It is an honour for me to presume the presidency at this stage. I would like to start by expressing my appreciation and gratitude to my distinguished predecessors in this function from Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Argentina and Australia for their commitment and leadership and for the excellent cooperation which we have enjoyed in the P6 throughout the whole year. I think a particular word of appreciation should go to our colleague from Australia, Caroline Millar, for the perseverance and diminished optimism that you have shown in the four weeks of meetings and throughout your presidency of the conference and that certainly serves us in our delegation as a great example which we will try to follow.

I would also like to extend the warm welcome first of all to our new colleague from Kazakhstan, Ambassador Mukhtar Tileuberdi. Welcome to the conference and I am looking forward to cooperating with you closely in our common tasks.

I wish to extend the warm welcome to the participants of the 2009 UN programme of fellowships on disarmament who have just arrived in Geneva and are observing our proceedings. I hope that they will benefit from the exposure to our forum. Documents from meetings and lectures you will receive and certainly I am ready to sit together with you to discuss various aspects of the conference.

Let me also thank all of you, all delegations for the engagement and the flexibility which has allowed us to adopt CD 1864 on May 29. I would also like to thank the Secretary General of the Conference for his personal commitment and I entrust his colleagues to convey to him our gratitude.

Dear colleagues, this year has been an unusual one for the conference since after more than a decade of stalemate we succeeded in adopting a programme of work. So, we provided the kick-off and today I would have liked to welcome you to the home stretch However, I am not sure that we are quite there yet because equally unusual to the eyes of the outside world three months after the adoption of the programme of work it has not yet been implemented.

We have a month left until the end of this year’s session and this is certainly not a very long time. But we are convinced that progress is still possible if we proceed with taking those decisions which are absolutely necessary very swiftly. As they are of a procedural and practical character and given the very extensive consultations which the Australian presidency has undertaken it is difficult to imagine that insurmountable obstacles could really persist.

So, I wish to assure you that my delegation stands ready to engage with all of you very openly, very patiently.  I am certainly looking forward to all of you putting on your running shoes for the home stretch and overcoming remaining concerns swiftly and make sure that these concerns get the appropriate place in the future activities of the Conference.

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