Disarmament Conference reports 'long, arduous session.' (includes related articles)

A large part of the work of the 1994 Conference on Disarmament--held in Geneva in three parts (25 January-31 March; 16 May-1 July; and 25 July-7 September)--was devoted to the question of a nuclear-test ban. Ending what Conference President Sirous Nasseri of iran termed a "long and arduous session", the world's sole multilateral disarmament negotiating body adopted its report (A/49/27) to the General Assembly's forty-ninth session.

In a message to the Conference on 25 January, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had declared that Assembly resolution 48/70 on the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty-sponsored by more than 157 Member States and adopted by consensus in 1993-was a "milestone in the efforts of the international community to ban all nuclear tests in all environments for all time". He was gratified that the Conference was to give priority to negotiations for a "universal, multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty".

The Ad Hoc Committee on a Nuclear-Test Ban, re-established on 25 January with Miguel Marin-Bosch of Mexico as Chairman, had a general exchange of views on all aspects of such a treaty and set up two working groups: on verification and on legal and institutional issues. After intensive work, the Committee included the results of its ongoing negotiations on the draft treaty in a rolling text.

In a related development, the Ad Hoc Group of Scientific Experts to Consider International Co-operative Measures to Detect and Identity Seismic Events continued work on measures to facilitate an international exchange of seismological data under a comprehensive treaty in a protocol that would be an integral part of the treaty.

The Group also completed plans for developing, testing and evaluating GSETT-3--AN experimental international seismic monitoring system that could help in establishing an ultimate verification system.

The 38-member Conference consists of: five nuclear-weapon States (China, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States); other militarily significant States; and neutral and non-aligned countries which form the "Group of 21". In 1994, 47 non-member States participated as observers in the plenary meetings of the Conference or its subsidiary bodies.

Members agreed that the Conference was the appropriate forum to negotiate a "non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for...