Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Unofficial transcript
France, Ambassador Eric Danon
25 August 2009

Yes, thank you Mr. President.

Very briefly: first of all, of course, to congratulate you on your accession to the Presidency and to thank Caroline Millar for the extraordinary work she did last month and the last few months. And also to welcome newcomers to the Conference and to tell them all how much France is ready to work with them and make progress in this forum.

I just wish to associate myself with very specific points made in the very interesting speeches this morning. I would like to say to the Italian Delegate, how much I agree with him, about how much what is happening today in the Conference is disappointing. I would like to say that thanks to the skill of Ambassador of Algeria we do have hopes of being able to begin this work, another country had killed this hope, the hope that we start again. This has been very disappointing so far and I hope it will not be the same thing next year.

I wish to associate myself with what Chile said, in connection with the risk of negotiating outside this forum. We know that in other fora there have been slippages of this kind and we are attempting to combat this. The risk does exist, definitely, because apart from the fact of 1864, what is important is what happened politically behind the scene. Since the Second World War, the five countries which had the vast majority of nuclear weapons in the world were ready to negotiate on something which was verifiable. That was the political event which underpinned the first working group, but also the balance of 1864. But that political dimension, quite obviously, will have to be reflected in something specific.

Today, with the global pressure upon us to change what is happening in the disarmament field, we cannot think that if the five are not ready to do something that can be checked upon – although we still have to see how etcetera - this is not done there is a risk. In the French delegation we want all this to be dealt with within the Conference on Disarmament and we have to work on that.

I associate myself also with what our Canadian colleague said, I found what he said very interesting in connection with the official documents, managed to avoid a certain number of false international law and false balance, and sort of a smoky haze surrounding some elements. If this was necessary to begin the work, then we would have accepted it. But if the aim was not to do anything, we do not agree with the Disarmament Conference to be undermined with a sort of smokescreen.

The Algerian colleague I hope, will hear our comment and know that we are very pleased with events surrounding Pelindaba, we welcome this event and we are pleased to see implementation of this Treaty. Also I would like to take this opportunity to say once more, how much we welcome and congratulate Ambassador Jazaïry for the excellent work he has done to bring us the Document 1864, if I may say that.

Then to the Ambassador of Russia I would like to say how carefully we have looked at new documents submitted by China and by Russia, and how the issue of space is of paramount importance to us and will be so in the forthcoming weeks and months, apart from nuclear problems.

So that, very briefly, is what I wanted to say Mr. President, and wishing you courage for the difficult trials ahead of you, between now and the time ahead of you.

Thank you.