The seminar entitled “Building a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East” was cosponsored by the League of Arab States and UNIDIR and held Cairo. It explored the prospect for a WMDFZ in the Middle East, while looking at other regional experiences. UNIDIR published an edited collection of the papers presented at the conference. Conference presentations reviewed the proliferation problem in the region and the history of NWFZ and WMDFZ proposals for the region. Of note is Mohammed Kadry Said’s presentation from the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, which outlined a three-phase plan for establishing such a zone. Said proposed an initial phase of confidence- and security-building measures coupled with a “no-first-use” pledge, a second phase of verified capping of existing WMD stocks and a freeze on the production of fissile materials, and a third phase of establishing the WMDFZ itself through the phased elimination of WMD stockpiles and final elimination.

Cover of the report from the joint UNIDIR-LAS conference.