CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT TO OPEN 2004 SESSION ON 19 JANUARY

Background Release

CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT TO OPEN 2004 SESSION ON 19 JANUARY

(Reissued as received.)

GENEVA, 16 January (UN Information Service) -- The Conference on Disarmament, the world's sole multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations, will open its 2004 session on Monday, 19 January, at the Palais des Nations.  The first public plenary will take place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 20 January.

The session will open under the presidency of Ambassador Amina Mohamed of Kenya.  The presidency of the Conference rotates amongst its member States according to the English alphabetical order; each President holds office for four working weeks.  During 2004, the presidency of the Conference also will be held by Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco and Myanmar.  The Conference's annual session is divided into three parts.  The first part of the session will conclude on 26 March; the second will run from 10 May to 25 June; and the third will be held from 26 July to 10 September.

In accordance with its rules of procedure, the Conference “shall adopt its agenda for the year at the beginning of the session.  In doing so, the Conference shall take into account the recommendations made to it by the United Nations General Assembly, the proposals by its Members, and decisions of the Conference”.

The Conference at its first plenary will hear from Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Secretary-General of the Conference and the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, who will read out a statement on behalf of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

In 2003, the Conference was not able to reach agreement on a programme of work -- the fifth consecutive year during which it was unable to do so -- and so was unable to start work on substantive issues.  While there was agreement on most of the elements of a programme, the main differences remained on the matters of prevention of an arms race in outer space and nuclear disarmament.  Despite intensive consultations on a number of informal proposals to break the deadlock, especially a cross-group initiative by the five Ambassadors of Algeria, Belgium, Chile, Sweden and Colombia, no progress was made. 

Based on the proposal by Ambassador Amorim of Brazil in August 2000 (CD/1624), the “Five Ambassadors” proposal calls for the establishment of four Ad Hoc Committees on the topics of negative security assurances; nuclear disarmament; a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and prevention of an arms race in outer space.

The provisional agenda of the Conference for 2004 includes the following items:  cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters; prevention of an arms race in outer space; effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons (radiological weapons); a comprehensive programme of disarmament; transparency in armaments; and consideration and adoption of the annual report and any other report, as appropriate, to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The Conference's public plenaries, usually held on Thursday mornings, also generally feature statements by member countries on their priority issues on the Conference’s agenda and on the ways and means of breaking the negotiating impasse in the Conference.

Member States of Conference

The 65 members of the Conference are Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, 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, Morocco, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal. Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe.

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