Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Ambassador Idriss Jazaϊri of Algeria to the Conference on Disarmament 2nd September 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Thank you Mr President.

First Excellency Ambassador Mundarain Hernandez please accept my delegations sincere congratulations for your accession to this important responsibility.

As this is the first time I am taking the floor, I would be remise if I did not say how much I appreciate the way that you are discharging your stewardship. I would also like to pay tribute to your eminent predecessors of the p6 and in this respect, I would like to put special emphasis on our brother, Samir Labidi who chaired this Conference with so happily and so efficiently with so much persuasive capacity and energy as a member of the region of Africa and as an African, I would say that all of us here from this region felt vey proud to have had him in the chair and I think that I can speak in the name of all the African countries present here to say how much we have appreciated him and how much we think that his promotion to the role of a Cabinet Minister is seen by us as a recognition of his outstanding capacity as it is and also as his human qualities.

Mr President, we have taken note with great interest of your draft report in this minefield of the Conference on Disarmament and we wish to congratulate you for having being able to steer your way in such an objective manner. We will be consulting our members of the groups of which we belong, G21 and others and we are sure that we will come to a joint conclusion whatever improvements have to be made. The substance, the basis for this discussion have been provided through your good efforts and I think they have been a source and it means the elaboration of the report will not in itself be a subject of such controversies, the ones that we have gone through in seeking a consensus on the substantive issues which we have been confronted with in the course of this year. But I think that attempts and comments are just made by my colleagues today in particularly the distinguished representative of Norway are a source of inspiration of us and we need to look to the future to continue our discussions in congenial spirit. Some language I heard this morning was a bit out of tune and I hope that we will continue to work in our congenial and friendly spirit with the view to achieving consensus in the course of next year.

I thank you for your kind attention Mr President.