EU Statement on the Annual Report of the Conference on Disarmament

18.09.2020
Geneva

Mr. President,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union.

We congratulate Belarus on assuming the last Presidency of the 2020 session of the Conference on Disarmament and thank you and other P6 members – Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh and Belarus – for all your endeavours.

In particular, I would like to thank you for putting the CD annual report (CD/WP.629) for adoption and put on record the following position. The EU continues to actively support the enlargement of the Conference on Disarmament which currently comprises only 65 members. Since the last expansion in 2002, 27 countries, including 12 EU Member States, are waiting to become CD members, and the number of observer States is growing each year, reaching a new long-term high in 2019. We would like to reiterate our proposal that a special coordinator be appointed to lead substantive consultations and lay out possible scenarios for the consideration of CD members on the long overdue expansion of membership.

Although we join consensus on paragraph 11 of the CD Annual Report, we deeply regret that one CD Member -Turkey- blocked the observership request of Cyprus, contrary to the usual practice for the last 22 years. We would like to remind all delegations that Cyprus applied for full membership and has been invited to participate at the Conference on Disarmament until January 2020.

Furthermore, we are of the view that a neutral, non-controversial and factual reference as included in the initial draft of the Report, which reads "The Conference also considered a request for participation from Cyprus", would find its place in the report. Yet again, this factual reference, based on the fact that the Conference discussed and made a decision on Cyprus’s observership application, followed by a number of compromise proposals were rejected by the same Member of the Conference on Disarmament.

In this regard, we are deeply concerned not only about the development in the CD during the 2020 session but also with the unconstructive approach towards negotiations of the report.

In conclusion, we strongly urge the concerned CD member to reconsider its position and to join consensus on the list of observers during the 2021 session.

Thank you, Mr. President.