Mr. Executive Secretary,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary to Budapest and thank you for accepting the invitation to attend the Experts’ Meeting on Civil and Scientific Applications of the CTBT Verification Technologies. We highly appreciate that a great number of well-known technical experts and academicians from various regions of the world will participate in the important deliberations during the next to days which bodes well for its successful outcome. We thank the Executive Secretary and the dedicated staff of the Provisional Technical Secretariat for their thorough preparatory work.

Hungary is a long-standing advocate of the concept of the civil and scientific applications of the CTBT verification technologies. The first meeting on this subject was hosted by us in September 2003 in Sopron, in the vicinity of the headquarters of the CTBTO. My Government decided to support the organization of a second event of this kind with the aim of facilitating the further review of the issues at hand and promote their deeper understanding. The political environment, influencing the attitude of several states towards this question has undergone significant and favorable changes since the Sopron meeting. States signatories of the CTBT are more strongly committed to consider ways to ensure that civil and scientific benefits of the Treaty’s verification system be broadly shared by the international community.

This Experts’ Meeting coincides with the 10^th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Treaty and its opening for signature. May I take this opportunity, Mr. Executive Secretary, to congratulate you and your staff on the 10th anniversary of the CTBT and the establishment of the Preparatory Commission. The Scientific Symposium dedicated to this jubilee held for the last two days in Vienna met the expectations and served well the objective of fostering increased interaction between the scientific community, the Preparatory Commission and States signatories.

The achievements of the CTBTO for the last 10 years are inseparable from the personal contribution of its first Executive Secretary, Ambassador Wolfgang Hoffmann who had steered its work during the difficult first phase of the building up of the verification regime. I am pleased to announce that in the recognition of his outstanding performance at the helm of the organization, the President of the Republic of Hungary, Mr. László Sólyom decided to award Ambassador Hoffmann, Executive Secretary Emeritus the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. The order will be handed over to him in the coming days.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The CTBT was the result of several years of intensive negotiations in the Geneva Conference on Disarmament. The completion of these talks in 1996 demonstrated that the international community was able to seize the window of opportunity which opened up after the end of the Cold War. A decades-long objective of the multilateral arms control efforts was achieved: The Treaty established the universal norm of banning nuclear test explosions in all spheres. It constitutes an effective measure of both nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Over the 10 years since the opening for signature of the Treaty, fundamental changes in the international security environment have taken place. New grave challenges and threats have emerged, and the multilateral system designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been put to serious test. The risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into hands of terrorists also added to the urgency of strengthening the international mechanism of halting and reversing these alarming processes. The current state of world affairs only reinforces our conviction that the CTBT is among those major multilateral legal instruments that provide the basic framework to promote the longstanding disarmament and non-proliferation goals of the international community.

Hungary takes its share of responsibility in helping the Treaty to bring all its security benefits and actively promotes its entry into force. My country is listed among the Annex 2 states whose ratification is required for the Treaty to take effect. With a view to facilitate this process and in line with our security policy aspirations, Hungary decided to sign the CTBT among the first and ratify it in July 1999. While expressing our concerns about the delay in the entry into force, we also welcome positive developments which have brought us closer to achieving this goal. The fact that the number of signatures has reached 176 and that of ratifications 135, reflects that the legal norm of banning all nuclear test explosions enjoys near-universal support. Hungary joins the call on those States which have not done so, especially those listed in Annex 2, to ratify the Treaty without delay and without preconditions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO, as a full-fledged international organization and its Provisional Secretariat in particular has played an important role in building up the Treaty’s International Monitoring System (IMS) and the International Data Center (IDC).. The On-Site Inspection (OSI) component of the verification regime is also making strides in meeting the Treaty requirements. We believe that it is essential to maintain this momentum of building and making operational all elements of the verification regime and to provide a realistic prospect that an effective verification regime will be in place by the time of the entry into force.

After its completion the verification system will be unprecedented in its global coverage as well as in the unique combination and configuration of the Treaty’s four verification technologies. We fully recognize that the primary purpose of this mechanism is to monitor activities prohibited under the CTBT and provide assurances against any violations of its basic provisions. Notwithstanding this, we also wish to stress the importance of exploring and developing the potential civil and scientific applications of the monitoring regime. We are deeply convinced that the verification technologies, beside their basic functions, can also demonstrate benefits in a number of areas, such as environment, earth science and technology and disaster alert system. Civil and scientific applications, if broadly shared by members of the international community, will make it more attractive for many States to sign and ratify the Treaty, and will thus promote its universality.

The devastating tsunami on 26 December 2004 as well as recent tragic natural events in Asia have underscored the need and urgency of putting certain components of the IMS to the service of disaster warning. The decision of the Preparatory Commission in March 2005 to consider how data and products provided by the IMS through the IDC could usefully contribute to such early alert systems, marked the beginning of an important technical and legal work. Hungary has followed carefully the developments in this field, especially the unfolding promising interaction of the PTS with recognized tsunami warning centers and National Data Centers (NDC). This exercise has clearly proved the usefulness of forwarding continuous seismic and hydroacustic data from the PTS to the above-mentioned institutions. Hungary believes that the time is ripe to move from this testing phase to more permanent arrangements. We are confident that with the necessary political will States signatories can agree at the November 2006 session of the Preparatory Commission on the modalities of such a mechanism, including confidentiality safeguards. Recent discussions in the framework of the CTBTO have clearly demonstrated a wide support for IMS participation in international tsunami warning, and the particular interest of countries affected by such disasters, in a speedy solution of this issue.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

When preparing a more tangible involvement of the Preparatory Commission in disaster warning, due attention should be paid to development of the necessary expertise and knowledge management. Hungary therefore welcomes and supports the initiative of the PTS to broaden its training and capacity building activities through a new e-learning project. The implementation of this initiative will also contribute to enhancing the operational performance of the verification regime and to improving the capacity of States signatories to fulfill their verification responsibilities. In this context I wish to recall that the e-learning initiative of the PTS is benefiting from a substantial voluntary contribution of the European Union in the form of a Joint Action under which the CTBTO will receive financial support of more than 1,1 Million Euros. We hope that the present Experts’ Meeting will be instrumental in introducing and bringing forward the e-learning initiative of the PTS.

Mr. Executive Secretary,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In conclusion I wish to all of you a successful continuation of the review of civil and scientific application of the CTBT verification technologies. I am confident that your deliberations will provide States signatories with additional ideas and facilitate further discussions in different bodies of the Preparatory Commission. I also hope that you will not miss this opportunity to learn more about my country and its capital. I wish you a pleasant and fruitful stay in Budapest.

Thank you.