Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Unofficial transcript
HUNGARY State Secretary Gábor Iklódy
17 September 2009

Mr President, thank you very much indeed.

First of all I would like to congratulate you and the previous P6 presidents on the adoption by consensus of the 2009 Annual Report of the Conference on Disarmament.

Hungary highly appreciates your great leadership and continuous efforts which have led us to this very moment

2009 was a special year in the council chamber. We were informed in Budapest on the 29th of May that the Conference on Disarmament successfully adopted by consensus its long awaited Programme of Work for the 2009 session under the Algerian CD presidency. We would like to thank Ambassador Idriss Jazaïry of Algeria for his excellent and indeed skilful work.

In the following weeks the Republic of Hungary stood ready to adopt the presidential decision on the implementation of the Programme of Work. The fact that after a long discussion the CD was not able to adopt by consensus this decision caused some confusion as to why it was not possible.

However the Annual Report which was adopted by consensuses just now will inform the General Assembly and the outside world that the Conference on Disarmament has woken up from its decade long sleep.

The positive momentum created by this adoption has at least two very important effects;

Firstly, it demonstrated that this unique body is able and wished to start substantive negotiations after a long stalemate.
Secondly, in each capital the decision makers got an early warning. From 2010 we can expect that the CD will start its substantive negotiations which require more staff, more experts, and much more time dedicated to the work of the Conference on Disarmament.

In this, when decisions makers bear special responsibility over the limited financial resources, these signals are extremely important. We will appeal to all delegations to save this positive momentum in the following month and find a possibility of the early commencement of substantive work next January.

I would like to assure you Mr President and the incoming that this delegation will stand ready to actively engage in the next years work as well, and hopefully the negations on those core issues which were identified in the Programme of Work for 2009.

Thank you very much again Mr President.