Written question asked by Lord Jopling (Conservative), in the House of Lords. It was answered by Lord Triesman (Labour) on Monday, 15 May 2006.

Disarmament

Question: Further to the Written Answer by the Lord Triesman on 4 May (WA 97), whether they will now indicate what are the issues on which a consensus agreement has not been reached, thus holding up progress on United Nations disarmament agreements in Geneva; and which countries have blocked agreement to each of the issues.

Answer: The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva has been unable to reach consensus on a programme of work since 1997. The issues on the agenda are: nuclear disarmament; a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT); prevention of an arms race in outer space; new types of weapons of mass destruction and radiological weapons; negative security assurances; and a comprehensive programme on disarmament and transparency in armaments. No individual country is responsible for blocking progress in the CD on any particular agenda item. Rather, many countries continue to view the agenda as a package and link progress on one issue to that of another. This has led to the unwelcome lack of consensus agreement on any of the agenda items. The UK believes the CD should move away from the package approach and deal with individual issues that are ripe for negotiation. That is why we continue to call for the immediate commencement of negotiations on an FMCT and look forward to discussions on this agenda item in the CD later this month.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 5617; 682 c5WA
Session: 2005-06
Related items: Disarmament
Thursday, 4 May 2006
Written questions
House of Lords
Subjects: Arms control International cooperation United Nations Conference on Disarmament
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk