Mr. President,

I would like to thank you for your efforts as well as that of P-6 in preparing this draft decision based on extensive consultations with the member States.

2.       My delegation also expresses its gratitude to our distinguished colleagues who have expressed willingness to serve as coordinators and help our work.

3.       I would like to put India’s position on record. India believes that it would be appropriate if these negotiations as suggested in your draft package were conducted with the objective of concluding legally-binding instruments.  Else these would remain more of discussion mandates rather than negotiating mandates,andwill take us further in the direction of transforming CD into a deliberative forum and not a negotiating forum as envisaged by SSOD1.India supports a comprehensive and balanced Programme of Work and without prejudice to the priority we attach to nuclear disarmament, we support the negotiation of an FMCT in the CD based on CD/1299 and the mandate contained therein.  Unfortunately, this does not find a mention in the draft decision despite suggestions from India and a number of other member States.

4.       The draft does not address India’s concerns. It has adopted a selective approach.  While it has replicated CD-2126 in terms of the timetable, it hasn’t followed the same approach vis-à-vis CD 2119.  The endeavor in this case has been to dilute it as much as possible instead of going in the other direction, i.e. strengthening it.

5.       We have taken note of PP2 in the document CD/W.P.626/Rev.I that the draft decision does not prejudice any past, present or future position, proposal or priority of any delegation.

Mr. President,

6.       India has always supported various efforts by the Conference over the years, to undertake substantive work based on its core mandate.  In this spirit, we had gone along with the decision in 2018 as well as had supported all constructive efforts undertaken last year by the Presidencies.  It is in this spirit of constructive cooperation that India once again will go along with your proposal and join consensus.  We hope to see the same flexibility from other delegations when it comes to consideration of negotiating mandates for legally binding instruments.

Thank you, Mr. President.