CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT HEARS FROM THE OUTGOING PERUVIAN PRESIDENT AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The Conference on Disarmament this morning held a plenary in which it heard from the outgoing Peruvian President of the Conference and the Russian Federation.

Ambassador Luis Enrique Chavez Basagoitia of Peru, President of the Conference, said that this was the last week of the Peruvian Presidency. The President had focused all of his efforts on informal consultations, with the hope that they would facilitate an understanding on a draft programme of work for 2016. The previous week, the delegations had been given an opportunity to express their view points on any items on the agenda, which had been a useful exercise. As part of the consultations, the President had submitted a proposal aiming to bring closer different positions. To date, the President was not in a position to inform whether consensus had been reached, nor was he in a position to submit a draft programme of work on his own behalf. The President would continue to promote bringing together of the positions in the informal setting until the last day of his Presidency, on 24 June. If there was some progress to report on, another plenary would be convened.

Russian Federation said that under the Presidency of Peru, hopeful movements had been noted towards an agreed-upon programme of work. Regrettably, the situation had eventually returned to where it had been several months earlier. The next Presidency, under Poland, would need to set up a new algorithm of work. The programme of work should be comprehensive in nature, thus including key points on the Conference’s agenda. The Russian delegation believed that the agenda should not be slanted in favour of any one issue. The programme of work should be balanced and include negotiations, or at least a realistic perspective of their launch in the near future. Otherwise, the Conference could be endlessly stuck in a vicious circle. All of the proposals on the table should be examined, and, based on that, an optimal option should be selected. Efforts to agree on a programme of work and to implement it should lead to the uniting of the Conference’s participants, rather than dividing them further, concluded the Russian Federation.

The next plenary meeting of the Conference will be held on Tuesday, 28 June at 10 a.m., unless there are reasons to convene another plenary earlier.


For use of the information media; not an official record

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