Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Conference on Disarmament General Secretary, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze to the Conference on Disarmament 2nd September 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Thank you very much Mr President.

Mr President, as probably some of the delegations remember, that it has been a consistent position of the Secretary General of this Conference to remind all delegations that raising issues outside the agenda of the sessions that are the CD is not a tool for political propaganda. I would also like to remind that this is not a Security Council, not Human Right Council, not even the human rights/humanitarian committee of the United Nations, not even the voluntary political debate on whatever issues because whatever according to our report that is before us, the items before the agenda of the of the CD and we have to adopt the report are secession of nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament, prevention of nuclear war including all related matters, prevention of arms race in outer space, effective international arrangement to ensure non nuclear weapons states against use or threat of use of nuclear weapons states, new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of weapons, radiological weapons, comprehensive program of disarmament, transparency in arms, and consideration and adoption of annual report and any other report as appropriate to the General Assembly of the United Nations; that we should be dealing with.

So I appeal to the delegations to concentrate on the agenda of the CD rather than bring here the problems that are outside the Conference on Disarmament. As you probably remember, each time we try to bring bilateral, multilateral problems that are outside the agenda of the Conference on Disarmament, in fact, it had negative effect on the considerations in other fora like the Security Council or other bilateral negotiations or multilateral negotiations before two or more countries.

We should not create that atmosphere of political trading blows. This is Conference on Disarmament and I would like you all to concentrate on the agenda items that I just read. We have plenty of work, we don’t have to be distracted, those who want to be distracted out of the Conference, get out, look into the archives we have plenty or archives at the United Nations, we have plenty of documents in the library of the United Nations and they may use other forums that are appropriate for that.

I, therefore, appeal to the delegations to concentrate on the acute problems rather than raising issues outside the agenda. I welcome then in that spirit the statement made by Norway, Mexico, and others

Of course diplomats at any other forum and especially the CD should be aware of political problems in the world but for that we have various sources of information that they can use and we should use the precious time here of the adoption of the report and concentration of the agenda. And I would like to remind you that once again we are not moving far ahead and we are not progressing quite as far as we would like to progress so at least what we can do is to adopt a report and present it to the General Assembly and think at the General Assembly, what the General Assembly should do to help us if we cannot help us if we cannot help ourselves. At least I would like to appeal to you not to spoil the good political atmosphere and not to hinder the process of the adoption of the report.

Thank you very much.