CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT DISCUSSES THE ADOPTION OF THE REPORTS OF ITS SUBSIDIARY BODIES
The Conference on Disarmament today discussed the adoption of the reports of its subsidiary bodies in both public and informal plenaries and decided to continue its discussion on Wednesday, 5 September.
Beliz Celasin Rende, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations Office at Geneva and President of the Conference on Disarmament, in the morning plenary said that she would like to put forward the reports of the subsidiary bodies for adoption today. This adoption would constitute a main step forward in the finalization of the annual report of the Conference. Decision CD/2119 that established the subsidiary bodies stipulated that the reports should be submitted to the Conference through the President for adoption and due reflection in the annual report. However, it did not dictate the exact procedure for the adoption process of the reports of the subsidiary bodies. They had heard several opinions and concerns over the adoption process in bilateral and group meetings, so she would like to ask the guidance of the Conference on how to proceed, in an informal setting. Once that decision was taken, they would revert to the formal plenary.
Following the morning and afternoon informal meetings, the President said that the Conference could not agree on how to proceed with the adoption process. At this stage, she was in an uncomfortable position to declare that the Conference could not take a procedural decision on how to adopt the reports of the subsidiary bodies. If they could not overcome this, they would be obliged to reflect this in the annual report. She understood that delegations needed more time and she would close this meeting if there was no request for the floor.
China said they still had 40 minutes before 6 p.m. and they could make good use of this time to work on the draft report.
Russian Federation said it was grateful to the President for organizing the informal consultations with a view to all working together on mutually acceptable solutions for all on modalities for the adoption of the reports of the subsidiary bodies. Russia was forced to note that the participants in these consultations were unable to agree. The Russian delegation had displayed a maximum amount of flexibility and did not object to the examination of the reports, despite the fact that the way that this was done fell outside the framework of the decision CD/2119. Unfortunately, reciprocity was not observed. The Russian comments on procedural matters had not been heard. Therefore, they considered it necessary, now in the plenary session, to set forth the Russian position once again as to the compliance with the procedural formalities provided for by decision CD/2119.
Firstly, Russia drew attention to the fact that the coordinators of the five subsidiary bodies in their letters had referred to paragraph 5 of CD/2119. Pursuant to this, through the President of the Conference, they had presented their reports to the Conference for adoption of the corresponding decisions. For this, it was necessary for them to fulfil one condition, that the report should contain information on progress accomplished. The participants may have different views on how to understand the term “progress”; it was Russia’s view that here they should be guided by the mandate of the subsidiary bodies as defined by sub-paragraph a to c of paragraph 1 of CD/2119. At the last minute, the coordinator of subsidiary body 2 had seriously revised his report, deleting from it a whole section on areas of commonalities. Moreover, just today, the final outcome document of subsidiary body 4 was revealed. That was not to the most important point. The most important thing was that the part of the reports on progress should have been agreed upon, as a necessity, in each of the subsidiary bodies. Not a single subsidiary body had been able to fulfil this condition.
Secondly, Russia said that they had heard several times that the reports of the subsidiary bodies did not need to be adopted by consensus, with delegations arguing that this was because the meetings of the subsidiary bodies were informal in nature. However, Russia drew attention to paragraph 3 which said the subsidiary bodies should conduct their activities in conformity with rule 18 of the Conference’s rules of procedure, that was on the basis of consensus, irrespective of the format of meetings. There was another very important situation which they had to consider. After the expiry of the activities of the subsidiary bodies, their coordinators continued to work on the reports, making editorial but also substantive changes to them. These amendments had not been discussed or agreed upon.
Russia said another fundamental principle of democracy and diplomacy was transparency, which was not followed, as several preliminary versions of the reports of the subsidiary bodies had been disseminated to select delegations, but not to all. Another issue was that the President said that the coordinators were presenting the reports on behalf of and in the name of the subsidiary bodies. Russia considered that only the coordinators on nuclear disarmament and preventing an arms race in outer space were justified in presenting their outcome reports on behalf of subsidiary bodies 1 and 3 respectively. The participants in these bodies had agreed on a particular way to proceed and the draft final reports were agreed upon in these meetings. As to the other reports, Russia considered that these reports being presented by coordinators on behalf of subsidiary bodies was not only unjustified, but it did not reflect the real state of affairs, and should not be presented for adoption at all. Russia said the coordinators did what they could, but the fact that delegations were not able to achieve a consensus was not down to the coordinators. However, saying that the reports were presented on behalf of the subsidiary bodies was unjustified, and it would be more correct to talk of the report of the coordinators, prepared in their personal capacity and under their own responsibility.
Russia said that all of these shortcomings could have been corrected if CD/2119 had provided for the option of the examination of the reports by the Conference itself. The Conference had been given a very marginal role, just to adopt them or not to agree with their results, and without discussion of the reports themselves. Given the lack of agreement on procedural issues and on the reports themselves, Russia suggested that they be submitted for adoption separately and then delegations could present their positions on the contents of the reports either before they were submitted for adoption or after this. In that way, a balance would be guaranteed. Russia believed that they should move to the procedure of adopting decisions on the reports of the subsidiary bodies, giving delegations additional time to settle all controversial points.
Beliz Celasin Rende, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations Office at Geneva and President of the Conference on Disarmament, asked if anyone would like to take the floor, and then said the Conference should take consideration of the remarks of the Russian Federation and proceed to the adoption of the subsidiary bodies one by one. She said there appeared to be consensus in the chamber on this.
Canada said it could not agree to proceeding to the adoption of the reports one by one at this time. They definitely needed time overnight.
Senegal said it was concerned about the ability of the Conference, as the single framework to negotiate disarmament issues, to discharge its mandate. This was part of the same failure that had marked its work for decades. Senegal would like the real reasons and causes for the barriers to the adoption of the reports to feature in the annual report.
Russia said it did not seek any justification for the divergent opinions between different delegations on individual points on one of the outcome reports to be transformed into undermining their common achievements. They should not be hostages to this disagreement.
Beliz Celasin Rende, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations Office at Geneva and President of the Conference on Disarmament, said that she noted that they still needed more time before they proceeded to the adoption of the reports of the subsidiary bodies. They would meet again on Wednesday, 5 September at 3 p.m. in the Council Chamber.
For use of the information media; not an official record
DC/18/041E