Of course getting negotiations underway is the easy part. Important national interests are at stake. Complex technical issues will not easily be solved. We urge all states to negotiate in good faith with an eye toward completing these negotiations in a timely manner. We believe that can be done.
Nuclear weapons occupy the bulk of our attention.
But we also have vitally important work ahead on other weapons of mass destruction and means of delivery and on especially destructive conventional arms. We must devote ourselves to fully implementing prohibitions on biological and chemical weapons. That means completing next year the work of the BWC Ad Hoc Group on a compliance protocol. It also means destroying existing stocks of chemical weapons under the CWC's regime. We must do all we can to ensure that these weapons, which humanity rightly considers particularly repulsive, do not proliferate further and are not available for terrorist use.