Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Ambassador Johannes Landman of Netherlands
to the Conference on Disarmament 25th January 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Thank you Mr President

Further to the substantive EU statement pronounced by the Ambassador of Slovenia also on behalf of the Netherlands. I would like to add the following:

First of all I would like to congratulate you with this very smooth adoption of our agenda which I would like to take as good auspicious for our further proceedings this year. We are extremely pleased that like last year and before last year, we have chosen to work together with the other five incoming presidents during the session of the CD this year. This is indeed the basis for good work.

Last Wednesday, for the first time in our history, the United Nations Secretary General addressed the yearly opening of the CD. Mr President, he used very strong words and I may quote from that “The international community values the conference on disarmament as the world’s single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum but we need progress. Even with widespread agreement on the gravity of stress to international peace and security, you still have not been able to find common cause to address them. I am deeply troubled by this impasse over priorities. When you were on the verge of reaching a decision on this draft presidential decision last June, I called on you to move forward in a spirit of compromise to seize that historic opportunity. You did not. Let us make this year a breakthrough year.”

Mr President, the gained momentum last year should not be lost. A balanced and carefully crafted compromise for a working program is on the table, on this we must proceed. There is no other way. To inspire us, in the coming weeks, I would like to give some quotes which represent so to say, some part of the collective wisdom of the globalized world. And I would like to start with a quote from the former Prime Minister of India, Nehru “crisis and deadlocks when they occur have the least disadvantage that they force us to sink." Then I would like to go back a little in our history and go to Plutaque who said, “Perseverance is more prevailing then violence and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yields themselves up when taken little by little.” Then I would like to quote from Molière who said it is not only what we do but also what we do not do for which we are accountable.

Now Mr President, for those who believe and apparently increasingly so while we stay idle and are almost confirming such a view and I am referring to the view that there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear free world. Well for those who believe that I would like to quote from the article in the Wall Street Journal of the 15th of January this year by George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn. “In some respects, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can't even see the top of the mountain, and it is tempting and easy to say we can't get there from here. But the risks from continuing to go down the mountain or standing pat are too real to ignore. We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.”

Thank you Mr Chairman.