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NPT PrepCom 2008
2008 NPT PrepCom adopts report but not Chair's factual and balanced Summary
May 9, 2008
By Rebecca Johnson
Back to the main page on the NPT
The final session of the 2008 PrepCom for the NPT opened on Friday May 9th, with a minute of silence in remembrance of the end of the 1939-45 War in Europe. It closed just after noon after adopting its "technical" report (containing details about the meeting and the six organisational and funding decisions it took on Tuesday relating to the 2009 and 2010 meetings).
After the minute's silence, the PrepCom Chair, Ukraine's Ambassador in Vienna, Volodyrmyr Yelchenko, quietly remarked that this was not just a reminder of the appalling consequences of war, but a reminder of the responsibility to assure peace and security in the future, saying that the NPT and its review process have an important role and responsibility in contributing towards this. The final morning of the PrepCom was almost an anti-climax. No stand-offs or fireworks, though the US, Iran and Syria maintained their combative carping to the end. To the disappointment of many states and representatives of civil society, who had been impressed with the balance and accuracy of the Chair's very substantive factual summary, opposition from a few delegations meant that the Chair did not obtain consensus for annexing his summary to the report, as provided for in the review conference decisions taken in 2000. It will instead be issued as a Chair's working paper [http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/08chair.htm], as happened with the Chair's summary at last year's (2007) PrepCom.
