North Korea to Head U.N. Conference on Disarmament


On Tuesday, the United Nations again made itself an international laughing stock – except perhaps to the American taxpayers who continue to foot 22 percent of the bill – by appointing North Korea chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. That would be the same North Korea that, according to an article this week by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has “twice tested nuclear weapons…is developing missiles to carry them…has built facilities capable of producing highly enriched uranium for more nuclear weapons” and has defied a U.N. arms embargo by exporting weapons and sensitive technologies to rogue regimes.



Alas, Senator Kerry is also one of the lead champion of the United Nations in the Senate. According to the U.N., "The Conference is funded from the UN regular budget, reports to the General Assembly and receives guidance from it."

North Korea assumes the Conference chairmanship by being the next state in the alphabetical rotation of the 65 members, which include five nuclear weapons states and 60 other countries such as Iran and Syria. North Korea will preside over the Conference for a four working-week period.

North Korea’s representative, So Se Pyong, was enthusiastic about his new job. He announced that he was “very much committed to the Conference” and that during his presidency he “welcomes any sort of constructive proposals that strengthened the work and credibility of the Conference on Disarmament.” He also said that “he would do everything in his capacity to move the Conference on Disarmament forward.”
That might make sense, if by “forward” he means toward a nuclear winter, or by “constructive,” he means steering clear of anything that might impede North Korea. The official mandate of the Conference looks a bit different and includes “all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems” with the following “main areas of interest”: “cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters.”

North Korea’s chairmanship was heralded by other U.N. aficionados, including the Iranian delegate to the Conference. Iran’s Mohammad Hassan Daryaei told the Conference meeting: “I would like to congratulate the distinguished ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for the assumption of the presidency and assuring him of my delegation’s full support and cooperation.”

Iran’s support is telling. Just yesterday Iran's Revolutionary Guards tested 14 long-range missiles that could carry a nuclear weapon, with the express purpose of hitting U.S. interests and Israel, according to the head of their aerospace division.

Congratulations also poured in from such upstanding world citizens and U.N. fans as China. China’s Wang Qun “welcomed the presidency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”

It was left to the Canadian delegate to speak plainly. Canada’s Marius Grinius said: “[I]n the last 13 years the Conference has failed to move forward on its core disarmament responsibilities, including the negotiation of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty…[T]he Conference on Disarmament is on life support because it no longer is the sole multilateral negotiating forum for disarmament. Indeed, it is not negotiating anything and has not been for a very long time.”

Why not just put it out of its misery and pull the plug?

Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a professor at Touro College, and the editor of EYEontheUN.org.

Frazzled wrote:http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/2D415EE45C5FAE07C12571800055232B?OpenDocument

Kilkrazy wrote:I thought the United Nations was still technically at war with North Korea.

Feds tell N. Korea to quit as UN disarmament group chair 5
By Daniel Proussalidis ,Parliamentary Bureau
First posted: Thursday, June 30, 2011 12:14:11 EDT PM

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. (Chris Roussakis/QMI Agency)

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OTTAWA - Canada has called on North Korea to step aside after it gained the chairmanship of the UN Conference on Disarmament based in Geneva.

"North Korea is simply not a credible chair of a disarmament body," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said in a statement Thursday. "We call on North Korea to pass the chair on to a credible country that will advance the disarmament agenda within the UN."

Baird also confirmed Canada will review its participation in the conference.

North Korea is known as an international threat for its drive to develop nuclear weapons and its hostility to both South Korea and western democracies.

The communist and militantly atheist government in Pyongyang provocatively fired a short-range missile into waters off its west coast mere weeks ago.

Last year, North Korea angered South Korea after it shelled an island off South Korea's west coast, killing four people, including two civilians.

Still, North Korean ambassador So Se Pyong took over the rotating chairmanship of the conference on Tuesday and received warm congratulations from China, Iran, and Nigeria.

This is just the latest UN move to raise eyebrows around the world.

Earlier this week, UN bureaucrats endorsed Iran's "anti-terrorism" conference in Tehran.

Iran is considered a prime sponsor of Islamist terror and is a major backer of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Canada will contribute more than $118 million to the United Nations over the coming year.

Kilkrazy wrote:I thought the United Nations was still technically at war with North Korea.

inquisitor_bob wrote:Dogma, do you have a citation?

I'm curious on the issue of whether or not Conference on Disarmament is part of the United Nations and whether there is a difference between United Nations Office of Geneva and the "United Nations" as we know.

An Introduction to the Conference

The Conference on Disarmament (CD), established in 1979 as the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community, was a result of the first Special Session on Disarmament of the United Nations General Assembly held in 1978.

It succeeded other Geneva-based negotiating fora, which include the Ten-Nation Committee on Disarmament (1960), the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (1962-68), and the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (1969-78).

The current Director-General of UNOG is the Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament as well as the Personal Representative of the UN Secretary-General to the CD.

