Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Unofficial transcript
Russian Federation – Ambassador Valery Loschinin
25 August 2009

Thank you, Mr. President.

The Russian Delegation welcomes you as the President of the Conference. You are a well known diplomat and you have great skills and considerable experience in multilateral diplomacy and in the activities of the United Nations as a whole. You have always been accompanied by success. We hope that this time also, your Presidency over the Conference will be successful. In all of your efforts you may count on our full support and assistance.

Our position, Mr. President, concerning the situation that has arisen in the CD has been set out several days ago. I would like, once again, to emphasise that we support the rapid start of substantive work in the Conference, on the basis of the approved Programme of Work.

Now I would like to inform you about another issue. The Russian Delegation, jointly with the Chinese Delegation, on 17th of august, provided for an official publication of the Conference an information document; called basic issues and comments on the draft agreement t o prevent the stockpiling of weapons in space, or the use of force or threat of force against objects in space and responses to these.

In preparing the Document, we used the presentations by delegations within the unofficial thematic discussions in the Conference and open ended meetings of the Conference, which Russia and China held in August last year and also those on the International Conference on security and space, traditionally organised.

There were specific proposals taken into account, received from a number of Delegations in writing. We are grateful for all those who actively participated in discussion and analysis of the Russian-Chinese draft agreement. We hope to continue this joint work for further substantive consideration, taking into account this document.

The Russian Delegation has also provided for an official publication for the Conference; a renewed report of the report of the United Nations Secretary-General on measures to ensure transparency and strengthening of confidence in outer space activities, prepared on the basis of the Resolution 63/68 of the General Assembly.

Somewhat earlier, these proposals were sent by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in keeping with this resolution, under which Russia and china call upon all Delegations once again to look at this resolution carefully and send in proposals on the issue of confidence building measures, before the beginning of the new session of the General Assembly.

We believe these new documents of the Conference on Disarmament, once they are published, will provide a good basis for the working group on Item 3 of the Agenda, when it starts its activities. These documents that I have mentioned are available in English. They can be obtained in this room from the Secretariat.

In conclusion, we would like very warmly to welcome the new Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan; Ambassador Mukhtar Tileuberdi, and note that we are ready to work with the Delegation of that country.

I thank you Sir.