US Mission Geneva

Ian Kelly: “we have very intensive negotiations going on. We have a very firm deadline that’s coming up very quickly, a little more than – well, it’s December 5th, so it’s – we’re talking about a month and a half now. So we have very intensive negotiations going on. We do not want to negotiate in public. We are taking the tasking from our two presidents very seriously, the Russian side and the American side.”

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 am pleased to be with you today, as the Conference on Disarmament resumes its mandate and its historic role in the multilateral negotiation of global nonproliferation and disarmament treaties. Your decision last week to begin negotiations on a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty, as well as to conduct substantive discussions on other core issues, reflects growing recognition of the value of nonproliferation and disarmament agreements to international peace and security. It also demonstrates the importance of all delegations realistically appraising the present situation and showing the necessary flexibility to allow the Conference to move forward.