S/2021/400 Security Council

In accordance with the procedure agreed upon by the members of the Security Council in the light of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the coronavirus disease pandemic, as set out in the letter dated 27 March 2020 from the President of the Security Council addressed to the members of the Council (S/2020/253), I would like to draw your attention to the following. The members of the Council have discussed a draft resolution, submitted by Mexico, in connection with the agenda item “Non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”. That draft resolution, contained in document S/2021/388 and enclosed herein, has been put into blue. In my capacity as President of the Security Council, I hereby put the above- mentioned draft resolution to a vote. The non-extendable 24-hour voting period for this draft resolution will begin at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, 21 April 2021. The non- extendable 24-hour voting period will expire at 4 p.m. on Thursday, 22 April 2021. Please submit your vote (in favour, against or abstain) on the draft resolution, as well as your possible explanation of vote, by sending the Director of the Security Council Affairs Division of the Secretariat (egian@un.org) a letter signed by the Permanent Representative or Chargé d’affaires a.i. within the non-extendable 24- hour voting period set out above. It is my intention to circulate a letter listing the outcome of the vote within three hours of the conclusion of the 24-hour voting period. I also intend to convene a video-teleconference of the Security Council to announce the outcome of the vote shortly after the conclusion of the voting period, on the afternoon of Thursday, 22 April 2021. (Signed) Dang Dinh Quy President of the Security Council

The Russian Federation attaches great importance to resolution 1540 (2004) as one of the global instruments in the field of non-proliferation. We are interested in all the provisions of the resolution being implemented fully and consistently by all States. That goal can be achieved only by closely interacting with each other in a spirit of cooperation, without imposing national priorities and values. The Committee established pursuant to resolution 1540 (2004), where mutual understanding and respect for other opinions have always prevailed, has an important role to play in that effort. We were somewhat surprised that the decision on the purely technical issue of the extension of the 1540 Committee’s mandate took several months. Despite the fact that there was more than enough time to prepare resolution 2572 (2021), the preparation of the draft text was carried out under strict time pressure. We regret to note that not all the concerns expressed by the Russian delegation during the work on the draft resolution were taken into account. In particular, the Security Council’s endorsement of the Committee’s work carried out in the context of the comprehensive review of resolution 1540 (2004), included in the preambular part of the resolution, is considered premature. We see that as a kind of advance tribute to the subsidiary body, which it still has to work on. We hope that the compromise reached will finally allow the Committee to focus on fulfilling its main task for now — to conduct a comprehensive review of the implementation of resolution 1540 (2004) within the established time frame and to develop, based on its results, a new long-term mandate for this subsidiary body of the Security Council. We are convinced that the Chairperson of the Committee has a key role to play in ensuring the success of the review process. We call on the Mexican chairmanship to organize its work as effectively as possible under the sanitary and epidemiological constraints.