CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT HOLDS FIRST PLENARY UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES

The Conference on Disarmament this morning held its first plenary under the presidency of the United States, hearing from its President on the activities planned during the next four weeks. The Conference also heard the statement by the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, Yleem Poblete, who addressed the challenges of arms control, non-proliferation, and disarmament.

Ambassador Robert Wood of the United States, President of the Conference on Disarmament, in his introductory remarks, said that throughout its presidency, the United States would seek to advance meaningful, transparent, substantive, and real-world discussions on disarmament challenges directly impacting the collective ability to make progress on the mandate of the Conference to negotiate legally binding instruments. In that vein, the first plenary would be devoted to the challenges of arms control, non-proliferation, and disarmament, the second week would address the topic of creating the environment for nuclear disarmament, week three would focus on deterrence, and the fourth and final week of the presidency would be devoted to transparency. The intent, he concluded, was to tap into the richness of expertise, diversity of views, and vast institutional knowledge that existed in this body, so that all could contribute to frank, substantive, and fruitful discussions.

In her address to the Conference, Ms. Poblete stressed the need to confront the vexing reality of the deadlock, which she said was due to a lack of political will of Member States to take tough decisions and to a failure to challenge those States which used the Conference as a platform to posture and promote agendas antithetical to the rules-based international order. If the Conference on Disarmament remained deadlocked, she cautioned, it would lose credibility, fail in contributing to international security, and risk fading into irrelevance. Stressing the critical importance of a verifiable and enforceable arms control in managing strategic competition among States and in contributing to security and stability, Ms. Poblete warned that those benefits were diluted of lost without States’ compliance and that violations and malign actions by rogue regimes and other States around the globe only served to increase tensions.

Accountability was critical, and required effective and robust monitoring, detentions, and verification measures, she said and went on to highlight a few specific examples, including in Russia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Islamic Republic of Iran, China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of). The responsible States, she said in conclusion, must be united and resolute in efforts to hold the violators accountable because the influence and actions of rogue regimes, desperate to retain power, thwarted the collective good faith efforts in bodies such as the Conference on Disarmament.

Speaking in the discussion were Ukraine, Russia, Syrian Arab Republic, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, China, Islamic Republic of Iran, Australia, and South Africa.

In concluding remarks, Cynthia Plath, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the Conference on Disarmament, who spoke on behalf of the President of the Conference, reaffirmed the role of the United States in this or any other international forum to drive an informed conversation on issues specific to international security which fundamentally drove all national security and disarmament policies, and said that the delegations which assessed this as politicization of the Conference were correct, because the very fundamental nature of the work in the Conference on Disarmament was political in nature. Having a broader conversation in the Conference other than on legally binding instruments was not politicization but it was actually creating an environment conducive to nuclear disarmament, she concluded.

The next plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday 20 March, during which it will hear from Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, who will address the Conference in the context of the high-level segment of the 2019 session.

Opening Remarks

ROBERT WOOD, President of the Conference on Disarmament and Permanent Representative of the United States to the Conference on Disarmament, in his opening remarks regretted that the Conference had been unable to adopt the draft decision to establish subsidiary bodies and special coordinators, despite the United Kingdom’s tireless and commendable efforts to reach consensus. As the sole multilateral negotiating forum on disarmament, this body had a role to play in shaping a safe, more secure world, and for that, it must overcome its current impasse. Throughout it presidency, the United States would seek to advance meaningful, transparent, substantive, and real-world discussions on disarmament challenges directly impacting the collective ability to make progress on the Conference’s mandate to negotiate legally binding instruments, and would devote plenaries to substantive themes germane to the Conference on Disarmament.

The United States Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance would address the Conference today on challenges of arms control, non-proliferation, and disarmament, he said. The topic of creating the environment for nuclear disarmament would be tackled in the second week of the presidency, week three would focus on deterrence, while the plenary of the fourth week would be devoted to transparency. The President explained that the plan was to hold one plenary per week and that a variety of speakers from the United States and other delegations would be invited to engage the Conference on those topics. The intent, he continued, was to tap into the richness of expertise, diversity of views, and vast institutional knowledge that existed in this body, so that all could contribute to frank, substantive, and fruitful discussions.

