Speaking on behalf of Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) members, Nassir Abdulaziz Al Nasser, Qatar’s ambassador to the UN, said leaders from the six-nation body were tackling the proliferation of deadly arms.
GCC members are "continuously coordinating among themselves to strengthen regional cooperation in the field of disarmament, including tightening export controls and bolstering the capacity of border control in the region," said Al Nasser.
Gulf officials have clamped down on the illegal trade in guns and other light weapons, passing laws to criminalise the activities of crooked dealers and stepping up crime-busting efforts.
The envoy also urged all UN members to reinvigorate efforts to dismantle nuclear weapons and continue a global disarmament project that has effectively ground to a halt.
"The only secure safety valve that prevents terrorists from getting hold of weapons of mass destruction lays in the complete elimination of the stockpiles of those weapons and stopping manufacturing them," he said. The diplomat reiterated calls to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapon free zone and urged Israel sign a universal non-proliferation treaty in advance of a global review conference in 2010.
"The GCC supports the basic principles and guidelines on the verification of establishing nuclear-weapon free zones," said the envoy.
"The GCC member states are therefore convinced that Israel’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons would contribute to preserving the credibility of the disarmament machinery and its multilateralism and enhance the confidence necessary to find many solutions to the problems of the Middle East."
Members of the General Assembly’s committee on global security and disarmament will decide upon two draft resolutions.
An Egypt-backed draft resolution calls for a Middle East nuclear free zone by which governments "declare solemnly that they will refrain, on a reciprocal basis, from producing, acquiring or in any other way possessing nuclear weapons".
A second draft resolution sponsored by Qatar and other league members highlights the "threats posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons to the security and stability of the Middle East".
Both draft resolutions are acknowledged to highlight Israel, which is widely understood to have a nuclear arsenal as well as being the only country in the region that has not signed up to the universal Non-Proliferation Treaty.
