Sixteenth Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention

Director-General Mr. Üzümcü,
Distinguished delegates:

It is a great honour for me to be with you for this exceptional meeting.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, pays great attention to the work of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Therefore, he is sending his personal message which I am authorized to read out today.

The message goes as follows:

“ As the International Year of Chemistry comes to a close, your conference can add meaning to our commemorations by carrying forward work on the Chemical Weapons Convention, one of the greatest achievements in the history of multilateral efforts to achieve disarmament and non-proliferation.

By ensuring the destruction of these deadly and indiscriminate arms and preventing their re-emergence, this treaty is a fundamental pillar of international peace and security.
The Convention has near-universal membership, with 188 States Parties covering all but 2 per cent of the global population. Under the supervision of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, over 70 per cent of declared chemical weapons have been verifiably destroyed.

This is welcome progress, but we must continue to press for universal adherence. I call on those States that have not yet done so to join the Convention and be part of the effort to build a world free of these indiscriminate arms.

Despite significant investments in human and financial resources, two possessor States will not meet their destruction deadline next year. I count on the Convention’s States parties to find a constructive and forward-looking solution to this matter, building on the OPCW’s excellent record of consensus-based decision-making. I am also satisfied that, despite the crisis situation in Libya, the declared chemical weapons stockpiles remained secure, as recently verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The spectre of chemical warfare is receding thanks to your diligent work. But we cannot rest until we destroy all chemical arms and eliminate the possibility that this nightmare scenario will ever be realized.

Your efforts also help to foster international cooperation for peaceful purposes in the field of chemical activities. There could be no better way to close out this International Year of Chemistry than to achieve solid progress in advancing your agenda.

In that spirit, I wish you a most successful Conference.”

That was the end of the Secretary-General’s message.

In my capacity as Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament, I would like to stress the importance of the Convention for the ongoing international efforts in the field of disarmament.

The Convention proves that persistence in resolving complex issues can result in an agreement freeing the world from at least one weapon of mass destruction. With patience and determination, the negotiating process, initiated in Geneva in the Committee on Disarmament in 1968, eventually resulted in the text of the Convention being adopted by the Conference on Disarmament in 1992.

Today, the Conference on Disarmament is facing other challenges in the area of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

The previously acquired experience has proven the advantage of a step-by-step approach where each resolved task serves as a basis for dealing with the following one. Negotiations on the establishment of the IAEA, on the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, many of which were conducted in the Conference on Disarmament or its preceding fora, serve as examples.

The Conference has to find a way out of its current deadlock to fulfill its duties. Joint efforts towards these objectives should not be abandoned despite the long-term impasse. The Conference has immense value and our common task is to preserve it as an indispensable mechanism for multilateral negotiations on disarmament issues to pursue undivided security.

To conclude, allow me to join the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, in extending my best wishes for a successful session.

Thank you very much for your attention.