By  Vijay Mehta vijay@ anglo-sphere.com

The meeting started by discussing NGO’s involvement in the Disarmament process and NPT review conference. How can we make a good contribution? At this moment Disarmament is going backward. We need to act together, incorporate the concerns of civil society and large number of NGO’s to speak as one to make diplomats and governments understand the importance of going forward in implementing the NPT treaty. It is an uphill task but we need to be present where ever there are weapons conferences.

The NPT review conference was on at the same time. It was agreed that it is important to know delegates of different countries attending the conference to discuss strategies. Critical Will website (http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org) and News in Review were placing all the NPT conference reports daily. It was requested that Sir Joseph Rotblat excellent speech be posted on the website. He was given the annual Linus Pauling award. There was a exhibition on the life of Linus Pauling twice Nobel Price winner once for chemistry in 1954 and for Peace in 1962.

The meeting started with the Ambassador of Hungary, president of the NPT conference telling us of what happened during the week of the conference. He said there were over two hundred presentations by different delegates from state parties to the NPT conference with a question’s and general debate afterwards. The question answer and debate happened for the first time after fierce lobbying from different NGO’s. It was a matter of immense relief that the Nuclear Disarmament Agenda was not hijacked by war on Iraq and status of North Korea. Otherwise the delegates would have spent two weeks just discussing that and not getting on with negotiations of Nuclear Disarmament.

Among the things coming out of NPT review conference were as follows:

1. NPT is still the corner stone of Nuclear Disarmament and international peace and security. State parties were urged to abide by law which will also reduce terrorism.
2. Strong support for conference on disarmament was advocated. A subcommittee was formed to do that. It was stated it is the CD (Conference on Disarmament) which implements the wishes of NPT. A strong NGO involvement and presence at the CD was desirable.
3. Regular reporting and transparency of state parties on commitment to NPT and status of the stockpile of different types of weapons was needed. It was stated that about twenty reports about the progress of NPT were received from different countries.
4. The role, understanding and cooperation of Non-Nuclear Countries, Civil society and educating the public at large, were discussed.
5. It was urged that nuclear free cities and zones need to be formed.
6. The role of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency – Vienna), ICBL (International Campaign to Band Landmines), MPI (Middle Powers Initiative) and many other organisations was commended.

However there was general dissatisfaction on progress, transparency of national reports by state parties and it was the feeling of the NGO committee that disarmament was a non issue. It was stated that the reports should be different and standardised approach to reports should be formed keeping in view of the goals of NPT. The differences among the state parties on ways to go forward, how international agreements should be legally binding and enforcement procedures still remain a serious issue.

It was urged that NGO should press for more involvement with the NTP and CD conferences as a way forward. A multilateral agreement was seen as a road map for moving forward like the plan in Middle East, but it was an issue which did not have universal consensus. It was discussed that if a state party disassociate itself with NPT (like North Korea) efforts should be made to bring them back to the club.

Proposals for Seminar on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, November 2003, Geneva, NPT Prep Comm 2004 and NPT, review conference 2005 in New York were discussed.

It was urged that landmines, cluster bombs, small arms, explosive remnants of war, biological, chemical and outer space weapons should also form an important part of the whole process of the disarmament issues.

All the officers for NGO committee for disarmament were elected unopposed except David Hay-Edie replaced David Attwood as president who was in the role for last eight years. Regina Hagen replaced Brain Cooper as vice-president as Brain had resigned earlier. Colin Archer as usual put in tremendous amount of work in preparing all the agenda and other papers to make the committee meeting a success.

The following calendar of events in various disarmament fields was announced:

• Nuclear Weapons: Conference on Disarmament
• Nuclear Test Ban: CTBTO event, Vienna September
• Small Arms: (26-30 May) (7-11 July, NY) + Geneva action Network on Small Arms
• Biological weapons: BTWC Convention Review Conference (Geneva, 10-14 November)
• Landmines: Ottawa Convention (May, September)
• Certain Conventional Weapons: Expert group on Explosive Remnants of War (16-27 June, 17-28 November)
• Advisory Board meeting for Disarmament Matters
• Other upcoming events (UNIDIR, Geneva Forum etc.)

There were couple of important anniversaries coming up in 2005 for which ideas for events were invited:

1. 60^th anniversary of the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2. 50^th anniversary of Einsten-Russell manifesto on rejection of nuclear weapons.

It was urged that strong NGO presence at these events is necessary to take forward disarmament issues and push the lethargic process of NPT conference which is struggling in the hands of diplomats.

It was a great opportunity to network with various organisations and delegates from different countries of Europe, Japan, North Korea and USA.

Vijay Mehta MA