At UN, Nuclear Disarmament Vote Splits China from P4, 134 States Speak

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, November 8 -- With nuclear disarmament talks long stalled, on the morning of November 6 as Americans were waiting in line to vote for President, a vote was held in the UN's First Committee to shift disarmament talks to an Open Ended Working Group where unanimity will not be required.

  The vote was surprising: the US, France, Russia and UK alone voted no, while their fellow Permanent Five member of the Security Council China went another way, abstaining along with 33 other states including nuclear weapons states India, Pakistan and Israel.

   Fully 134 states, more than two thirds of the UN's membership, voted yes. Inner City Press is putting the voting list online, here. The resolution, "Taking forward a multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations," was adopted:

 

"Recognizing the absence of concrete outcomes of multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations within the United Nations framework for more than a decade,

 

"1. Decides to establish an open-ended working group to develop proposals to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations for the achievement and maintenance of a world without nuclear weapons;

 

"2. Also decides that the working group will convene in Geneva in 2013 for up to fifteen working days, within available time frames, with the contribution of international organizations and civil society, in accordance with established practice, and will hold its organizational session as soon as possible."

   More than ten percent of UN member states sponsored the Austria, Norway and Mexico prepared resolution, which Inner City Press is putting online here; one of these ten percenters told Inner City Press that the resolution's "goal is to take forward nuclear disarmament negotiations, that have been stuck in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva for more than 15 years. The impasse has been very convenient for nuclear weapon states that do not want to see any kind of movement in nuclear disarmament."

  France, in particular, was singled out as a country whose Permanent membership on the Security Council is related to its status as a nuclear power. France, which in this same week "played cheap" in opposing inclusion of a maritime component in the Somalia peacekeeping mission AMISOM, is said to have tried to undermine this disarmament working group by demanding a Program Budget Implications or PBI statement.

   But this Open Ended Working Group will have no extra costs, since it will use the money allocated to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and that is not used since the CD hasn’t been able to agree on a Program of Work and its implementation for more than 15 years, lacking consensus.

   A proponent concluded, "'This resolution places the General Assembly back at the center of nuclear disarmament efforts, a place it lost since the 1970s when the Conference on Disarmament and the UNDC were established." We'll see. Watch this site.