CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT HEARS ADDRESS BY FOREIGN MINISTER OF CHINA

The Minster of Foreign Affairs of China, Yang Jiechi, this morning addressed the Conference on Disarmament, laying out China’s position on disarmament and non-proliferation and its strategy for working towards a world free from nuclear weapons.

Mr. Yang began by acknowledging that, thanks to the concerted efforts of all parties, the Conference had recently adopted its programme of work and would soon proceed to substantive work on the core issues. China believed that the Conference would press ahead with its work on various fronts and deliver new results, living up to the expectations of all parties. For its part, China had unswervingly followed the path of peaceful development and a win-win strategy of opening up, and maintained that the people of all countries should join hands to build a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity. Today, at a time when the Conference was to open a new page in its history, they should seriously review past experience and lessons and explore ways to ensure all-around and sound progress in multilateral arms control and disarmament. To do that, China believed that they should embrace a new security concept featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination, and work for a harmonious and stable international and regional security environment; they should uphold multilateralism, bringing into full play the role of the United Nations and other multilateral mechanisms; they should maintain international strategic balance and stability, and achieve security for all based on mutual respect and equal treatment of the legitimate security interests of all parties; and they should intensify dialogue and cooperation and commit to peaceful settlement of international disputes.

Achieving the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons for a world free of nuclear weapons was a goal that China had been advocating all along and pursuing with unremitting efforts, Mr. Yang stressed. It was solely for the purpose of self-defence that China had developed limited nuclear capabilities. China had faithfully abided by its commitment that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances and that it would unconditionally not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones. China had always exercised the utmost restraint in the development of nuclear weapons and had never and would never participate in any form of nuclear arms race. It had also been among the first countries to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. China supported the Conference in launching negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty at an early date and would take an active part in those negotiations. China also opposed the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, and had joined all related international treaties and mechanisms, and strictly enforced United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction) and other non-proliferation resolutions. Moreover, China had intensified efforts in export control and conducted multilateral and bilateral exchanges and cooperation on non-proliferation. In that connection, China called for peacefully resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation, and had made unremitting efforts towards that goal.


Unprecedented opportunities now existed in international nuclear disarmament. The complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons and a nuclear-weapon-free world had become widely embraced goals and various initiatives on nuclear disarmament had been proposed. China welcomed those developments. The nuclear weapon States should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national security and should commit themselves to no-first-use of nuclear weapons as early as possible. As early as 1994, China had officially put forward a draft treaty on no-first use of nuclear weapons, and it was hoped that under the new circumstances the parties concerned would take that proposal into serious consideration. The international community should also negotiate and conclude an international legal instrument on security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon States at an early date. The Conference on Disarmament, for its part, should advance its substantive work in a balanced manner, and negotiate and conclude the fissile material cut-off treaty as soon as possible. In addition, the practice of seeking absolute strategic advantage should be abandoned; in particular, countries should neither develop missile defence systems that undermined global strategic stability nor deploy weapons in outer space.

In the realm of non-proliferation, it was important to enhance the universality, authority and effectiveness of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and ensure strict compliance with it; to further strengthen the safeguards function of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and promote effective implementation of and universal adherence to the Safeguards Agreement and its Additional Protocol; and to reject any practice of double standards. China also believed that the right of NPT signatories to peaceful use of nuclear energy had to be truly respected and upheld, and that right should not be compromised under the excuse of non-proliferation. The IAEA should also play a bigger role in promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In that regard, Mr. Yang called on all States parties to seize the opportunity of the NPT Review Conference scheduled for May 2010 to advance the three major objectives of nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear energy in a comprehensive and balanced manner.

Finally, Mr. Yang underscored that outer space – the common asset of mankind – was now facing the looming danger of weaponization. Credible and effective multilateral measures had to be taken to forestall the weaponization of and an arms race in outer space. In February last year, China and Russia had jointly presented to the Conference a draft treaty on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space, the threat or use of force against outer space objects, and it was hoped that the Conference would soon start substantive discussions on the draft.

At the end of the meeting, Conference President, Ambassador Caroline Millar of Australia, said that there were no further meetings scheduled for this week at present, but an announcement would be made as soon as the Conference had achieved a consensus on modalities for implementing the Conference’s programme of work for 2009.


For use of the information media; not an official record

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