Here is Richard Guthrie’s latest report.

Today is day 5 of the conference and according the the tentative pregramme of work the Commitee of the Whole will spend the morning session on:

“implementation of the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention relating to national implementation measures; consultation, cooperation, and fact-finding.”

And the afternoon session on:

“implementation of the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention relating to assistance and protection against chemical weapons.”

On the news side of things, Global Security Newswire ran a story about the Open Forum, ITAR-TASS has a piece about the Russian photo exhibit, and there was an article in the latest issue of Nature.

Today the General Debate continued so we had 2 full sessions of national statements. I posted quick entries on the U.S. and Iran statements since they were by far the most anticipated and interesting. In addition to the U.S. and Iran we heard from Saudi Arabia, China, Russian Federation, Singapore, Japan, Pakistan, Serbia, Switzerland, Mexico, Algeria, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Ukraine, Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Peru, Republic of Korea, Australia, Brazil, Tunisia, Yemen, Norway, Sudan, El Salvador and Mongolia. The rest of the statements were not too controversial. Daniel Feakes managed to keep a running list of each state and their key points for both the morning session and afternoon session. Overall, the U.S. statement was not terribly strong or confrontational. The statement of Iran followed later in the morning, and while it was not without a few controversial statements, it could very well have been heavier. Nearly all states listed CWC universality or CW stockpile destruction as their first priorities for the RevCon and the next 5 years. Only a handful of states brought up the issue of non-lethal weapons or riot control agents and concerns over their use by other states parties. Nearly all of the developing nations pressed Article XI as one of the main pillars of the CWC and called upon the developed nations to increase the sharing of scientific and technical information and equipment fr purposes not prohibited under the convention with them. The developed nations almost entirely ignored Article XI in their statements, and those that didn’t only devoted one or 2 lines to it. A far as CWC news goes… The U.S. State Department has posted the statement read by Amassador Javits this morning. Also there are:

• Destruction of chemical weapons top priority of convention, China says – China View, April 8, 2008.
• Universal Membership Crucial for CWC, Officials Say – Global Security Newswire, Chris Schneidmiller, April 8, 2008.
• Nations Demand Adherence to CW Disposal Deadlines – Global Security Newswire, Chris Schneidmiller, April 8, 2008.
• Nations to Consider Future of Chemical Weapons Pact – Global Security Newswire, Chris Schneidmiller, April 3, 2008.

OPCW is starting to put national statements up on the Second Review Conference site.

So far statements from Bangladesh, Serbia, Switzerland (French and English) and Tunisia (French only) have been posted, and hopefully other statements will begin showing up here also.

Other new items on the RevCon site include the press release “Watchdog Agency: Treaty to Eliminate Chemical Weapons Is Succeeding” and an image gallery.