Statement by the United States Assistant Secretary of State

YLEEM POBLETE, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance at the Department of State, the United States of America, at the outset stressed the need to confront the vexing reality of the deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament and the fact that only twice in the past two decades it had been able to reach consensus, briefly, on a programme of work including actual negotiations. This represented a squandering of this body’s potential, she said, stressing that the impasse was due to a lack of political will of the Member States to take tough decisions and to a failure to challenge those States which used the Conference as a platform to posture and promote agendas antithetical to the rules-based international order. It was certain that if the Conference on Disarmament remained deadlocked, it would lose credibility, fail in contributing to international security, and risk fading into irrelevance. The Assistant Secretary of State highlighted that disarmament did not occur in a vacuum and stressed the critical importance of a verifiable and enforceable arms control in managing strategic competition among States and contributing to security and stability. These benefits were diluted of lost when States did not comply with their obligations and adhered to their commitments, while violations and malign actions by rogue regimes and other States around the globe only served to increase tensions. Accountability was critical, and required effective and robust monitoring, detentions, and verification measures, she said and went on to highlight a few specific examples.

Russia, she said, had invaded neighbouring countries and attempted to annex part of a neighbour’s territory, while its aggressive actions in Europe had strained the key pillars of European security architecture. Moscow’s continued aggression could not go unchecked, for its destabilizing activity sought to play spoiler in efforts to achieve and maintain global stability while enabling its contemporary revisionist geopolitical ambitions. Russia’s behaviour must be viewed in its entirety in order to understand its gravity, said Ms. Poblete, mentioning specifically the ongoing compliance issues relating to conventional arms control instruments; the violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention and the use of chemical weapons on the territory of another State party; as well as its obfuscating the abhorrent use of chemical weapons by the “Syrian regime” against its own people. Russia’s use of the undeclared and unscheduled military-grade nerve agents in Salisbury in the United Kingdom clearly demonstrated that it was not meeting its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and that it maintained a covert chemical weapons programme in violation of Article 1 of that Convention.

Russia continued its support for and defence of the Assad’s regime’s brutal tactics against its own people, said Ms. Poblete, which included the use of the “starve and surrender” tactics, barrel bombs, and chemical weapons. Russia continued to sweep under the rug Syria’s ongoing violations of the obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the International Atomic Energy Agency. As for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the bottom line was that Russia had developed, produced, flight-tested, and fielded a ground-launched cruise missile, known as the SSC-8, with a range capability between 500 and 5,500 kilometres, in violation of the Treaty. The violation of the Treaty by Russia posed a direct threat to the United States, European, East Asian, and global security, stressed the Assistant Secretary of State, adding that there was no reason for the United States to remain in a treaty that constrained its ability to respond to Russia’s violations. The United States had announced on February 1 that it would suspend its obligations under the Treaty as a remedy for Russia’s material breach, unless Russia returned to full and verifiable compliance. The Russian response had been a combination of open threats along with deliberate disinformation to sow confusion.

As for the prevention of an arms race in the outer space, the United States questioned Russia’s seriousness given its development of a broad array of counter-space capabilities, to include ground-launched anti-satellite missiles and various anti-satellite weapons. The new ground-based laser system designed to “fight satellites in orbit”, as Russia’s leader had announced, could disrupt the normal functioning of remote sensing satellites and as such would be a circumvention of Russia’s own draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space. If it was really serious about preventing an arms race in outer space as it claimed, Russia should cease the development of anti-satellite weapons.

As for the Syrian Arab Republic, the Assistant Secretary of State highlighted the responsibility of the Assad’s regime for the heinous chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018, in breach of its obligations as a State party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. There must be no impunity for this crime nor accountability for those responsible. The Syrian Arab Republic must cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency and answer the longstanding and unresolved questions regarding its nuclear programme and the questions about its undeclared plutonium production reactor which it was building with the assistance from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The United States remained gravely concerned by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s missile programme. Its ballistic missile activities and space launch vehicle development efforts were in defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolution 2231, said Ms. Poblete and noted that its missile programme was a key contributor to increased tensions and destabilization in the region and it increased the risk of a regional arms race. From Lebanon to the Syrian Arab Republic to Yemen, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s malign influence was spreading throughout the region. The United States remained committed to aggressively countering its regional proliferation of ballistic missiles and its unlawful arms transfers. Turning to a strategic competitor, China, the Assistant Secretary of State said that China’s military modernization remained centrally focused on establishing regional dominance in order to expand its ability to coerce the United States’ allies, eventually pushing the United States out of the region, and becoming a military power capable of competing on the global stage. Ms. Poblete denounced China’s expansion and diversification of nuclear force and the lack of transparency regarding the scope and scale of its nuclear modernization programme, and raised concern about China’s behaviour in outer space and its pursuing of anti-satellite capabilities.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea must understand that the only way to achieve the security and development it sought was to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programme as demanded by numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions, stressed Ms. Poblete. In Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), the “former Maduro regime”, aided and abetted by Russia, Cuba, and China, consistently used repressive tactics against democratic actors, including trying to silence the National Assembly, the only democratically elected institution that remained in the country. The United States hoped that “President Guaidó’s legitimate representative to the Conference on Disarmament” would be in a position to assume the presidency of the Conference when it rotated to Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) in May 2019.

