A tough talking John Baird said Monday that Canada alone is boycotting the UN Conference on Disarmament to protest against North Korea chairing the hearings.

“North Korea chairing a UN agency on disarmament is absurd,” the foreign affairs minister told reporters.

“It puts one of the world’s worst offenders in the chair, it hurts the credibility of the United Nations and it is a blow to any meaningful efforts at disarmament,” said Baird, adding the boycott would be lifted Aug. 19 with the rotation of the 65 members.

A Liberal critic said it was just another example of partisan ideology driving Canada’s foreign affairs.

Baird said Canada’s Conservative government would no longer “go along to get along,” and added Canada will be calling for an end to the practice of routinely rotating chairs to avoid this happening again. Chairmanship is rotated three times a year.

“The regime is a major proliferator of nuclear weapons and its non-compliance with its disarmament obligations goes against the fundamental principles of this committee. North Korea’s chairmanship undermines the integrity of both disarmament framework and of the United Nations and Canada simply will not support that,” Baird said.

“It’s one thing to have them in the tent, it’s another thing having them not just at the front row of the tent but chairing the meeting in the tent,” he said.

In stark contrast, Canada’s permanent representative to the UN office in Geneva, Marius Grinius, congratulated the North Koreans when they took over. Baird refused to answer questions on Grinius’ actions.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said Canada’s boycott will be ineffective since the disarmament conference has been essentially deadlocked for a dozen years.

“Canada’s boycott is admirable but it alone is not going to make a difference. I would encourage the Canadian government to use this boycott as an opportunity to press for action (on stopping productions of bomb-grade nuclear materials) outside of the Conference on Disarmament,” Kimball told the Toronto Star.

Liberal critic MP Dominic LeBlanc said by withdrawing from the disarmament conference the federal government was abdicating its responsibility to be heard on nuclear non-proliferation.

“The government's refusal to attend the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament is just another example of Stephen Harper’s failed ideological approach to foreign affairs,” he said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday the U.S. did not consider North Korea’s involvement to be a big deal.

“We have chosen not to make a big deal out of this because it’s a relatively low-level, inconsequential event,” she said.

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Also Monday, Baird dismissed the Palestinian campaign to win recognition at the UN in a September vote as a public-relations move.

“We believe in a two-state solution … that the establishment of the Palestinian state be negotiated with the Israeli government. We think it is distinctly unhelpful to seek a public relations declaration within the UN General Assembly. Obviously it would be without any meaning. That would only be done by the Security Council and we believe that statehood should be the product of a negotiated permanent peace,” he said.

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