United States Mission Geneva

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We now face a different kind of threat, a threat that is more diffuse and perhaps even more dangerous. The range and intensity of current nuclear proliferation challenges is alarming. The international community failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. We are now engaged in diplomatic efforts to roll back this development. Iran continues to ignore resolutions from the United Nations Security Council demanding that it suspend its enrichment activities and live up to those international obligations.

Mr. Chairman, the United States is pleased to inform the General Assembly’s First Committee that efforts to promote international cooperation and understanding in the peaceful use of outer space continue to expand. Such cooperation is essential today more than ever as space evolves into an increasingly congested, complex, and potentially contested, domain.

The steady entry of new States Parties over the last several years, bringing the CWC close to universal membership (there are currently 188 States Parties), has been most encouraging. We strongly support the efforts of all States Parties, the Director General, and the Technical Secretariat to strengthen contacts with the remaining non-member states.

I would like today to discuss the views of the United States on nuclear disarmament. I will describe our fundamental approach, what we have accomplished in recent years and our current objectives, and some more long-range questions as we consider how to create, in the words of Security Council Resolution 1887, “the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons, in accordance with the goals of the NPT”.

Thanks to Ambassador Salander, Chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative, and Dr. Christian Shoenenberger, Head of the Task Force on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, for hosting this event and for inviting me to speak to you this afternoon on the subject of “Defining Success at the 2010 NPT Review Conference.” With less than seven months before the eighth Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, events like this provide a timely opportunity to bring together the Treaty’s many stakeholders, both governmental and non-governmental, to discuss the issues that we will have before us next May.

This is an exciting time to appear with my colleagues in this body to discuss nonproliferation and disarmament. My government applauds the dedicated engagement of the First Committee, as well as the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, in addressing the compelling issues of nonproliferation and disarmament that we confront. Last month, at a historic United Nations Security Council meeting, the United States led an effort to approve a ground breaking resolution on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. And, for the first time in a decade, the United States participated in the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Article XIV Conference.

I wish to begin by welcoming the Ambassador of the Netherlands, and thanking you, your delegation, and the collective P6 Presidency for your unceasing efforts to bring the promise of CD/1864, our consensus Program of Work for 2009, to fruition. As we committed at the commencement of your Presidency, my delegation has given its full support to those efforts, and shares your disappointment, and the disappointment of nearly all in this chamber, that we have yet to begin the negotiations and substantive discussions set out so clearly in CD/1864.

I’m here to speak to you this evening on the subject of strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. This is an objective that the Obama Administration has embraced as one of its highest priorities, and we are engaged in an ambitious effort to address proliferation challenges and opportunities to strengthen the global regime. Being ambitious means the way ahead will be difficult, but there is little of value that comes easily, and we have opportunities now to make real progress if all states work together to take advantage of them.