November 15, 2021
Following its longstanding practice of offering informal discussion fora for key NPT delegations in advance of NPT Review Conference meetings, CNS, in consultation with the President-designate of the 10th Review Conference and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs organized a high-level working lunch at the Permanent Mission of Indonesia to the United Nations in New York on October 29, 2021. Prior to the pandemic, CNS typically organized one- or two-day long seminars on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly First Committee at the Indonesian or other Permanent Missions in New York. The recent working lunch was the first in-person meeting of this sort in the past two years.
The meeting, hosted by Ambassador Mohammad K. Koba, Indonesian Charge d’Affaires, was one of the very first opportunities for a number of key NPT delegations to interact directly with one another and to consult in person with President-designate, Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen from Argentina. The ambassadorial-level event enabled the President-designate to exchange views with representatives from key NPT States, including the United States, Russia, France, Austria, Japan, Spain (also representing the Stockholm Initiative), Switzerland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, NPT Review Conference Secretary-General Ioan Tudor and UN High Representative for Disarmament Izumi Nakamitsu. The luncheon discussion, facilitated by Center Director Professor William Potter, addressed several key issues that will be at the forefront of the Review Conference. They included how States Parties should reflect the implementation (or lack thereof) of commitments adopted at previous Review Conferences, and whether some commitments should be given higher priority in light of changing circumstance and new challenges.
The President-designate used the opportunity to brief senior NPT representatives about his preparations for the conference, which will be held at the UN from January 4 to 28, 2022. The working lunch also fostered the development of greater interpersonal relations among a number of ambassadors, who had limited prior interactions. In a note to CNS, the President-designate commented that he found the working lunch extremely interesting and useful to him in his preparation for the Review Conference, and also noted that he benefited very much from the frank discussion and the outlining of incipient positions by key players on the main issues.
Building on the success of this working lunch and other NPT- related outreach activities, CNS plans to conduct a follow-on virtual NPT seminar in early December 2021. It also has begun preparation for a post-Review Conference workshop in Annecy, France, following its decades long tradition of convening NPT workshops in Annecy.
