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WORLD’S FATE RESTS WITH ARMS CONTROL, DISARMAMENT INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, YET STATE OF AFFAIRS UNSTABLE AT BEST, DISARMAMENT CHIEF TELLS FIRST COMMITTEE – 7thSpace Interactive

WORLD’S FATE RESTS WITH ARMS CONTROL, DISARMAMENT INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, YET STATE OF AFFAIRS UNSTABLE AT BEST, DISARMAMENT CHIEF TELLS FIRST COMMITTEE
7th Space 17 Oct 08 Heads of Atomic Energy Agency, Disarmament Conference, Chemical Weapons, Test-Ban Treaty Organizations, Describe Efforts to Keep Pace with Emerging Threats
The future of the world rested in the fate of arms control and disarmament intergovernmental organizations, yet the current state of affairs in the fields of disarmament and arms control was unstable at best, the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Sergio Duarte, said today.
Addressing the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), Mr. Duarte said that many Member States were confronted with a variety of crises, some of which had been particularly hard on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and had inspired doubts about the Treaty’s effectiveness in achieving its goals of disarmament and non-proliferation. Then too, some of the crises related to the lack of any multilateral legal obligations in certain fields, such as missiles, space weapons and conventional armaments.

Today, the heads of some key arms control and disarmament organizations – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), the Conference on Disarmament, and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — spoke to the Committee about the impasses and breakthroughs they had experienced in an effort to keep pace with, and even ahead of, the indisputably fluid security environment.

With only nine countries remaining to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission of CTBTO, Tibor Toth, said his organization was making sure the verification regime was ready from “day one” of the Treaty’s entry into force. The system would comprise 337 facilities in 89 countries, each hosting a range of recording equipment maintained by nearly 500 operators worldwide, around the clock.

With the CTBT verification regime, a new standard of transparency had been achieved, which represented a new democracy in the verification of multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation instruments, he said, urging the Committee to stay focused, at the upcoming 2010 NPT Review Conference, on the gravity of nuclear dangers, and for Member States to contemplate the importance of progress on the test-ban Treaty’s entry into force.

WORLD’S FATE RESTS WITH ARMS CONTROL, DISARMAMENT INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, YET STATE OF AFFAIRS UNSTABLE AT BEST, DISARMAMENT CHIEF TELLS FIRST COMMITTEE – 7thSpace Interactive

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

October 17, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war