Not very surprising …

No agreement on starting negotiations on a Fissban.

So, should the Conference on Disarmament negotiate a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty on a mandate which does not contain the words "effectively verifiable"? In March, I argued that it was going to be difficult to convince India and Pakistan to agree on "on a mandate which explicitly excludes verification. After all, while it is difficult to say how much weapons usable stuff has been produced on the subcontinent, fissile material imbalances between the two countries are likely". So, I've been talking a bit to members of the European diplomatic community, and some other people I know, about why they thought that the six president's proposal hasn't flown yet. Most are putting the blame squarely at China which, in their view, seems to magically control the motions of several other members of the Conference on Disarmament. Not a single person mentioned the role of India and Pakistan on this issue. It is somehow like their positions don't really matter. I think that's a peculiar train of thought, knowing that the CD operates on the principle that everyone should agree to everything, and that India nearly managed to block the adoption of the CTBT in the mid-1990s.

So, the six presidents wanted to delete the words effectively verifiable. India and Pakistan disagree. This is what they said yesterday. India held that "we are attached to the negotiation of a universal, nondiscriminatory, effectively and internationally verifiable treaty and it would be desirable for this to be clarified by the Presidency". Pakistan agreed, "we would like to recall that the majority of Conference members expressed their readiness to begin negotiations [on the basis of the Shannon mandate], which stated a call for an indiscriminately, multilaterally, international, and verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. We believe that we should continue to adhere to these agreed parameters in order to launch sustained FMT negotiations".

The United States is opposed including the words "effectively verifiable" in the mandate. Some diplomats I've spoken to believe that the six president's proposal covers verification. One held, "it's like Iran at the NPT review conference. The entire conference knows that we're going to talk about it anyway." Okay, I agree with that. However, I do think that there is a genuine risk, if the current mandate gets accepted, that the verification aspect will be silently forgotten. True, verification is not an aim in itself, but it is hardly controversial (in fact, it's even a principle) to state that, "adequate and effective verification is an essential element of all arms limitation and disarmament agreements".

V-word. You're not forgotten. Hang in there.