| Acronym Institute Home Page | Calendar | UN/CD | NPT/IAEA | UK | US | Space/BMD |
| CTBT | BWC | CWC | WMD Possessors | About Acronym | Links | Glossary |
Rebecca Johnson
Back to the main page on the NPT
The NPT Review Conference president, Ambassador Sergio Duarte of Brazil, was finally able to bring the gavel down on agreement for the three main committees (MC) and three subsidiary bodies (SB) to meet, starting Thursday May 19th. In the morning plenary he warned delegations that time was running out and if the committees were not agreed today, then he would propose an alternative approach. The plenary, at which further working papers were introduced by Norway, China, Cuba, Qatar on behalf of the League of Arab States, Canada, New Zealand on behalf of the New Agenda and in a further statement representing a joint paper on article X with Australia, as well as more from the G-10 was followed by interrupted informal (closed) meetings and several caucuses of the groups (or rather the NAM and Western group, since the declining Eastern European group is often to be found spending caucus time in the lobby with cigarettes, coffee and amusing conversation). Just before the interpreters were due to shut up shop, we were treated to the final five minute plenary at which the president's proposal was accepted.
For a time the problem appeared to be time allocation, then it was said to be difficulties over agreeing chairs for the subsidiary bodies. In the end, the President's threat of a Plan B concentrated the minds of hold-outs. Just before 5.30 pm, the closed meeting was declared open and the throngs of NGOs and press waiting in the fug of smoke outside Conference Room 4 were permitted to enter. The president was already half way into his short speech as we scrambled for seats and then the gavel came down. Apologies therefore if anything vital has been missed, but it would be easier to be accountable for accuracy if the doors didn't keep closing on the really interesting debates, with civil society on the outside.
Although the chairs for the subsidiary bodies were not named, pending finalisation, they will be from the New Agenda Coalition (SB1 on practical nuclear disarmament as well as related issues of nuclear doctrine and security assurances); the Western Group (SB2, covering regional issues and the Middle East); and the NAM (SB3 on withdrawal from the treaty). This complements the committee chairs: MC.1 (Indonesia, NAM); MC.2 (Hungary, Eastern European group); MC.3 (Sweden, Western group). In addition to the traditional allocation of treaty articles to the committees, it was agreed that disarmament and nonproliferation education would be addressed within MC.1 and institutional issues, including proposals for institutionally strengthening accountability, compliance and implementation powers, within MC.2. It is understood that until Wednesday May 25, two parallel sessions each morning and afternoon will be divided equally among the committees and proportionally for the subsidiary bodies. The president scheduled the drafting committee to report to the conference Wednesday afternoon. That would leave two days to wind up the conference.
This schedule will be very tight. According to Acronym's daily updates from 2000 (available on the website), the committees were underway before the first week was out and by the end of the second week the chairs of the main committees had issued their first draft working papers, which focussed on the issues of emerging areas of consensus and of contention. Even so, negotiations on the key issues took all of the remaining fortnight plus a further day as the conference spilled beyond its last day and into Saturday afternoon before agreement was locked down. The 2005 review conference has seven working days left and the committees will start work tomorrow. But perhaps they won't need all that time, as a mysterious two-sided document appeared on tables in the conference room and the nearby Vienna café. The paper, structured as a 10-paragraph declaration, bore no indication of its provenance, but its first paragraph prioritised the "changed" security environment and emphasised "non-state actors, terrorists and States in non-compliance", and the only references to the outcomes of 1995 and 2000 are in paragraph 6 which "notes" progress in their implementation, which might be a clue. Some carried the title "Draft: Outcome of the 2005 Review Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons", while others, identical in wording, lacked any title. There was much speculation about where this paper had come from, if it was intentionally leaked, and whether it was an attempt to pre-empt, contribute to - or, indeed, spoof - a possible 'common denominator' product for this Review Conference.
18.5.05
© 2005 The Acronym Institute.