On finally agreeing to admit Ireland and four others as new members last week, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva seemed to surprise itself. The assembled ambassadors even broke into spontaneous applause, though that might have been from relief, since this is the first good decision they have managed to take in months of wrangling.
The decision was a long time coming. Ireland first applied in 1982, but missed out when 23 countries were admitted as part of a package three years ago. Last September the conference was poised to bring in five countries: Ecuador, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Tunisia.
But at the last minute Iran balked, annoyed because Ireland had criticised its human rights record. By the time Iran was persuaded not to veto the decision - which by conference rules must be by consensus - Pakistan and then India had found reasons to prevaricate.
They appeared to want to use their veto power to punish the applicants for joining in a UN resolution condemning India and Pakistan's nuclear tests. Months of delicate diplomacy, led by Ireland's Ambassador in Geneva, Ms Anne Anderson, has now paid off, as the last spurious objection was finally cleared out of the way.
The Conference on Disarmament, which now has 66 members, is the formal negotiating body for disarmament and arms control treaties under the UN system. It was formed to give a role in negotiations not only to countries possessing chemical or nuclear weapons (or whatever), but also to countries which had chosen not to develop certain kinds of weaponry, and who therefore had an even greater interest in getting them banned.
In 1992 the conference concluded the Chemical Weapons Convention and went on to negotiate the comprehensive test ban treaty, which was finalised and signed in 1996.
Since then, however, it had done nothing but argue in circles about what the next steps should be. In 1995 the members agreed to work on banning the production of plutonium and enriched uranium used for making nuclear bombs, but four years later the conference has still not got started. Some countries want it to work more specifically on nuclear disarmament, but the weapons states resist.
In the wake of US plans to develop missile defence systems, China is now pushing hard for the Conference on Disarmament to address the dangers posed by nuclear weapons or targeting systems in outer space. Faced with the need to get consensus agreement on a work programme which includes is sues of different levels of priority for certain key countries, the Conference on Disarmament has ended up paralysed.
Even Ms Anderson acknowledged that she would have preferred to join when the conference was demonstrating more purpose and effectiveness. "We have been asked - and have asked ourselves - why we still want to join," she commented, calling Ireland's determination to become a member an "act of faith in the CD's future".
This is a particularly important time for a country such as Ireland to be playing a full part in international talks on arms control, especially nuclear disarmament. After the initial optimism of the end of the Cold War, international security and arms control have taken a tumble.
Relations between the US and Russia and between the US and China have been deteriorating.
The talks to reduce strategic nuclear weapons (START 2) have been at a standstill for several years, leaving the US and Russia with more than 20,000 nuclear weapons between them. None of these three governments has ratified the test ban treaty, although Britain and France have done so. India and Pakistan have not even signed the test ban, though they promised to do so as a result of diplomatic initiatives and sanctions following their nuclear explosions last year.
Russia, worried by the weakness of its armed forces compared with NATO, is now talking about increasing its reliance on nuclear weapons and is looking at maybe developing a new, more usable, tactical nuclear system. Britain and France have reduced their nuclear arsenals, which nevertheless still number in the hundreds, but neither shows signs of wanting to give up the status they think the weapons give them.
NATO, despite its overwhelming superiority in conventional forces has recently reiterated that nuclear deterrence is the cornerstone of its strategy, including retaining the option to use nuclear weapons first.
In addition to India, Pakistan and Israel, which already have them, there are several wannabes eager to join the nuclear club: Iraq, North Korea, maybe Iran and Saudi Arabia. Unless the world wakes up to the fact that the end of the Cold War has not solved the nuclear arms race, there could soon be many more.
Ireland was one of the first countries to try to do something about nuclear weapons in the 1950s, and is justly regarded as the mother of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In June 1998 Ireland again took the lead. Together with the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa and Sweden, David Andrews launched an initiative for a "new agenda" to achieve a nuclear weapons free world.
The Dublin Declaration, as it came to be known, sketched a number of actions which would reduce nuclear threats and facilitate further progress towards abolishing nuclear weapons. The declaration was turned into a UN resolution, which fleshed the ideas out further, proposing a multi-stranded approach, including steps that could be taken unilaterally (by the individual weapon states), among just the five major nuclear possessors, and/or in partnership with the wider international community.
After a long and heated debate which pitted NATO members against one another, the UN General Assembly endorsed the "new agenda resolution" by 114 votes to 18. Stuck in the mire of old, Cold War alliances and thinking, the Conference on Disarmament desperately needs some fresh approaches on disarmament and security.
In addition to its concrete and pragmatic proposals, the importance of the Dublin Declaration was in forging a coalition of European, African, Asian and Latin-American states, including some, like South Africa and Brazil, which once had formidable nuclear weapon programmes but chose to give them up.
Ireland will not be able single-handedly to transform the creaky machinery and culture of the UN's main negotiating body on weapons issues, but Ireland's new membership will add strength and weight to the voices calling for much more to be accomplished.
Rebecca Johnson is executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.