Northeast Asia Regional Meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament

May 19, 2009
Japanese

The Northeast Asia Regional Meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament will be held on May 22 (Friday) and 23 (Saturday) in Beijing. Yoriko Kawaguchi, former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the Hon. Gareth Evans AO, former Foreign Minister of Australia, will serve as co-chairs.
The main goals of the international commission are to contribute to the success of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, as well as to offer proposals towards a world without nuclear weapons ahead of the review conference from a medium and long-term viewpoint. The Northeast Asia Regional Meeting is held separately from the commission’s main meetings to gain support in the region for the commission’s activities. At the meeting, commissioners (mainly commission chairs and members from the region) hold discussions with government-affiliated and civilian experts from the Northeast Asia region about the regional issues in the area of nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy that the commission is dealing with.
Kuniko Inoguchi, member of the Diet of Japan (Acting Secretary General, the Parliamentarian League of International Disarmament Promotion); Nobuyasu Abe, Director of the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (Advisory Board member); Shunsuke Kondo, Chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (Advisory Board member); Tetsuya Endo, former Vice-Chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission; Fumihiko Yoshida, editorial writer for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper; and Nobumasa Akiyama, Hitotsubashi University Associate Professor, will attend the commission as experts from Japan in their individual capacities.
Along with Australia, the Government of Japan plans to continue to offer its support to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament as sponsor, so that the commission can present a path to a peaceful world without nuclear weapons and methods to maintain and strengthen systems for international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation based on the NPT.

(Reference) The International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament
At the Japan-Australia Summit in July 2008, then-Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd agreed to establish the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament as a joint initiative between Japan and Australia, and former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan Yoriko Kawaguchi and former Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans were appointed as co-chairs. The commission deals with the issues of nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and the peaceful use of nuclear power. It will also issue a report including specific recommendations ahead of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that will be held in May 2010. Four meetings will be held before the report is presented. The first was held in Sydney from October 20-21, 2008, and the second was held in Washington, DC from February 14-15, 2009. The third will be held in June in Moscow, and the fourth in Japan (Hiroshima) in October. In addition, the Latin American Regional Meeting was held in May 2009 in Santiago. Other planned regional meetings include Northeast Asia, South Asia (September in Delhi), and Central Asia (September-October in Cairo).

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