In conclusion, the Assistant Secretary of State emphasized that responsible States must be united and resolute in efforts to hold the violators accountable. The influence and actions of rogue regimes, desperate to retain power, thwarted the collective good faith efforts in bodies such as the Conference on Disarmament. The United States remained committed to arms control efforts and remained receptive to future arms control negotiations if conditions permitted, for which willing, reliable, and responsive partners were needed.

Discussion

Ukraine thanked the United States for its unwavering support in the face of the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russia continued the use of the Minsk-prohibited weaponry in several areas of the country and continued to supply arms and ammunition to illegal armed groups in the south-east of the country. Ukraine denounced Russia’s progressive militarization of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol as well as the military exercises in this region, and called upon Russia to unconditionally and without delay release the vessels and the crew members captured illegally at the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov in November 2018. Ukraine stressed the importance of the adherence to the existing arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation instruments and regimes, and expressed concern by Russia’s continued supply of weapons and materials prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention to the illegal armed groups in the south-east of the country. The continued use of chemical weapons by the authorities in the Syrian Arab Republic and its continued violation of the obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention were also a matter of concern. The Conference on Disarmament must not turn a blind eye to those very concerning issues and must analyse how its products and other disarmament agreements were being applied.

Russia welcomed the intention of the current presidency to continue the efforts aimed at preparing a programme of work acceptable to all delegations and reiterated its preference for a two-track approach, on a programme of work and on the creation of subsidiary bodies. Russia remarked that the statement by the United States Assistant Secretary of State was in sharp contrast with the constructive approach that President of the Conference had outlined earlier. Russia’s position of principle on all the issues raised in this statement would be addressed by Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov in his address to the Conference on Wednesday 20 March, which would clearly demonstrate the unfounded nature of claims presented in Ms. Poblete’s statement.

Syrian Arab Republic said that what had aspired in the Conference on Disarmament this morning was contrary to the standards of professionalism and represented a flagrant example of politicization of this body. The statement had launched accusations and sought to promote the propaganda of the United States “seeking to demonize states not to its taste”. The United States simply exploited its presidency of the Conference to promote its policy and “inject poison and lies” with regard to the use of chemical weapons, and it sought to transform the Conference into a venue for addressing the issues outside of its purview instead to focus on making progress. The Syrian Arab Republic rejected the exploitation of the presidency for the purpose of promoting ideas and policy that targeted specific states. The United States itself violated the provisions of nuclear disarmament treaties and agreements, nuclear weapons remained a core element in its security doctrine, and it had hindered the work of the last review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Based on its own long experience of the use of nuclear weapons, the United States knew that the accusations against the Syrian Arab Republic were not correct and that the country did not have any nuclear weapons. The Syrian Arab Republic would offer a detailed statement in response to the United States at a later stage.

Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) regretted the irrational, aggressive attacks by Ms. Poblete against numerous countries this morning. She came to the Conference, the speaker said, to “declare war on numerous countries”, and to declare that everyone, all continents and all states, belonged to the United States and Donald Trump. The democratically and constitutionally elected Government of Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) was recognized by the majority of States and the United Nations. Multilateralism was the best tool for promoting the work of this Conference and the agreements agreed together and aligned with the United Nations Charter must be respected. Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) deplored the attempts to bring the items that did not belong in the Conference on Disarmament as this bogged down its work and stressed that the interference in its domestic affairs represented a clear violation of international principles and norms. The “war-mongering, xenophobic and racist Government of Donald Trump” wanted to military intervene in Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and sought to impose a puppet, a self-proclaimed person as a president of Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of). All States should reject the war this State promoted and support a constructive and constitutional dialogue among the Venezuelans.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea strongly rejected the accusations made by the Assistant Secretary of State and reiterated its clear position that, due to the lack of trust between the two countries, issues must be addressed one by one. The United States, preoccupied with its own geopolitical interests, was not interested in implementing the Singapore Joint Statement but only in using the fact of negotiations to maximize its political gain. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stressed that, since it had halted its nuclear test and rockets for the past 15 months, there was no justification in maintaining the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council resolutions, which had a direct impact on the livelihoods of the people. Everyone in the room knew what the United States had promised during the Singapore meeting and it should keep it promises.

