Taylhardat Dec 8 Forum

I wish to begin by highlighting the significance of the fact that this Important Forum, which gathers parliamentarians around the subject of nuclear no proliferation, takes place in this hospitable country of New Zealand, a country that has played an active and constant role in the efforts of the international community to proscribe nuclear weapons.

New Zealand not only is a country that has had a leading participation within the Conference of Disarmament and at the UN, but also performed a fundamental role in bringing about the initiative of the Rarotonga Treaty.

During the cold war nuclear weapons played a central role in the foreign policy and defense strategies of the United States and of the then Soviet Union and the other nuclear powers. The deterrence doctrines that derived from such policies lead to an irrational and dangerous nuclear weapons competition that kept humanity under the permanent risk that any international crisis could evolve into a nuclear confrontation.

The efforts to abolish nuclear weapons used to be disregarded with the argument, among others, that they were useless pretensions because it is not possible to "des-invent" what has been already invented. According to this view nuclear weapons are there to stay forever and they will continue to exist because it is impossible to suppress neither the human knowledge nor the technology that invented them. Those of us who advocated nuclear disarmament were commonly considered as naive an idealist.

But, as the Honorable Marian Hobes said this morning, "that idealism is the only hope we have".

Since the end of the cold war some significant steps have been made in the efforts to check the spread of nuclear weapons.

This has been possible, in part, as a result of the end of cold war and the east-west confrontation. But nobody can deny that non nuclear countries and the pressure of international public opinion have greatly contributed to reduce the nuclear danger in the world. Gradually it has been possible to bring the terrible genie back into the bottle.

The International Court of Justice's consultative opinion given in July 1996, which clearly established that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is contrary to International Law and confirmed the obligation of nuclear powers to negotiate nuclear disarmament in good faith , constitutes a most valuable manifestation of support to the efforts aimed at reaching nuclear disarmament. Both the NPT and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty are fundamental element in those efforts.

But the various regional nuclear free zones schemes have been, without doubt, the most effective factors in contributing to contain the spread of nuclear weapons. The Treaty of Tlatelolco concluded in 1967, the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1985, the Treaty of Bangkok in 1996 and the Treaty of Pelindaba of 1996 constitute fundamental steps towards the goal of achieving a nuclear free world. The step taken by Mongolia by unilaterally declaring itself a nuclear free territory is also an important contribution towards this aim. Other similar regional initiatives such as those of the Middle East and South Asia are still pending and it is hoped that the necessary agreements could be attained soon.

Allow me to turn now to the main issue under consideration in this panel which is Non-proliferation and Parliamentary Engagement. At this stage, allow me to make a brief personal remark. At the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, my country officially promoted an initiative o mine to amend the NPT in order to extend indefinitely its validity. As you know, currently the NPT has to be extended every 20 years, and this poses a kind of sword of Damocles on the Treaty itself because it leaves opened the possibility for nuclear powers so seek termination of the Treaty and thus freeing themselves of the obligations imposed to them by the Treaty. That proposal retained the system of five year review conferences that allow the non-nuclear countries the possibility to demand accountability to the nuclear powers on what they have or not have done in terms of their compliance with the obligations the have assumed under the Treaty. That initiative unfortunately failed to succeed as a result of the strong opposition if faced from the US Government and the pressures that country exerted upon many countries, including NOAL countries that initially supported it. Awkwardly enough, my own government subsided to those pressures and decided to withdraw the proposal.
Thad led me to resign my position as head of the Venezuelan delegation to the NPT
Review and Extension Conference.

Having been myself a diplomat directly and actively involved in the issues of disarmament, and being now a parliamentarian, I wish to acknowledge the importance of the efforts being made by the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament in order to involve the national parliaments and their members, as well as the international parliamentarian organizations in the efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

There is, in effect, a vast field of action within which the parliaments and the parliamentarians can contribute to promote disarmament, both conventional and nuclear.

Parliaments already fulfill important functions that have an impact on disarmament when they deal with legislative process of ratification of international legal instruments, or when they decide the allocation of financial resources for the implementation of disarmament treaties or to projects of programs related to disarmament issues, or when they exercise control upon the activities of the executive branch related to disarmament issues. But there is no doubt about the important benefits that a more active involvement of parliaments and their members can bring about in the efforts towards disarmament, by taking initiatives and promoting actions to reinforce the endeavors of the international community.

Additionally, parliamentarians, as direct representatives of the people and their constituencies, have also a fundamental role to play in terms of informing and communicating with the civil society and serving as a vehicle for the concerns of public opinion on an issue so vital as disarmament. As my friend and former colleague at the CD and former UN Undersecretary for Disarmament, Jahanta Dhanapala says in his introduction to the booklet "Parliamentarians and Nuclear Disarmament", "If the people demand progress on disarmament, their voices must be heard".

The publication issued by PNND contains a number of interesting ideas that could serve as guide lines for the development of parliamentarian initiatives in the field of disarmament. I will not enter into details at this stage, but being a Member of the Latin American Parliament, and taking the advantage of the presence here of my very good friend, the Secretary General of OPANAL, Edmundo Vargas, I would, most humbly, like to suggest to him to consider the possibility of establishing a regime of collaboration between PARLATINO and OPANAL. The Treaty of Institutionalization of the Latin American Parliament envisages disarmament, and particularly nuclear disarmament as one of its main objectives. I am sure that an initiative of OPANAL for concluding a collaboration agreement with PARLATINO would be most welcomed. Probably similar arrangements could be done between other Nuclear Free Zones and the regional or subregional parliamentarian organizations.

I believe this could be a most effective road to mobilize parliaments and to promote initiatives both at the national and international levels.

In concluding, I wish to fully endorse what the Honorable Douglas Roche says in the submission he has presented to this forum:

"Speaking up takes courage and leadership. Parliamentarians possess both these attributes. You also have access to the decision-making processes of your government" . "Parliamentarians must press their governments to act now to achieve nuclear non proliferation, disarmament and greater international security. Such leadership must be taken to help save the Non.-Proliferation Treaty in 2005".

I thank you for your attention.