Chapter III. General review of the legal activities of the United Nations and related intergovernmental organizations

1. General review of the legal activities of the United Nations 1. DISARMAMENT AND RELATED MATTERS1

   {a) Comprehensive approaches to disarmament

   (i) Follow-up to the special sessions of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament

   Of the 29 resolutions which the General Assembly adopted in 1984 under the two collective items on follow-up to the special sessions directed to disarmament, only 10 resolutions—most in procedural areas—dealt with actual follow-up items. In the general debates, in both plenary meetings and the First Committee, a number of States made comments on the importance of a continuous effort to monitor implementation of the disarmament strategy set out by the Assembly at its tenth special session. The expectations generated by that session were frequently stressed, as were the continuing dismay and concern that those expectations had in no way been realized.

   By resolution 39/148 M2 of 17 December 1984, entitled "International co-operation for disarmament", the General Assembly, convinced of the need to strengthen constructive international co-operation based on the political goodwill of States for successful negotiations on disarmament, in accordance with the Final Document of the Tenth Special Session of the General Assembly,3 called upon all States, in implementing the Final Document, to make active use of the principles and ideas contained in the Declaration on International Co-operation for Disarmament by actively participating in disarmament negotiations, with a view to achieving concrete results, and by conducting them on the basis of the principles of reciprocity, equality, undiminished security and the non-use offeree in international relations, and to refrain at the same time from developing new channels of the arms race; and appealed to States which were members of military groupings to promote, on the basis of the Final Document, the gradual mutual limitation of military activities of those groupings, thus creating conditions for their dissolution.

   By resolution 39/148 N* of the same date, entitled "Report of the Conference on Disarmament", the General Assembly expressed its deep disappointment that the Conference on Disarmament had not been enabled to reach concrete agreements on any disarmament issues to which the United Nations had assigned greatest priority and urgency and which had been under consideration for a number of years; urged the Conference to undertake negotiations with a view to elaborating a draft treaty on a nuclear-weapon-test ban; and also urged it to intensify its work on the elaboration of a draft convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of all chemical weapons and on their destruction.

   And by its resolution 39/148 O,s also of the same date, on "Implementation of the recommendations and decisions of the tenth special session", the General Assembly invited all States, particularly nuclear-weapon States and especially those among them which possessed the most important nuclear arsenals, to take urgent measures with a view to implementing the recommendations and decisions contained in the Final Document of the Tenth Special Session of the General Assembly, as well as to fulfilling the priority tasks set forth in the Programme of Action contained in section III of the Final Document; called upon great Powers to undertake genuine negotiations in a constructive and accommodating spirit and taking

   into account the interest of the entire international community in order to halt the arms race, particularly the nuclear-arms race, and to achieve disarmament; and called upon the Conference on Disarmament to concentrate its work on the substantive and priority items on its agenda, to proceed to negotiations on the cessation of the nuclear-arms race and nuclear dis-armament, on the prevention of nuclear war as well as the prevention of an arms race in outer space without further delay and to elaborate drafts of treaties on a nuclear-weapon-test ban and on a complete and effective prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of all chemical weapons and on their destruction.

   (ii) General and complete disarmament

   The agenda item entitled "General and complete disarmament" covered a number of different subjects. General and complete disarmament was reaffirmed as the ultimate goal in a number of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly. However, strained international relations seemed to make the Member States somewhat reserved about the prospects for achieving that goal.

   By resolution 39/151 G6 of 17 December 1984, the General Assembly, reaffirming its conviction that genuine and lasting peace could only be created through the effective implementation of the security system provided for in the Charter of the United Nations and the speedy and substantial reduction of arms and armed forces, by international agreement and mutual example, leading ultimately to general and complete disarmament under effective international control, invited all States to communicate to the Secretary-General their views and suggestions on ways and means by which the United Nations could more effectively exercise its central role and primary responsibility in the field of disarmament.

   (b) Nuclear disarmament

   (i) Nuclear-arms limitation and disarmament

   With regard to the consideration of the subject in the Disarmament Commission, the Conference on Disarmament and the General Assembly at its thirty-ninth session, there was no substantive progress. However, the year ended on a positive note, as the Soviet Union and the United States announced in November their agreement to enter into new negotiations in the early part of 1985. The announcement was widely welcomed as a step in a better direction.

   Two draft resolutions on "Bilateral nuclear-arms negotiations" were submitted under the agenda item "Review of the implementation of the recommendations and decisions adopted by the General Assembly at its tenth special session".

   By resolution 39/148 B7 of 17 December 1984, the General Assembly, deeply regretting that the bilateral nuclear-arms negotiations at Geneva between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America were not continuing, urged the Governments of those States to resume, without delay or pre-conditions, bilateral nuclear-arms negotiations in order to achieve positive results in accordance with the security interests of all States and the universal desire for progress towards disarmament.

   By resolution 39/148 K8 of the same date, the General Assembly believed that efforts should be intensified with a view to initiating, as a matter of the highest priority, multilateral negotiations in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 50 of the Final Document of the Tenth Special Session of the General Assembly;3 and requested the Conference on Disarmament to establish an ad hoc committee at the beginning of its 1985 session to elaborate on paragraph 50 of the Final Document and to submit recommendations to the Conference as to how it could best initiate multilateral negotiations of agreements, with adequate measures of verification, in appropriate stages for: (a) cessation of the qualitative improvement and development of nuclear-weapon systems; (b) cessation of the production of all types of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, and of the production of fissionable material for weapons purposes; and (c) substantial reduction of existing nuclear weapons with a view to their ultimate elimination.

   And by resolution 39/148 E,9 also of the same date, the General Assembly reaffirmed its request to the Conference on Disarmament to start without delay negotiations within an appropriate organizational framework, with a view to concluding a convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling, deployment and use of nuclear neutron weapons as an organic element of negotiations, as envisaged in paragraph 50 of the Final Document of the Tenth Special Session.

   (ii) Non-use of nuclear weapons and prevention of nuclear war

   Although there was clear agreement that there would be no winners in a nuclear war and that such a war must never be fought, there was no agreement on appropriate and practical measures for the prevention of nuclear war. Moreover, at the thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly the belief that the two main categories of armaments, nuclear and conventional, were closely linked had been increasingly voiced, particularly by Western States. The prevailing view in the Assembly and other disarmament bodies, however, seemed to be that to focus on the non-use of nuclear weapons and prevention of nuclear war did not imply licence to use conventional weapons, and there had been certain measures that could, and should, be adopted without delay in order to reduce the nuclear threat.

   By resolution 39/148 D10 of 17 December 1984, the General Assembly, reaffirming that the nuclear-weapon States had the primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament and for undertaking measures aimed at preventing the outbreak of nuclear war, inter alia, by establishing corresponding norms regulating relations between them, and convinced that the renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons was a most important and urgent measure for the prevention of nuclear war, considered that the solemn declarations by two nuclearweapon States made or reiterated at the twelfth special session of the General Assembly, concerning their respective obligations not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, offered an important avenue to decrease the danger of nuclear war; and expressed the hope that those nuclear-weapon States that had not yet done so would consider making similar declarations with respect to not being the first to use nuclear weapons.

   And by resolution 39/63 H11 of 12 December 1984, the General Assembly, convinced that a prohibition of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons would be a step towards the...