First Committee

Advancing priorities common to all States advanced the interests of each State and had the potential to revitalize faltering global disarmament efforts, the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Angela Kane, told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today during its annual debate.

Absent global consensus on a new security architecture for disarmament, regional groups and individual countries opened debate in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today with statements both affirming the global political stasis and strategic uncertainty while putting forth ideas on how to correct their course.

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today approved its agenda and work programme for the sixty-seventh General Assembly session at a brief organizational meeting.

The General Assembly’s First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today elected, by acclamation, Desra Percaya (Indonesia) as Chair of its sixty-seventh session.

In a late diplomatic development today in the Disarmament Committee, a key sponsor of a draft resolution that would have had the General Assembly call upon the Conference on Disarmament to set a programme of work during its 2012 session to enable the immediate start of negotiations, did not press that text to a vote, in order, he said, to “preserve the integrity and strength” of the proposal.

Revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament, accelerating the implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments, and granting negative security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon States were among the aims of the 10 draft texts approved today as the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) continued its action on the 53 draft texts before it.

Furthering compliance with non-proliferation, arms limitation and disarmament agreements and commitments, consolidating the African nuclear-weapon-free zone, enhancing transparency in armaments, and banning development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction were among the aims of the 22 draft texts approved today as the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) continued its action on the 53 draft texts before it.

Keeping biological, chemical and nuclear weapons from terrorists, bolstering regional and subregional arms control and speeding results from nuclear disarmament promises and processes were among the aims of the 17 draft texts approved today as the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) began taking action on the 53 draft texts before it.

Warned throughout the debate today in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) that the “world cannot afford to stand still on the crucial issues of disarmament and non-proliferation”, delegations struggled once more to understand the root cause for the dysfunction in the United Nations disarmament machinery in order to evolve a common approach to correcting it.

Building confidence and meeting disarmament and non-proliferation goals via measures unique to regions would have a broader impact on international peace and security, delegates told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) during thematic debates on regional disarmament and on the disarmament machinery, which heard the introduction of seven draft resolutions, including divergent texts concerning the Conference on Disarmament.