Co-Presidents,

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

At the outset, I wish to congratulate Minister Erlan Idrissov of Kazakhstan and Fumio Kishida of Japan for your election as co-Presidents of this session of the CTBT Article Fourteen Conference. As coordinators of Article 14, you are vested with demanding yet important tasks to promote further our long-standing endeavours of facilitating entry into force of the CTBT.

Nearly twenty years have passed since the CTBT has been open for signature and yet again we are convening here today for this conference on the facilitation of the entry into force of the Treaty.

For Mongolia, universalization of the treaty signifies as an imperative step towards disarming the world from nuclear weapons. It is a matter of priority for each and every State to continue their efforts to promote prompt ratification by Annex 2 states.

The Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) has fulfilled all necessary requirements to a full-scale testing phase for International Data Centre (IDC) known as the P5b of the IDC Progressive Commissioning Plan, allowing the Organization to act under its mandate as soon as the treaty enters into force. So, Provisional Technical Secretariat is moving forward with necessary infrastructural development for the verification regime. Now, the States Parties’ responsibility to demonstrate real actions on their parts.

This year we are commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Word War II and also the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is a constant and horrific reminder for us to ban all types of weapons of mass destruction, namely the nuclear ones.

Mongolia has always supported and made every effort to promote the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. As a party to the NPT and CTBT, Mongolia strongly supports the establishment of nuclear weapon free zones around the world, including one in the Middle East.

In the same spirit, we share the view that the North East Asia should also be free of nuclear weapons. It is well known that Mongolia, on its part, declared its territory a nuclear-weapon-free zone back in 1992 and ratified the CTBT in 1997. 

Like all other member states, we note with regret that despite all the efforts, the 2015 NPT Review Conference came short of reaching consensus on the substantive part of its draft Final Document. Nevertheless, this also should not prevail us from uniting as one community to promote common peace and security and thus should not prolong the universalization of the CTBT. In fact, it merely signifies that even greater perseverance of efforts required from each and every States.

Mongolia welcomes the historic agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached between EU+3 and the Islamic Republic of Iran on 14 July 2015, and believes that its successful implementation would provide the international community with necessary assurances in building confidence in the region. With this major step forward, I believe that we are not far from making another important step towards the entry into force of the treaty.

With this brief remark, Mongolia welcomes the Final Declaration and Measures to Promote the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty to be adopted from this session.