Having said that, I might point to my visit to Annex 2 country Viet Nam towards the end of 2005. That was after other visits by several Foreign Ministers and former Executive Secretary Wolfgang Hoffmann. These all prepared the ground. My own visit was very thorough. There were meetings at the political level and with the Parliament. I met with the relevant interdepartmental working group tasked with preparing ratification, etc., sent documentation, kept in touch and followed up in New York. I also requested a number of other ambassadors to stay in touch with Viet Nam. Together, all these efforts brought about the very welcome decision by Viet Nam to deposit its instrument of ratification six months later, in March of 2006.

There were at least six or seven other countries where I spoke with members of their governments and, in all cases, it helped. In fact, I’m not surprised to see that they have meanwhile ratified the Treaty because, often, when they explained their particular problem to me, I was able to help. A kind of “advance trouble-shooting”.

In other countries, it was not my doing; they were already in the process. The Executive Secretary may have been in contact with them or they were hosting an IMS station and valued the technical assistance. In one instance, the country promised to ratify within a month. The month went by and nothing happened, but after six months, they ratified. And that’s the main thing.

Q: Amongst the  so-called “hold-out” Annex 2 countries, whose ratification is mandatory for the Treaty to enter into force, which one(s) do you think are farthest from taking this critical step and why?

Farthest away are undoubtedly those three States that have not yet signed the Treaty – the DPRK, India and Pakistan. Here much remains to be done. Why? In the case of India, it rejects the concept of the Treaty as such, though it has promised “not to stand in the way” of its entry into force. Pakistan's position is linked to what India eventually decides to do. The Six Party Talks to solve the issues around the DPRK’s nuclear, and nuclear weapons, programme is ongoing. Once these issues have been solved, there would be no obstacle to prevent the DPRK from ratifying the Treaty.