By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Five Central Asian states plan to meet in September in an effort to complete an agreement establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region, a senior U.N. disarmament official told Global Security Newswire yesterday (see GSN, March 11).

The meeting, scheduled to be held by the end of September in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, will involve representatives from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, said Tsutomu Ishiguri, director of the U.N. Regional Center for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific.  The purpose of the meeting is for the Central Asian states to develop a joint response to comments on a draft treaty provided by four of the five declared nuclear weapons states. Of the five, only China has submitted no comments.

The nuclear weapons states submitted their written proposals earlier this year, but the Central Asian states later requested that they be resubmitted in Russian so that they were available in a common language, Ishiguri said, adding that the proposals were resubmitted by early March.  After the Central Asian states had an opportunity to individually review the translated comments, representatives from the Central Asian states’ U.N. missions then met twice in New York — June 3 and July 17 — to “review notes,” Ishiguri said. 

U.N. mission representatives are now expected to meet again by the end of this month to finalize details for the Tashkent meeting, Ishiguri said.  He added that the Central Asian states need to send high-level officials to the Tashkent meeting, in addition to technical experts, so that decisions can quickly be made “on the spot.” 

After the Tashkent meeting, the Central Asian states will be in a position to meet with the nuclear weapons states to discuss their proposals, Ishiguri said.  While the five nuclear weapons states cannot prevent the creation of the zone, the Central Asian states have requested that they sign a protocol to the treaty stating that they agree to respect the zone.

The United Nations hopes the treaty can be signed by the end of this year, Ishiguri said.  The Central Asian states have twice anticipated signing the treaty — once in October 2002 and again in April.

In May, Ishiguri told GSN that delays in signing the treaty should not be interpreted as a sign that the Central Asian states are losing interest in establishing the zone.  He noted then that the Central Asian states had reaffirmed their commitment to the creation of the zone in working papers presented at a meeting of the U.N. Disarmament Commission (see GSN, April 18) and during a meeting of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty members (see GSN, May 9).  He told GSN yesterday, however, that there is concern that momentum could be lost if the treaty is not signed soon.

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