Nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East – First Cttee debate – Verbatim record (excerpts)

Official Records

General Assembly

Fiftieth session

First Committee

18th meeting

Friday, 10 November 1995, 3.00 p.m.

New York

Chairman: Mr. Erdenechuluun ……………………….. (Mongolia)

The meeting was called to order at 4.05 p.m.

Agenda items 57 to 81 (continued)

Action on all draft resolutions submitted under all disarmament and international security agenda items

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Mr. Yativ (Israel): Israel remained in the consensus in the voting on draft resolution A/C.1/50/L.26. However, it would have voted against the fourth preambular paragraph concerning the final documents of the Cartagena Conference if a separate vote had been taken on that paragraph.

Israel is opposed to certain resolutions of that Conference, especially those contained in chapter 87, which single out Israel and do not support the achievements of the peace process in the Middle East.

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Mr. Yativ (Israel): Israel joined the consensus on draft resolution A/C.1/50/L.36/Rev.1. However, my delegation wishes to state that our position is that all regional-security matters pertaining to the Middle East are subject to the peace negotiations. Operative paragraph 5 of the draft resolution does not take this into account. Accordingly, we wish to put on record our reservations and to reiterate our position that in the region of the Middle East the establishment of security arrangements, including in due course a mutually verifiable nuclear-weapon-free zone, is a suitable solution to be agreed upon by all regional States.

Mr. Mubarak (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) (interpretation from Arabic): Over the past few years, my country has been one of the sponsors of the draft resolution on the subject of A/C.1/50/L.36/Rev.1. However, this year we could not continue to play the same role, even though we joined in the consensus adoption of the draft resolution. Notwithstanding our agreement in the consensus, we continue to have reservations with regard to the sixth preambular paragraph, since my country does not believe that the current arrangements regarding the so-called peace process in the Middle East will lead to a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian question. In our view, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace lies in the establishment of a democratic non-racial State in Palestine in which Palestinian Arabs and Jews alike would live side by side on an equal footing, on the South African model.

We also have reservations with regard to operative paragraph 9, which has to do with the Barcelona conference. Last year, we accepted the idea of that conference in good faith on the premise that all countries of the region would participate on an equal footing in negotiations regarding security and cooperation in the region. However, our good faith was misplaced. What really happened was that my country was excluded from those negotiations and we were not invited to participate in the preparatory work for the forthcoming conference at Barcelona. Such exclusion of a country that, politically, geographically and economically, has important weight on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, emphasizes our suspicion that what is being prepared for in Barcelona does not aim at promoting security and cooperation in the region but, rather, aims at achieving other purposes, especially the imposition of acceptance of Israel as a principal partner in the negotiations, promotion of acceptance of the results of what is being called negotiations in the Middle East and imposition of the European model with its economic, political and social systems on the countries of the region in order to pave the way for European intervention in these internal affairs of the Mediterranean countries.

Thus the conference is no longer a Mediterranean conference that will be dedicated to the region’s security or to the promotion of cooperation between its countries, but a European conference that includes some Mediterranean countries which do not object to the European aforementioned design in the hope of making some material gain which, in my country’s view would be made at the cost of surrendering the national sovereignty and independence for which we, in Libya, have paid so dearly.

Mr. Moradi (Islamic Republic of Iran): I should like to express my delegation’s reservations with regard to the seventh preambular paragraph of draft resolution A/C.1/50/L.36/Rev.1, “Strengthening of security and cooperation in the Mediterranean region”.

The Islamic Republic of Iran firmly believes that the so-called Middle East peace process will not lead to full restoration of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people nor to the establishment of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region. The same holds true for any other similar references to this subject in the draft resolution.

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The meeting rose at 6.20 p.m.