John Duncan

RECOVERING THE RELEVANCE OF MULTILATERAL ARMS CONTROL

The last two weeks have seen some good progress in the world community’s efforts to break out from the “Decade of Deadlock” in multilateral Arms Control in Disarmament with the US Inspired UN Security Council Summit and this week in Geneva a more positive resumption of the talks between Iran and the E3 +3.

Over the next 4 weeks in New York the UN General Assembly First Committee will meet for it’s annual overview of the Arms Control & Disarmament agenda. Some 50 plus resolutions will be tabled, voted on and submitted to the main UNGA.

Often described as the “litmus test” of world opinion (do people still use litmus paper!) this year's meeting will certainly be a test of whether the Arms Control community can respond to the new energy that Pres. Obama has injected into the debate since his Prague speech last April.

In my last post I contrasted the debate in the UNSC Summit with that of the General Assembly. We may well see the same thing again with those who do not buy-in to the new agenda of a collective endeavour to get the world back on track towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons "The Road to 2010",   or just trot out the tired old mantras; rather like Cato the elder in the Roman Senate exhorting that “Carthage must be destroyed” long after it had been.

For the UK this meeting will be a pivotal one as it will be the moment when the General Assembly decides whether to launch formal negotiation of a new Arms Trade Treaty. After 3 years discussion we and the 6 original co-authors of this initiative (Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya) are proposing that a negotiating Conference is established to draft and agree the treaty.

So on both the nuclear and conventional side  the next 4 weeks will be a test of whether the UNGA can step up and respond effectively to the challenges we face in today’s world.

I will be blogging and also posting on Twitter from New York for those who want to follow the debate.

Posted at 07:24 03 October 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[0]