The terms of reference of the CD include practically all multilateral arms control and disarmament problems. Currently the CD primarily focuses its attention on the following issues: cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters; prevention of an arms race in outer space; effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons including radiological weapons; comprehensive programme of disarmament and transparency in armaments.

The CD meets in an annual session, which is divided in three parts of 10, 7 and 7 weeks, respectively. The first week shall begin in the penultimate week of the month of January. The CD is presided by its members on a rotating basis. Each President shall preside for a period of four weeks.

As originally constituted, the CD had 40 members. Subsequently its membership was gradually expanded (and reduced) to 65 countries. The CD has invited other UN Member States that have expressed a desire to participate in the CD's substantive discussions, to take part in its work as observers.

The CD adopts its own Rules of Procedure and its own agenda, taking into account the recommendations of the General Assembly and the proposals of its Members.

It reports to the General Assembly annually, or more frequently, as appropriate. Its budget is included in that of the United Nations. Staff members of the Geneva Branch of the Department for Disarmament Affairs service the meetings of the CD, which are held at the Palais des Nations
The Conference conducts its work by consensus.

The CD and its predecessors have negotiated such major multilateral arms limitation and disarmament agreements as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, the seabed treaties, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

dogma wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I thought the United Nations was still technically at war with North Korea.

Nope, the Korean Armistice ended the conflict.

dogma wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I thought the United Nations was still technically at war with North Korea.

Nope, the Korean Armistice ended the conflict.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

inquisitor_bob wrote:Dogma, do you have a citation?

I'm curious on the issue of whether or not Conference on Disarmament is part of the United Nations and whether there is a difference between United Nations Office of Geneva and the "United Nations" as we know.

I can't cite a negative. It simply isn't a part of the UN. Even though Fraz spoke first, his words do not carry any weight. He has to prove that it is part of the UN, which he won't do, and won't be able to do.

fire4effekt wrote:If your not wrong then you should be able to prove it, so do it.

Ahtman wrote:

fire4effekt wrote:If your not wrong then you should be able to prove it, so do it.

Do you understand what it means to 'cite a negative'?

fire4effekt wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

fire4effekt wrote:If your not wrong then you should be able to prove it, so do it.

Do you understand what it means to 'cite a negative'?

No.

Do you understand what sit and spins means?

fire4effekt wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

fire4effekt wrote:If your not wrong then you should be able to prove it, so do it.

Do you understand what it means to 'cite a negative'?

No.

Do you understand what sit and spins means?

fire4effekt wrote:
Tap dancing around the fact that your wrong i take it?
If your not wrong then you should be able to prove it, so do it.

dogma wrote:I can't cite a negative. It simply isn't a part of the UN. Even though Fraz spoke first, his words do not carry any weight. He has to prove that it is part of the UN, which he won't do, and won't be able to do.

Frazzled wrote:Its a highly affiliated NGO. I said that teenager.
http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/chronicle/cache/bypass/home/archive/issues2010/conferenceondisarmamentinjectingpoliticalwill?ctnscroll_articleContainerList=1_0&ctnlistpagination_articleContainerList=true

reds8n wrote:
..still, I kind of prefer that idea to the reality. Like when you're a bairn and your stomach is like a furnace and wee men ( or women if one is a girl perhaps ?) shovel your food into it, there's guys with telescopes and computers in your head and so on. Hmm.. upon reflection that really sets us up as some form of uber tyrant slavemaster. Wow. Where's Freud when you need him eh ? EH ? The you get older and you discover your entire body is more like some grotesque chemical warfare zone.

Good times.

.. err... anyway..

... BEHAVE !

reds8n wrote: A. let's stay calm people. There's really no point in getting riled over whatever this is really about.

B. For general reference sometimes things like title changes, spelling corrections etc etc sometimes take a wee while to kick in or appear. It's something to do with caches and the speed of the small men who run through the internet tubes with their superfast sharpies writing the things down, using calculators etc etc.

.. behold my mastery of the digital age.

..still, I kind of prefer that idea to the reality. Like when you're a bairn and your stomach is like a furnace and wee men ( or women if one is a girl perhaps ?) shovel your food into it, there's guys with telescopes and computers in your head and so on. Hmm.. upon reflection that really sets us up as some form of uber tyrant slavemaster. Wow. Where's Freud when you need him eh ? EH ? The you get older and you discover your entire body is more like some grotesque chemical warfare zone.

Good times.

.. err... anyway..

... BEHAVE !

reds8n wrote:
..still, I kind of prefer that idea to the reality. Like when you're a bairn and your stomach is like a furnace and wee men ( or women if one is a girl perhaps ?) shovel your food into it, there's guys with telescopes and computers in your head and so on. Hmm.. upon reflection that really sets us up as some form of uber tyrant slavemaster. Wow. Where's Freud when you need him eh ? EH ? The you get older and you discover your entire body is more like some grotesque chemical warfare zone.

Orlanth wrote:
1. North Korea is controlled by China regarding nearly all external issues. China is effectively the chair but putting China as de facto chair might ruffle feathers.