REGIONAL MEETING ON DISARMAMENT TO BE HELD IN KATHMANDU, 15-17 FEBRUARY

Press Release
DC/2677

REGIONAL MEETING ON DISARMAMENT TO BE HELD IN KATHMANDU, 15-17 FEBRUARY

NEW YORK, 4 February (Department for Disarmament Affairs) -– The Department for Disarmament Affairs, through its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific, will convene the twelfth regional disarmament meeting in Kathmandu from 15 to 17 February. The theme of this year’s meeting will be “Strategic Stability, Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and the 2000 NPT Review Conference”.

Against the backdrop of a new millennium, the meeting will focus on nuclear disarmament and attempt to elaborate concrete measures and strategies toward a world free from nuclear weapons. An objective of the meeting is to help the Asia-Pacific community to prepare for the 2000 NPT Review Conference under which a spectrum of issues of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament will be examined. In that context, the twelfth Kathmandu meeting will address procedural matters, objectives and goals, responsibilities of the nuclear-weapon States and specific regional situations in relation to the 2000 NPT Review Conference. At the same time, the meeting will also address Mongolia’s nuclear-weapon-free status in the context of the United Nations General Assembly resolution on that matter.

The Regional Centre’s activities, carried out through the organization of regional meetings over the last 12 years, have the primary objective of encouraging regional and subregional dialogue for the enhancement of openness, transparency and confidence-building, as well as the promotion of disarmament and security. The dialogue facilitated by those regional meetings has become known as the “Kathmandu process”.

Approximately 35 participants from government, academic and research institutes and non-governmental organizations, mainly from the Asia-Pacific region, are expected to attend the three-day meeting in their personal capacity. It will be entirely financed from voluntary contributions of Member States and interested organizations.

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