Assembly commends chemical weapons ban, reviews nuclear, security items; building upon disarmament momentum.

• Position: First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly - Includes related article on an address by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The first global chemical weapons ban--the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction--was formally approved by the General Assembly on 30 November.

The 24-article text, which will enter into force after ratification by 65 States, was to be opened for signature by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at a special meeting in Paris in January 1993.

The result of 10 years of negotiations within the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, the treaty was commended by the Assembly in its resolution 47/39, which was adopted without a vote.

The new treaty represented the "best compromise possible" to eliminate chemical weapons, Assembly President Stoyan Ganev of Bulgaria said after the resolution's adoption. It provided the international community with the "first multilaterally negotiated, global and verifiable disarmament agreement". Together with other disarmament accords, the treaty could "advance efforts towards the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction worldwide", he said.

Adolf Ritter von Wagner of Germany, Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical Weapons of the Conference on Disarmament, said the verification provisions in the draft had been the "most difficult to negotiate, since verification measures intrude deeply into the sovereignty of States".

A |high dose of realism'

In launching the substantive debate in the First Committee (Political and Security) on 12 October, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Vladimir Petrovsky called on Committee members to approach their work "with a high dose of realism and make action-oriented recommendations". To that end, Member States should take new approaches in dealing with substantive issues.

In addition to the chemical weapons treaty, the Committee's 23-item agenda covered a wide spectrum of disarmament concerns, including nuclear and security issues. A total of 48 texts were recommended for Assembly adoption.

On 9 December, the Assembly acted on the bulk of the texts recommended by the Committee.

In resolution 47/47, all States were urged to seek the "early discontinuance of all nuclear-test explosions for all time". The world body also called upon the Conference on Disarmament to continue efforts towards establishing an international seismic monitoring network for the effective verification of compliance with a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty.

All parties to the 1963 Treaty...