"Canada is boycotting the UN Conference on Disarmament in protest after North Korea took over the rotating presidency of the body, Foreign Minister John Baird said Monday.
"I think what we'll do is simply withdraw and boycott any activities of the conference until after August 19," Baird said. "The bottom line is, that with respect to disarmament, North Korea has been a rogue regime."
Pyongyang holds the rotating presidency of the UN body from June 28 to August 19 and has said it is ready to engage with it on nuclear arm control talks, which have been in a deadlock for the last two years.
But Canada wanted to take "a tough line," Baird said in a telephone press conference, adding it was not good for this conference "if a country like Canada just remains quiet."
"Today we are suspending our participation in the UN Conference on Disarmament," Baird said in a separate statement.
"Canada will resume its engagement in the Conference on Disarmament following the end of North Korea's presidency on August 19, 2011."
"North Korea is simply not a credible chair of this UN body. The regime is a major proliferator of nuclear weapons and its non-compliance with its disarmament obligations goes against the fundamental principles of this committee," he added.
"This undermines the integrity of both the disarmament framework and the UN. Canada will not be party to that."
Canada is the only one of the conference's 65 members to have taken such a hard line.
North Korea, which has tested two nuclear bombs, stormed out of six-nation denuclearization talks in 2009 when it accused the United States of hostility.
Pyongyang has since said it is willing to talk, but the Obama administration wants it to commit clearly to past denuclearization accords.
Asked about Canada's action, a spokeswoman for the US State Department said there were no plans for Washington to follow suit.
"We have chosen not to make a big deal out of this, because it's a relatively low-level, inconsequential event," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.
The conference is "a consensus-based organization, so nothing can be decided just because the chair is a country that we have issues with," she added....
Pakistan's lone public opposition in starting talks on the production of new nuclear bomb-making material has led to the deadlock in discussions at the Conference on Disarmament since 2009."
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AT publisher thanks Canada:
7/12/11, "North Korea chairs UN Disarmament Conference; Canada quits, US downplays," American Thinker, Thomas Lifson
"What a shameful episode for the United States. The Obama administration can get exercised over Jews adding a spare room to their houses in the West Bank, but a murderous, heartless regime that is straving its own people being honored with a UN chairmanship rates
- no outrage.
Thank-you, Canada, for showing up the real values of the Obama administration."...
via American Thinker
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