Its now past 4am in The Hague, and Richard Guthrie has managed to get out another update.

“At 2am it was announced that the side negotiations had produced a text with one outstanding paragraph unresolved.

It was not until roughly 4am that a printed version of this text was available to delegates. The Conference has just gone behind closed doors again to consider the text in a formal session of the Committee of the Whole.

It is not clear how long this phase is going to take.”

Well, Richard Guthrie is the only NGO representative left, and even though he’s lonely, we’re glad he’s there to update us on the late-night proceedings. Here is his latest informal email update:

“We have just had a procedural plenary to stop the clock as the mandate of
the Review Conference ends at midnight. Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia
and Thailand asked questions about when it would be that the document would
see the light of day, but no answer was forthcoming other than “soon”.

There are some outstanding issues remaining in the side negotiations,
although indications are these will be complete relatively quickly. As
those negotiations have now gone on for about 32 hours, “relatively” is a
difficult term to have some sense of.

The document will be circulated to the Committee of the Whole which will
then examine it before it is forwarded to a new plenary session.

It is a slightly peculiar experience to be sitting inside the meeting room
for the plenary, having been outside of meeting rooms for most of the last
ten days. The last plenary meeting included a long line of NGOs along the
back of the room. As the only NGO left — the line looks a little empty …”

Awwwww, I wish I was still sitting in the NGO line at the back of the room as well.

Richard Guthrie has sent another email update on progress in The Hague, and from the sounds of it they are in for another long night. It is already 7:30pm and much still remains to be done.

“The discussions between around 20 states to try and hammer out a final document are still continuing. Looks like it will take at least another hour or two before a document emerges, although sometimes the very end game can suddenly pick up speed.

Some states outside this “other meeting” are increasingly annoyed at the process and the total lack of transparency (nothing is coming out of the meeting — not even sections of text that have been agreed). Some simply want time to read the final document before agreeing to it, but this could take two more hours. Some are asking for group meetings to discuss it. Others have indicated that they have instructions to send the document back to capital before it can be agreed — which could add many hours.

The Technical Secretariat also will need 2-3 hours to translate the agreed document and print it in the six official languages.

All in all, it looks unlikely that the process will be over before midnight. Some are expecting it to end well into the early hours.”

It looks like things are getting pretty tense in the final hours of the Second Review Conference and there is uncertainty about whether or not they will be able to produce a consensus declaration. At this point it seems that in order to gain consensus, any declaration produced will be very weak.

Richard Guthrie provides a look at the final push of the conference in his latest report “The Penultimate Day: Running close to the wire.”

To supplement his report, Richard also sent out this informal email update:

This is an informal update and the outline provided here will be filled in with more details in the regular report when it comes out, probably on Monday. I’ll also try to produce an informal update at whatever time the conference concludes.

The discussions between around 20 states to try and hammer out a final document continue. They have now been working at it so long that the commitment to try to see this through to the end is clear. However, everything is taking longer than is expected.

There is a meeting of the Committee of the Whole pencilled in for 4.30, in order to read through the text from the “other meeting”, but it is not yet clear that the text will be ready by that time.

Most delegates are lingering around the OPCW building waiting for news, while the other meeting is happening in the Convention Centre next door.