingly diverse range of functions – from communications to climate change monitoring. We must ensure that future opportunities for peaceful development are not compromised by militarization.

In this regard, New Zealand was concerned to learn that China had undertaken an anti-satellite test with no advance notification – the first such test in 20 years. We are disappointed that transparency and confidence building measures, such as those we have been discussing in this very forum, do not appear to have been observed. New Zealand remains strongly opposed to any attempts to militarise outer space.

A useful outcome to our discussions during this informal segment would be to evaluate prospects for a more comprehensive legal framework regulating the demilitarization of space. Canada circulated a very useful working paper during last year’s debate which aimed to identify gaps in the existing legal systems. This might provide a good starting point from which to explore whether there is agreement on the existing gaps before proceeding to debate on how best to fill them. Russia and China have also done some important work in this regard, and we thank them for the updated version of their compilation paper, circulated this morning.

Arguments that there is no current arms race in space, and therefore no need to address this issue, ignore the preventative benefits that adopting a precautionary approach might provide.

We have previously observed that a useful precedent exists for creating an overarching legal framework for peaceful uses in the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. A key consideration for participating States in that process was the judgment that the potential benefits for the global community in terms of peaceful uses and scientific research which could be carried out on that continent, under an agreed international treaty regime, outweighed any narrower benefits to individual states which could have been accrued through weaponisation or military deployment by those states. In our view, a parallel set of considerations should exist with respect to our discussions on measures to prevent the creation of an arms race in outer space in this forum.