Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by the Republic of Korea
to the Conference on Disarmament 29th January 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Mr. President.

To begin with I would like to congratulate you on the assumption of first Presidency of the 2008 Conference on Disarmament.

I would also like to express my sincere appreciation for your tireless efforts to conduct consultations during the intercessional period with the 2007 presidents as well as with each member state to seek the common ground and in order to bring the CD back to substantive work. I can assert that your hard work will lead our discussions to successful beginnings for this year’s work.

Mr. President, last year the CD engaged in constructive and serious discussions under the able leadership of the six Presidents based upon the new P6 mechanisms initiated in 2006 and the appointment of the coordinators for seven items of the agenda. This initiative has without a doubt greater contributed to increasing the consistency and intensity of discussions in the CD creating a significant momentum to bring the CD out of its long standing stalemate. In particular as the Ambassador Trezza of Italy put in his farewell remark “the appointment of the coordinators complimented vertically the horizontal coordination among the Presidents” by their genuine engagement and their dedication. In this regard by the leaders the idea of maintaining this practice in 2008 to lead our discussions in a more effective and efficient way.

During the last meeting, we successfully adopted the agenda for this year. In this regard, I would like to remind you and other colleagues that we conducted informal rolling discussions on all items on the agenda last year and then stipulated the priorities for more focus debates. Those are as you are all aware, the treaty to ban the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, nuclear disarmament, negative security assurance, and preventing an arms race in outer space. Given the importance of the continuity and the coherence of discussions in the CD it would be better to concentrate on the core issues in order to build on what we have achieved last year.

No one can deny the fact that the presidential drafted decision L1 together with the two other documents CRP5 and CRP6 is the most noteworthy product of last year’s session. I believe that the proposal is based upon a realistic and balanced approach and as said by Secretary Ban Ki-moon, “the adoption of this decision would not deprive any member state of the ability to assert its national position in the subsequent phases of the Conference’s work.”

While recognizing that a fissile cut off treaty is the only issue ripe for negotiation in the CD, L1 does not exclude the possibility of future negotiations under any agenda item as was clearly mentioned in the compliment presented statement in CD/2007/CRP5. L1 is the only possible compromise for the moment to bring the CD back to work. Given that the proposal enjoys large support in this room, we should seek to mobilize the necessary consensus by addressing any remaining concern.

My delegation sincerely hopes that we will be able to begin substantive work as soon as possible through the adaptation of the L1 proposal as the basis for the program of work.

Mr. President, I believe in this saying “A hard beginning makes a good ending.” I sincerely hope that through our deliberations this year, the concerted efforts of the P6 to rejuvenate the CD will reap a good harvest.

I thank you Mr. President.