I am not going to bombard my readership with a blow by blow account of of discussions in New York, but the opening day is always interesting to judge the mood music for what follows and today was no exception.
My day started with an EU meeting to discuss “last minute” changes to our general statement. After 30 hours often difficult discussion in Geneva one would have thought everything had been agreed. But it is one of the minor irritations of multilateral diplomacy that some capitals don’t pay attention until the text is close to or has been finalised and then someone has a "bright idea" and sends new instructions. It is the bane of those who have to reopen the discussion and there were quite a few barbed comments around the table. Fortunately it doesn’t happen too often to UK ambassadors any more. The new ways of working based around the idea of our missions and London colleagues forming a “Virtual Team” in an ongoing dialogue means we usually manage to avoid these last minute surprises.
Today’s plenary debate was mostly taken up by such statements by regional and other groups such as the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) from which it was clear that the EU is not alone in wrestling to produce a common view. Much staking out of old ground on which the unwritten text was “The Security Council may have delivered a new vision, but don’t forget my project from the early 90’s (or even earlier)”
Once we moved into national statements the pace started to hot up. Mexico delivered a passionate, wide ranging and articulate vision of what they saw as the priorities. While we might not agree on all of the points, one cannot but welcome the change of tone their intervention introduced to the debate.
The US address the plenary tomorrow. It will be a keynote in both senses of the word.
Tomorrow also sees the first open discussion on our new resolution to launch negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty. Still a contentious issue after 3 years discussion it will consume a lot of my teams time and energy over the next 4 weeks.
The other element of particular note was the measured tone of the Iranian “right of response” to some quite firm comments by the EU about the recent revelations about the uranium enrichment site near Qom. After the generally productive outcome from last week’s talks in Geneva, perhaps we are at last moving beyond the “shouting across the table” that has often characterised the wider arms control and disarmament community's discussion of the Iranian nuclear issue.
One can but hope. As they say “Optimism is to the diplomat what courage is to the soldier”
Posted at 00:05 06 October 2009 by John Duncan | Comments[0]
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