The appeal came to the conference at its plenary session from Leonid Skotnikov and Hu Shaodi, respective Russian and Chinese permanent representatives at the United Nations HQ in Geneva.
"We can only regret that the Disarmament Conference has not yet come to a compromise on its action program, and has not resumed the activities of the special committee for the prevention of arms race in space," said Skotnikov.
Russia and China have long been calling Conference member countries to elaborate, within its framework, a legally binding international instrument to prohibit arms basing in space.
They repeatedly offered to the Conference for consideration working documents to fill in gaps in the international space law. Meanwhile, this legislation makes no essential ban on R&D for, and deployment of anti-satellite weaponry, as well as development of anti-missile defense systems or their space-based components.
Today, Russia and China came up with another such document, which concerns legal aspects of the issue.
The document offers practical initiatives on the tentative definitions of such terms as "space", "space object" and [space-based] arms".
"Just as previous Russo-Chinese documents, this is largely an invitation for creative team efforts," Skotnikov said.
No arms are basing in space for today. However, an U.S. program for a national missile defense system, whose start President George Bush announced in 2001, envisages an opportunity to use the entire range of weaponry, space-based systems included, to fight ballistic missiles.
Russia and China called the 65 Disarmament Conference countries, as early as 2002, to draft a treaty on Star War prevention.
The United States' stance on the problem remains vague to this day. As the USA said several years ago, it does not recognize the Star War danger-the problem belongs to too distant a future to open related negotiations now.
