by William M. Reilly
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Two weeks of debate at UN World Headquarters in New York over the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ended on Friday without reaching agreement on a final document, despite last minute negotiations.
Still, the third and final session of the Preparatory Committee meeting, held May 4-15, laid groundwork for the NPT Review Conference mandated for April of 2010. The 2005 review failed to reach consensus on an outcome document.
A Review Conference has been held every five years since the 1968 NPT came into force in 1970. It has been ratified by nearly all the 192 members of the United Nations. The exceptions are India, Israel, and Pakistan who neither signed nor ratified the accord and have developed nuclear weapons. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) ratified it but withdrew in 2003.
How to deal with nations withdrawing from the treaty was a subject of debate.
The five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, all nuclear weapon states -- issued a joint statement on Friday, reaffirming their support for the NPT and welcomed "the progress and substantive discussion at this Preparatory Committee meeting."
This latest "prepcom," as it is known in the halls of the United Nations, debated on Thursday the revised draft which had been submitted by the panel's chairman, Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku of Zimbabwe, who said a consensus had not been reached for this session's outcome.
He green-lighted continuing negotiations overnight among various groups. Several states said differences were not that great and expressed hope a consensus could be reached to avert another session ending without agreement on an outcome document.
But, not reaching such accord was not necessarily a bad thing, Rebecca Johnson, executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, told Xinhua.
First, she said the most contentious of issues facing delegates was the question of disarmament, and the recommendations in the chair's first draft "were stronger and much closer to where they feel they should be in 2010 than the wording in the second draft" outcome document.
Many of her colleagues in non-governmental organizations attending the meeting and several non-nuclear states felt some of the nuclear weapons states insisted on the disarmament language being heavily watered down for that revised draft, she said.
The countries who plugged for more negotiations were the ones who, in effect, already got what they wanted in terms of watering down disarmament commitments or they say, "No, we could've been happy to have adopted the recommendations in the first draft but the second one goes to far away from where we think our position needs to be in 2010," said Johnson, who holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science
"I think also there is a division in respect to those who think any agreement on recommendations is better than no agreement," she said, adding there are others who say while the recommendations are not perfect, they offer a perspective.
The problem in diplomacy is that once there is agreed language it is transmitted and "evoked by everybody next year as being agreed language and those that like that language become completely embedded in it, invested in it and refuse to negotiate alternatives and that means that those who allowed it to go through for the sake of agreement while registering their discontent or their preference for different language are left out in the cold," Johnson said.
"While it is very useful for this prepcom to try to get recommendations that they can agree on, the process that at least demonstrates the ambience is better transmitted without full agreement," she said.
Asked if she was saying it was likely even without consensus that states could hold up this year's draft of a document and cite it, Johnson replied, "Yes, and they can take it as a resource to help their discussions and negotiations in 2010. It is not a hostage to fortune."
"You are not going to get states demanding this and only this is the end, agreed language, because in 2010 it's clear their will be a chair's working paper from 2007, 2008, 2009 to help the process," she said. "It can help identify many things that are problems. I mean the negotiations have to take place anew in 2010."
She described the two weeks of meetings as "a very, very successful prepcom."
Johnson said the reasons were not only Chidyausiku's chairmanship but "the changed attitude of the United States and to the (U.S. President Barack) Obama Administration. They clearly wanted a change, they wanted to find agreement, and they didn't use procedure to build up impenetrable obstacles to avoid discussing substance."
Obama said in Prague last month he was seeking nuclear disarmament.
The P5 statement reiterated their delegations' "enduring and unequivocal commitment to work towards nuclear disarmament, an obligation shared by all NPT states parties. We welcome the decision by the U.S. and Russia to negotiate an agreement to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the recent emphasis on further steps, including promotion of entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty."
"This has actually been a very constructive and effective prepcom and to keep the positive atmosphere here together with the concrete and incredibly important decisions on the agenda and other procedural aspects is a real achievement," said Johnson.
