MOSCOW, October 9 (Itar-Tass) - Russia together with China plans to submit a new draft resolution on transparency and confidence building in outer space to the United Nations for consideration, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department and Russia’s envoy to the First Committee of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly, Mikhail Ulyanov, said on Wednesday.
“The lack of a legally binding ban on the deployment of weapons in outer space is the factor that affects strategic stability and aggravates transition to new agreements on nuclear weapons,” Ulyanov said. “The Russian-Chinese draft treaty designed to fill in the gap has been shelved at the Geneva Disarmament Conference for a long while and unfortunately, no progress has been made so far.”
“The task of preventing the arms race in outer space become even more pressing from year to year,” he said. “From a technological point of view the probability of deploying weapons in outer space is steadily growing. The lack of consensus on the launch of negotiations on the Russian-Chinese draft treaty proves that some capitals may not have relevant plans, but they at least have intentions to keep a free hand.”
“Intermediate steps towards keeping outer space peaceful become even more important,” Ulyanov said. “We first of all mean the results of the work by the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures in Outer Space Activities. We express our gratitude to all governmental experts for constructive support for Russia’s presidency of this group. Our joint efforts helped adopt a substantive consensus-based report submitted to the UN General Assembly’s current session for consideration.”
“Russia together with China plan to submit a new draft of the traditional resolution on transparency and confidence building in outer space,” he said. “We invite all interested states to co-author it and hope for a consensus-based approval of the draft.”