The United Nations Disarmament Yearbook 1993, vol. 18. - book reviews

UN Chronicle, June, 1994 by Harold Fruchtbaum

UN Centre for Disarmament Affairs, New York United Nations Publications, 1994 419 pp. $50. Sales No, E.94.IX.1 ISBN 92-1-142204-3

The timely appearance of the concise and well-written Disarmament Yearbook, with its texts of General Assembly resolutions and appendices of documents, is always welcome. "During 1993", the Yearbook states, "although threats to international peace were posed by ethnic strife and militant nationalism and fundamentalism, they did not prevent further progress towards disarmament". The United States and the Russian Federation, for example, reduced their inventories of mass destruction nuclear weapons. A de facto moratorium on nuclear testing continued, and substantive negotiations began this year to conclude a comprehensive test-ban treaty. The Yearbook also cites progress in other areas such as nuclear arms limitation, transparency, and the prohibition of biological and chemical weapons. Considerable activity centred on the use of land mines and other weapons considered excessively injurious or indiscriminate in their effects. Nevertheless, problems like threats to the non-proliferation treaty remain. In its review of developments and trends, the indispensable Yearbook does not avoid these.