Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Ambassador Luiz Filipe de Macedo Soares of Brazil to the Conference on Disarmament 19th August 2008

Thank you Mr. President

The first point which I like to address, inevitably so, would be to express the satisfaction of Brazil at seeing the President, the last post for 2008 filled by Venezuela, a country with which Brazil share much more with than just a long frontier.

For the delegation of Brazil, it is a period of work here in the CD, where we have the assurance that the Latin American President will give a different vision, a different sense to things and an initial demonstration of that is that we have the oldest long standing demilitarized zone in our region. It is essentially ours; it is essentially a peaceful continent.

The second item I wish to refer to, we will have to approve the Conference on Disarmament report for the year and clearly this is no easy undertaking and without adding to your responsibility further burden I wish to say that this CD report will clearly be objective and factual but at the same time my delegation hope that it will not be a static, rigid, photography of the current state within the conference but instead will contain, and this can be done because it is a written document, still contains within in it stylistic imprint and can offer a message for the year to come, and make it clear that we are not ending in a state of impasse and that we will be starting from zero next year but instead we will be able to launch what we have put together this year thanks to all our presidents who have presided over the CD this year.

And now my third comment, I would like to thank the distinguished ambassador of Pakistan first of all for his statement, as always based on deep meditation and presented with limpid clarity. I would like to express general agreement with the arguments advanced by the distinguished ambassador of New Zealand. I might add a specific point of my own, however, that is that my delegation, possible negotiations on our fissile materials cut off treaty for explosive purposes should contain verification provisions. IN the view of my delegation, it is not so important for this position to be in the mandate, even if it did, we have no certainty as to just what kind of clauses there would be in the document within the document as ultimately negotiated. Negotiations involved the advancing of ideas and contrasting of those ideas by participants in the course of the negotiations.

And my last point now, Ambassador Jean- François Dobelle in his farewell address, provided a final demonstration here within the CD of our forum, of the profundity, the clarity of his thinking. I would like to say that in a body which is called upon to provide negotiations which have a specific mandate in the field of disarmament. One requires diplomats but as he has said, political diplomats follow instructions, but in negotiating legal instruments, one requires legal expertise, mastery in the field and apart from many of the qualities we are losing in the Conference as a result of the departure of Ambassador Dobelle. We are losing a skilled Jurist, and I wish to state that for the record at our session today.

Thank you.