Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 67, October - November 2002

Editor's Introduction

From November 2002, Rebecca Johnson will be leaving the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy to become Director of the Disarmament and Arms Control Programme at the Simons Centre for Peace and Disarmament Studies at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada. The Simons Centre will also become the new institutional home for Disarmament Diplomacy, for which Sean Howard will remain editor. We would like to thank Acronym's wonderful staff, Board and funders for all their support and encouragement, especially in these difficult times, and look forward to working together under new hats in the future.

This issue carries Rebecca's report on the annual session of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, where, after six years of negotiating inactivity, the best efforts of a number of dedicated delegations failed to arrest the forum's grim decline. More encouragingly, Fiona Tregonning, researcher for the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW), reports on constructive discussions at the Seventh Conference of States Parties to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. In our other guest contributions, Theresa Hitchens, Vice-President of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) in Washington, warns against a possible shift in US defence policy towards countenancing the weaponisation of space, while André Gsponer, Director of the Independent Scientific Research Institute (ISRI) in Geneva, details the role of nanotechnology in driving the development of new, fourth-generation nuclear weapons.

News Review is dominated by the momentous debate over the appropriate response to Iraq's non-compliance with UN resolutions. The Review also includes coverage of a visit by a US envoy to North Korea, an apparent breakthrough soon shattered by a dark admission from Pyongyang; yet more ballistic missile tests in South Asia; fresh efforts to revive the fortunes of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); an apparent US rejection of discussions to bolster the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC); and an upbeat meeting of states parties to the Mine Ban Treaty.

We wish to thank all Acronym's colleagues and readers for their interest and support over the years. As the full transition to the Simons Centre may take some time, we request your understanding for any glitches that may arise. We would also like to assure you of our intention to continue publishing up-to-date information and analysis in the journal and on the Acronym website until facilities are fully established for us to publish from the Liu Institute.

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