CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT CONCLUDES 1999 SESSION

Press Release
DCF/382

CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT CONCLUDES 1999 SESSION

(Reissued as received.)

GENEVA, 7 September (UN Information Service) -- The Conference on Disarmament, the world's sole multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations, ended today its 1999 session, which had been held at the Palais des Nations since 19 January.

The Conference had decided to examine at the session the following questions: nuclear disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race; prevention of nuclear war; prevention of an arms race in outer space; effective international arrangements for guaranteeing non-nuclear-arms States against the use or the threat of such weapons; transparency in armaments; new types and systems of weapons of mass destruction; radiological weapons; a global programme of disarmament; and consideration and adoption of the annual report and any other report, as appropriate, to the General Assembly.

By the end of the 1999 session, the Conference had not been able to reach agreement on a programme of work. While agreement had been reached on most of the elements of a programme, major differences remained among national delegations on two topics: nuclear disarmament and prevention of an arms race in outer space.

The 1999 session was noteworthy for a consensus decision taken on 5 August to admit five new members to the Conference -- Ecuador, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Tunisia -- thus bringing total membership to 66. Following this expansion, numerous delegations saluted the role played by Swiss Ambassador Erwin Hofer, who had led extensive consultations on the matter over the past year. Several delegations also expressed hopes that other long-term candidates for membership might soon be admitted. The Conference still has before it requests for membership from 21 countries. Some nations called for universal Conference membership; others said it was important to consider the effects of admitting new members on the efficiency and practical functioning of what was in essence a negotiating body, and to take into account political and regional balance. The United States said it would not approve of the admission of any further new members until the Conference, at its current size, demonstrated that it could make progress in its work.

Last year's Conference session unfolded against an international background that included nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan. This year's meetings occurred while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) engaged in military operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed, the United States decided to pursue a national anti-missile defense system, India released a draft nuclear deterrence doctrine, and tensions in Kashmir escalated. All these events drew the attention of the Conference.

On 11 May, as the Conference began the second part of its 1999 session, China spoke, denouncing and condemning the attack four days earlier in which NATO had destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. China demanded that NATO provide a convincing explanation for the attack and that it offer moral and financial reparations for this "barbarian act". The same day, the Russian Federation condemned the NATO campaign against the Sovereign State of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A month later, the Russian Federation declared that the NATO attacks had gravely complicated the international situation. On 3 June, the United States contended before the Conference that in its view the crisis in the Balkans had not been caused by the actions of NATO but by the inhuman policies deliberately put into effect in Kosovo by the Serbian Government to which a NATO response had been necessary.

In a joint statement published on 11 May, China and the Russian Federation expressed serious concern over what they termed a grave threat to the treaty on the limitation of anti-ballistic missiles by the United States' decision to implement a national system of anti-missile defences. Pakistan indicated that it shared this concern.

On 19 August, Pakistan spoke on the subject of a draft "nuclear doctrine" made public by India according to which, Pakistan contended, India appeared to be directing itself towards deployment of nuclear arms. Pakistan said the doctrine called into question Indian assurances given to Pakistan in the Lahore agreement. In response, India assured the Conference that it had not changed its national policy on the matter of a minimum credible nuclear deterrence.

The entry into force on 1 May 1999 of the Ottawa Convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production or transport of anti-personnel landmines, and on their destruction, constituted another major event of the 1999 session of the Conference on Disarmament. That made possible a potential next step of opening negotiations within the Conference on a prohibition of the transfer of these "barbarian weapons", as already advised by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to the Conference on 26 January. In this address, the Secretary-General also urged that the Conference begin constructive negotiations on a non-discriminatory, multilateral, and effectively verifiable treaty prohibiting the production of fissile materials for military purposes.

Throughout the session, numerous delegations insisted on the necessity of reopening negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons. On 21 January, the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency of the United States, John Holum, read out a message from United States President Bill Clinton expressing the hope that such negotiations would be rapidly resumed. Divergences of opinion persisted between various delegations on the matter, with some insisting that such a treaty include existing stocks of fissile materials while others preferred that any agreement apply only to future production of such materials. Canada called for a middle position, contending that while it wasn't indispensable to include existing stocks in such an agreement, it was nonetheless essential that in parallel with such negotiations, all States having existing stocks should take measures to ensure transparency in relation to those materials and to reduce their stocks in an irreversible fashion under a formal moratorium. On 26 March, the President of China, Jiang Zemin, announced before the Conference that his Government had presented the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty to the National Popular Assembly of China for ratification.

The Conference was also informed of the adoption on 7 June of the Inter- American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Weapons Acquisitions.

During the 1999 session, the Conference was addressed by high-level officials from a series of Governments: the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland; the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Norway; the Vice Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Iran, Belarus, and Ukraine; the under-secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs of Italy and Mexico; the Director of the Section of Disarmament of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico; the Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control of Germany; and the Director of International Security of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom.

This year the presidency of the Conference was held successively for four- week periods and conforming with the principle of rotation by alphabetical order in English by the Ambassadors of the following member States: United States, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Algeria, Argentina and Australia. Zimbabwe decided not to assume the presidency of the Conference during the period set aside for it in May and June.

The 1999 session was closed by Leslie Luck, Ambassador of Australia, who will hold the presidency until 31 December.

The Conference has fixed the following dates for its session for the year 2000, which will take place in three parts: 17 January - 24 March; 22 May - 7 July; and 7 August - 22 September.

Conference Membership

The 66 members of the Conference are Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador*, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland*, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan*, Kenya, Malaysia*, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia*, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela; Viet Nam, Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.

The five new members admitted on 5 August are marked with asterisks (*).

Representatives of the following non-member States also participated in the 1999 work of the Conference as observers: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brunei Darussalam, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Holy See, Iceland, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Nepal, Oman, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovenia, Sudan, Swaziland, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Yemen, and Zambia.

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