Cuba reiterated that its relations with Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) were based on solidarity and the idea of an integrated and sovereign Latin America and the Caribbean, a zone of peace. Thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers provided support and help to the Venezuelan people and it was a lie that Cuban people participated in Venezuelan security forces. Cuba did not interfere in internal affairs of Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), nor did it have a single military base abroad, nor secret prisons, nor satellites that monitored what happened in other countries. The continuing spread of lies by the United States had and would continue to have important impacts, Cuba cautioned.

China congratulated the United States for assuming the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament and hoped that it would make practical efforts to enable the Conference on to achieve substantive progress in nuclear disarmament. It was very clear what the Conference should do and what the delegates should discuss, China said and expressed its faith that everyone knew how to do their job well. China reiterated that its was a path of peaceful development, while its national defence policy, determined by the Government of China and its people, was based on history and traditions, economic realities, and its own national interests. China stressed that its nuclear policy was defensive and was guided by the commitment not to be the first to launch a nuclear weapon, and stressed that no one should misunderstand or distort its strategic interests. The United States, on the other hand, continued to strengthen its nuclear arsenals and to lower the threshold of the use of nuclear weapons; it remained locked in the Cold War mentality and the pursuit of its military hegemony.

Islamic Republic of Iran said that today was the beginning of the new presidency in the Conference on Disarmament and stressed the need to respect the rules of procedure and preserve the integrity of this body at the time when nuclear disarmament was more necessary than ever before. The United States had discredited themselves by showcasing the disrespect for the professional etiquette of the Conference; it held “no limit in displaying pathological narcissism” and in blaming others for their own mistakes and criminal acts through the world. The Islamic Republic of Iran said that this only showed how unfit the United States had become to chair this body.

Australia stressed the need for this body to deal with facts and reiterated the findings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic. The international community must hold the perpetrators accountable, Australia stressed.

Speaking on behalf of the President of the Conference on Disarmament, CYNTHIA PLATH, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the Conference on Disarmament, in her concluding remarks said that there should not be any question about the impartiality of the United States as the President of the Conference, but this did not mean that the United States would not defend its interests and positions, and respond when attacked accordingly. The goal for the next four weeks was to promote a robust conversation which, unfortunately, was not possible through a formatted conversation in the subsidiary bodies. It was the role of the United States in this or any other international forum to drive an informed conversation on issues specific to international security which fundamentally drove all national security and disarmament policies. “If you assess this as a politicization of the Conference on Disarmament, then you are correct”, said Ms. Plath and added that the very fundamental nature of the work in the Conference on Disarmament was political in nature. Having a broader conversation in the Conference other than on legally binding instruments was not politicization but it was actually creating an environment conducive to nuclear disarmament.

While some States took an offence at the examples used in Ms. Poblete’s statement, the speech was incredibly illustrative of the challenges and the reasons why the Conference on Disarmament became deadlocked and unable to have a conversation on legally binging instruments, for example on Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. Ms. Plath underlined the critical importance of frank and honest exchanges on those security challenges in order to make progress on nuclear disarmament, even if such a conversation was threatening to some. Finally, she underlined her country’s commitment to promoting democracy in Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) and stressed that the interim President was Juan Guaidó who had been appointed by the National Assembly and according to the Constitution, and who had been recognized by 54 other countries, many of which were present in this chamber.

South Africa reiterated its commitment to the Conference on Disarmament, which was based on the principle of multilateralism and to its clearly defined mandate. South Africa hoped that the United States would seek to preserve the Conference, that the issues that belong to other forums would remain there, and that the focus should be on what deadlocked the Conference for more than twenty years. Multilateralism might not mean much for the powerful but for the weak, they needed it; it was very, very easy to destroy the multilateral framework put painstakingly together after the World War Two, but very difficult to build it. As far as Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) was concerned, South Africa believed in the rule of law and respected the mechanisms of individual states; it did not pronounce on the integrity of structures or elections held outside of its continent, just like it had not participated in the debates on the elections that had brought the United States president into power. South Africa also hoped that the Conference would not set a precedent by discussing the legitimacy of any Government.


For use of the information media; not an official record

DC19/021E