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.
, 
