John Duncan

NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION TREATY, NEW YORK: DAY 2

Day 2 and  President Obama sends a personal message to the meeting. Civil Society have a special session to address the meeting. Unfortunately I am tied up in bilateral meetings all afternoon, but reading the transcripts their input is noticeably more focussed than in recent meetings and members of my team report on the number of younger people speaking on behalf of various NGOs. This is a very positive move. As Gordon Brown commented in his Lancaster House speech nuclear war is not something that just concerns our generation.

General Statements will continue tomorrow. Are we reaching the point where as George Robinson once remarked (about a NATO meeting) “ I think everything has been said on this subject, but not everyone has said it yet!”

We will be up late to try and ensure that when we get to the afternoon discussion on Nuclear  Disarmament we are not simply talking at the other delegations and repeating the same tired old formulas.

Surprisingly we seem to be making some progress on the procedural issues that while excruciatingly boring have managed to tie the NPT into knots on several occasions in the past – nearly two weeks to agree the agenda at our meeting in Vienna 2 years ago. The diplomatic equivalent of water torture and completely incomprehensible to the ordinary mortal.

Posted at 03:50 06 May 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[1]