UN: The Conference on Disarmament, the main international forum on weapons of mass destruction and arms control, should broaden its membership beyond the present total of 66 countries, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, has said, writes Deagláde Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
He told a session of the conference in Geneva this week he found it "hard to believe, much less understand, how a body charged with a mandate of such relevance to humankind and drawing its funding from the United Nations can continue to effectively exclude civil society from a meaningful role in its deliberations."
He added: "Nor can I understand the exclusivity with which the conference guards its membership. While your membership includes some with modest engagement with multilateral disarmament treaties, others who are staunch upholders of the multilateral disarmament system are denied entry. Amongst the latter I would include member-states of the European Union and acceding states whose admission has been blocked."
Mr Cowen said conventional weapons might have killed far more people, but it was the proliferation and possible use of weapons of mass destruction which caused greatest fear.
Pointing out that the preparatory committee for the 2005 review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) would meet next month, he said the treaty itself had been subjected to severe strains in recent years.
"Like others we deplore the announcement made by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to withdraw from the NPT last year. We continue to urge the DPRK to dismantle immediately any nuclear weapons programme in a visible and verifiable manner."
Concerns had also arisen about the nuclear programmes of a number of other countries.
He continued: "There is a fundamental link between the objectives of the NPT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was the last major agreement to be negotiated in this forum. Ireland continues to see the CTBT as one of the fundamental building steps on the road to nuclear disarmament."
The Conference on Disarmament (CD) was established in 1979, following a special session of the UN General Assembly. The terms of reference of the CD include practically all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems.