The Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world’s sole body for negotiating multilateral disarmament treaties, adopted a program of work on 29 May 2009, laying the groundwork for the CD to begin its first substantive work in 12 years.

The centerpiece of the CD’s decision (CD/1864) is the establishment of a working group to begin negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

The full decision also includes the establishment of working groups to discuss the following issues before the Conference on Disarmament: cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament, prevention of an arms race in outer space, and effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. Special coordinators will also be appointed to seek the views of members on new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons, radiological weapons, a comprehensive program of disarmament, and transparency in armaments.

Under the terms of CD/1864, all working groups and special coordinators are to report on their progress before the end of the CD’s 2009 session, which reconvenes 3 August - 18 September 2009. The CD meets for three sessions each year and this is the third and final session scheduled for 2009.

After agreeing to the program of work, there was hope among many CD members that working groups would begin meeting during the second session, which ended on 2 July 2009. To that end, on 25 June 2009, the president of the CD released two draft decisions on implementing the program of work — a draft calendar of activities (CD/1866) and a draft list of possible working group chairs and special coordinators (CD/1867). A number of CD member states expressed their support for the draft decisions, including the Western European and Eastern European Groups. The U.S., the Russian Federation, Colombia, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, Turkey, Chile and Japan also individually expressed their support. Despite widespread agreement on the draft decisions, however, consensus could not be reached, largely because of the concerns of delegations from China, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan.

The CD’s current president has pledged to undertake intensive consultations with delegations during the CD’s summer break to try to reach consensus on the implementation of the program of work.

Melissa Gillis is the editor of Disarmament Times.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about the work of the CD, go to the website of Reaching Critical will, a project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, at www.reachingcriticalwill.org. RCW’s CD Report includes summaries of the CD’s proceedings, as well as links to all statements and documents. TO LEARN MORE about fissile materials and read a draft fissile materials cut-off treaty, go the website of the International Panel on Fissile Materials at www.fissilematerials.org. Visit the website of the NGO Committee on Disarmament at http://disarmtimes.org to read the transcript of a 5 May 2009 workshop at the U.N. about a fissile materials cut-off treaty by members of IPFM.