DISARMAMENT: Nuclear Powers Could Bring CTBT to UN Assembly

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 1996 (IPS) - The world’s nuclear powers, stung by India’s objections to a nuclear test ban treaty, are considering options to bring that treaty to the United Nations without an international consensus, analysts believe.

Supporters of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) say they still are trying to secure New Delhi’s support for the measure, which is being negotiated by the 61-member Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. But with time running out, the five declared nuclear powers – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – may decide to push the measure themselves, whether the Conference approves it or not!

“If India is serious about blocking the treaty, there are alternative routes,” says Craig Cerniello, senior research analyst at the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

In particular, he says, the five declared powers — who are also the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — could present the most recent agreed text of the CTBT, drafted Jun 28, to the U.N. General Assembly directly.

“One option is for ‘the friends of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,’ including the United States, to forward the June 28 draft (of the CTBT) to the United Nations and open it up for signatures,” says Daryl Kimball, associate director for policy for Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“The idea would be to gain as much support for the resolution as possible,” Kimball says. But the danger is that taking such a route would lack credibility if consensus could not be reached at Geneva despite two years of negotiations, he warns.

That is a main consideration among U.N. diplomats, who all deny in public that the CTBT will come to the General Assembly until it is first approved by the Conference on Disarmament. But, as one ambassador here notes pointedly, “Time has become a factor now.”

Sources at the United Nations contend that, if India and other critics of the current treaty do not come on board by the end of this week, the five declared nuclear powers will begin to work on other options to bring the treaty up for approval here.

Ideally, all member states want the Conference on Disarmament to decide the CTBT’s fate but the Conference, which operates by consensus, has been stalled by India’s opposition. In addition to objecting to the lack of any timetable in the CTBT for nuclear disarmament, India now threatens to block the measure outright if it includes a provision to prod certain nations to sign it within three years.

India – which, along with Pakistan and Israel, is believed to be a “threshold” state with nuclear capability – is one of 44 nations which, under the terms of the CTBT, must sign the treaty within three years. If those countries do not do so, the treaty suggests that countries adopt “measures consistent within international law” to prod them into acceptance.

India argues such language, which could pave the way for sanctions or other punitive measures, infringes national sovereignty. Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, claims it accepts the language requiring threshold states to sign, but refuses nonetheless to sign the treaty unless India also does so.

As a result, hopes for securing a consensus on the CTBT dropped sharply this week. “I believe we’re looking at less than a 50-50 chance right now of the conference reaching a consensus on the treaty text,” Kimball says.

Yet recent days have seen some surprises, with China — the only declared power to hold out against some CTBT language — swinging its support behind the treaty and Iran seeming ready to back away from a separate dispute with Israel.

Beijing was mollified this week by an agreement requiring substantial international support before any on-site inspection of nuclear test sites can be taken. Thirty member states of a proposed 51-nation Executive Committee on nuclear testing would have to agree to on-site inspection before it could be carried out, delegates in Geneva agreed.

“Having China on board is very significant, since, for the first time, you have the (declared nuclear powers) unified,” Cerniello says. With that unity, he contends, the chances for passage of the CTBT at the United Nations are enhanced.

Similarly, a standoff with Iran seemed to recede by week’s end when Ambassador Jaap Ramaker of Finland, who chairs the talks, assured Teheran that the classification of Israel within the CTBT as a “Middle Eastern state” has no larger political significance. Iran objected when Israel received a spot on the 51- state Executive Committee as a nation from the Middle East, rather than as a member of the Western nations. But Ramaker argued that the classification of nations in the treaty is “CTBT-specific … (and intended) merely to define regions in geographic terms.”

The India hold-out is a larger and more intractable problem, however, since it is based on a fear common to many developing nations: that the treaty favours existing nuclear states.

At least 29 nations from the developing world still express concerns about failings in the nuclear treaty. Most of them, including threshold states India and Pakistan, object to the lack of a commitment to disarmament; many also worry that the talks so far have been skewed in favour of the “big five” powers.

“The text that has emerged is not entirely the product of negotiations,” Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram complained in Geneva. Ramaker has in fact developed his own language to steer the talks past snags between the nuclear haves and have-nots. But the compromise text has not pleased everyone, with Iranian Ambassador Sirous Nasseri complanning, “Talks on some key issues became confined exclusively to very few states.”

Kimball argues that, to alleviate such worries, the nuclear powers should address a few of the critics’ concerns, most notably by establishing an ad hoc committee on nuclear disarmament. Such a move, he says, “could be the type of measure that would help persuade India not to block.” But he adds he doubts the big five

are willing to take that step now.