Conference on Disarmament Discusses Draft Annual Report to the General Assembly

The Conference on Disarmament today discussed its draft annual report (CD/WP.636) to the General Assembly.

Ambassador Frank Tressler of Chile, President of the Conference on Disarmament, said that in today’s formal plenary, they would discuss the draft annual report of the Conference, going through it paragraph by paragraph on the understanding that nothing was agreed until all was agreed. He urged those who had written proposals to the Presidency for changes to also take the floor and talk about them. He said the first draft of the report had been sent out on 16 August and a second draft would be sent out soon.

On the paragraph on the requests for attendance of Observer States at the 2021 session of the Conference, some speakers said that the agreed language as suggested by the President should be maintained, recalling the extensive difficult discussions on this topic last year. Other speakers suggested adding new sentences to reflect that objections had been made to requests for observership by five States. Some speakers said that the purpose of any report what to reflect everything that had happened during the year, adding that the report to the General Assembly should correctly reflect what happened with appropriate wording. The text would be lacking without adding sentences on this. Others said that the President’s draft report was the minimum that the delegations could agree on.

Concerning the agenda and programme of work for the 2021 session, conflicting opinions were expressed about whether or not there should be mention of the extensive discussions held on the various proposals for a programme of work and establishing subsidiary bodies, which did not achieve consensus. Some speakers said that as the Conference had spent 10 weeks intensively discussing solid proposals, it was strange not to mention this, adding that reference could also be made to the agreement on the establishment of the subsidiary bodies in 2018. Others said that the President’s original wording in the draft report was the right one. If the annual report started mentioning specificities of one proposed programme of work, it should mention specificities of other proposals. In order to avoid these contentious debates and to avoid reflecting them, the simplified language proposed was good.

One speaker said that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was now called North Macedonia.

On the improved functioning of the Conference, some speakers said they had submitted proposals for paragraph 23 as it was important that the outcome of the discussion on reflecting the equality of women in the language of the rules of procedure be reflected in the report. The Conference had not succeeded in reaching consensus on the draft decision. Some said that there was real reluctance from some States to work on a factual report, noting that the fact that the Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament had attended the plenary, and that delegations had expressed their views in the discussion, and that no consensus had been reached should be reflected. Speakers said that they understood that the Conference was seeking the lowest dominator, but now it looked like they were being selective in reporting what had happened and this was censorship. One speaker asked for clarification on whether the draft decision had actually been put forward to the consideration of the Conference. The Canadian President of the Conference at the time had said that the draft decision would only serve as a foundation for the discussion. Further discussions would only complicate the situation and the report should remain as it was.

Concerning the substantive work of the Conference in paragraphs 28 to 47, the President said that these were standard paragraphs to reflect the debate held on each of the items on the agenda. A suggestion was made to reformulate some paragraphs to reflect that speakers had expressed their positions in two plenaries recorded in the plenary records of the session. One speaker disagreed, saying that their delegation had expressed its position on several occasions during the 2021 session, not only during those two plenaries. Another speaker asked if the informal plenaries had records but the President said they did not.

The President said that paragraph 54 contained a proposal to change the date of the beginning of the 2022 session from the penultimate week of January to February. Some speakers said that they would not object to this, while others said this would contravene the rules of procedure.

In his concluding remarks, Ambassador Tessler said that he would now outline the future course of their work. He had submitted a report that was very similar to reports of previous years that had tried to be factual. He had accepted some suggestions from delegations on certain deletions. However, now he was worried that the discussion on the draft report was repeating earlier exercises on issues that had already been discussed at length and where they had already not reached consensus. He would hold an informal meeting this afternoon to discuss the debated paragraphs. On paragraph 12 on Observer States, he said that it was important to keep the delicate balance that was struck last year on this issue. They had also spent a lot of time this morning discussing paragraphs 17, 23, 28, 50 and 54. He hoped that during the informal meeting, they could come up with language that better met with consensus so that he could submit a new draft of the annual report to States by the end of the week. He urged all delegations that had made proposals this morning to send them to the secretariat now so that they could attempt to reach consensus on them this afternoon.

Speaking today were Syria, United States, Turkey, United Kingdom, Australia, Iran, India, France, Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, Russian Federation, Switzerland, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Spain, Argentina, China, Venezuela, Peru and Pakistan.

The next public plenary of the Conference will be held at 3 p.m. on Thursday, 26 August, when it will hold a discussion on the role of women in international security.

DC21.038E