Foreign Minister John Baird said Friday Canada will return to UN disarmament talks following the end of North Korea's presidency of the Conference on Disarmament.

Canada withdrew from the talks on July 28 in protest of North Korea's chairing of the conference.

"In July, I announced our government's decision to suspend its engagement in the Conference on Disarmament for the duration of North Koreas presidency, which ended today, August 19, 2011," Baird said.

"As a major nuclear proliferator, North Korea completely lacks credibility to serve as president of a forum dedicated to advancing disarmament," he explained.

The UN Conference on Disarmament was created in 1979 as the world's main forum for negotiating disarmament treaties and arms control measures, but has not achieved any meaningful results of late.

Chairmanship of the Geneva-based meetings is rotated alphabetically among the 65 participating states.

Canada has said it would push for a new way of selection a chair to keep countries such as North Korea and Iran that have snubbed international efforts to curb their nuclear ambitions from chairing the conference.

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