Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka of Sri Lanka
to the Conference on Disarmament 4th February 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Thank you Mr. President,
May I once again congratulate you on your chairing which demonstrates qualities of strength and clarity.

Mr. President,
Sri Lanka is inescapably situated in a volatile part of the world which has two nuclear weapon states. So we have a Western interest in the success of the themes and ideas of this conference. But I must say that I listened to the proceedings of the morning with a growing sense of unreality.
Mr. President, there was a funny line attributed variously to Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler which went: ‘What’s mine is mine. What’s yours – let’s negotiate.’ Now, that attitude, Mr. President, is not going to ensure progress in this conference.

We must be realists. Everybody has been walking the four great realist horsemen of nuclear disarmament. We must be realist to understand that the approach of one more heave is not going to do it. If there are states that have not come on board then it is inaccurate to say that there is international consensus. There is some consensus, but obviously it was not widespread enough. That is not because we run out of time. That is because we have very real underlying issues and concerns which have to be addressed. And as I have said before, the idea of a course of exhortation or one more heave oppressing certain states in a moral dock is just not going to work. It is unrealistic to think so.

Mr. President,
This is true not only of those states which have second thoughts about document L1. It is true of some of the other disarmament issues that will been raised today. We can not expect great progress which builds on some of the more important arms control agreements; outbidding or détente. In a new period in which there are those who seek the regain of their old dreams: of the resettlement of Russia by placing new weapons systems on its territory.

Mr. President,
We can not expect our great Asian friends to come on board of the consensus that is supposed to exists when there are open speculations as to whether or not this is the new enemy and whether if it exercises its right of sovereignty or the adventurism of a secessionist either. That will be the cause for the sole super power to defend that breakaway either, with all this might including the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. President,
We will not make progress on the FMCT issue if we continue to demonize one or two states in a volatile arch of crisis. We are forgetting conveniently that there is at least one state with a longstanding nuclear weapon stockpile; a state which has invaded almost all its neighbours. We can not make progress on the FMCT so long as there is loud speculation as to unilateral strikes on certain states, including strikes with low heel tactical nuclear weapons. None of this is going to work, Mr. President.
And Sri Lanka, as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, certainly does not accept some notion of moral superiority on the part of those who invaded other countries using as an excuse an outright lie about weapons of mass destruction. So this moral isolation of some states by hypocritical others, I do not think is about to success. In the view of Sri Lanka, Mr. President, and in the view of the Non-Aligned Movement, though I do not speak for in the moment as a coordinator of G21, but of Sri Lanka. In the view of the Third World, I believe, what is needed is realism and new thinking; a new paradigm. That frankly addresses the concerns of all.