DISARMAMENT: India, Pakistan Unite against Test Ban Treaty

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 1996 (IPS) - Historic nemeses India and Pakistan have at last found common ground during this week’s U.N. debate on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.

Unfortunately for treaty supporters, the two nations are in agreement only in their right to maintain a nuclear option against each other — and thus in their mutual opposition to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

India made known its stance a month ago when it blocked consensus approval for a test ban treaty negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. But Pakistan had hinted it might sign the CTBT — until Monday night when Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said it could not do so as long as New Delhi retains its nuclear option.

“Any step of nuclear escalation in our region will find a matching response by Pakistan to safeguard our security,” Akram warned at a special U.N. General Assembly meeting to approve the CTBT. “We will not accept unilateral obligations and commitments.”

The bottom line, Akram said, is that Pakistan approves the General Assembly resolution, which adopts the CTBT and opens the text for signature. “However, in view of the concerns arising from the position and policies of our neighbour, Pakistan will not…sign the treaty as long these concerns continue to exist,’ Akram added.

India, for its part, was similarly blunt: New Delhi will refuse to sign or abide by a CTBT as long as there is no global commitment to full nuclear disarmament.

“Our security environment has obliged us to maintain the nuclear option,” argued Indian Ambassador Prakash Shah. “Countries around us continue their weapons programmes either openly or in a clandestine manner. In such an environment, we cannot permit our (nuclear) option to be constrained or eroded in any manner.”

Those two rebuffs effectively halt the CTBT from entering into force. The treaty will only take full effect after 44 nations — including the five declared nuclear states and the three nuclear ‘threshold’ states of India, Pakistan and Israel — sign the treaty.

If those countries have not adopted the CTBT within three years, the treaty proposes an international conference on how to secure its implementation. Given that two of the key states now openly refuse to sign on, a 1999 conference appears inevitable.

The CTBT enjoys massive support in the General Assembly, which will likely approve it by ahuge margin Tuesday. But its success has been effectively booby-trapped by the South Asian arms race.

“The adoption of the CTBT should herald a new dawn in the history of the quest for global nuclear disarmament,” conceded Akram. “Instead, a dark sun has appeared over the skies of South Asia.”

Although neither India nor Pakistan admits to having built nuclear weapons, each is believed to have at least a dozen warheads. India tested a nuclear device in 1974.

The third threshold state, Israel, is one of 126 co-sponsors of the Assembly resolution which was brought to the United Nations by Australia. Israel also has indicated it will sign the treaty, which will commit it — along with all other signatories — to a moratorium on nuclear testing even if India and Pakistan do not sign.

Until Monday, India’s opposition to the treaty was the last remaining hurdle. Delhi’s opposition sank the treaty’s chances for consensus approval at the Conference on Disarmament. Failure there prompted Australia to propose the treaty to the General Assembly.

Over the past two weeks, treaty backers got more than two- thirds of the General Assembly’s 185 members to sign on, more than enough to secure its approval. More important, all five declared nuclear powers –Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — have pledged to sign the treaty and thus maintain their current moratoria on testing.

“We’re on the eve of an enormous victory,” predicted Daryl Kimball, spokesman for the anti-nuclear group Physicians for Social Responsibility.

It may be a great victory in terms of votes, but, with India’s de facto ability to veto the text, it is a hollow achievement, said Ambassador Arundhati Ghose, India’s top nuclear negotiator.

“You are giving us a veto we do not want,” Ghose said of the provisions requiring India’s signing for the CTBT to take effect. “Now it won’t go into force.”

She added that the current text does not provide for an end to nuclear testing anyway. Instead it bans high-threshold test explosions.

But sub-critical nuclear explosions and computer simulations may both continue under the text, Ghose noted. Significantly, all five declared nuclear powers are capable of conducting such tests, although India and Pakistan likely are not.

Many developing nations protested that disparity at Geneva. Before India’s blocking of the consensus, 28 developing nations called for a programme of action to implement complete nuclear disarmament after the CTBT. They also wanted a ban on all nuclear testing. That inclusion reflects, Ghose argued, a clear awareness among those nations that the CTBT does not achieve that goal.

Indeed, as debate began on the CTBT Monday, even several of the countries who have promised to vote for the Australia resolution sharply criticised the treaty.

Malaysian Ambassador Razali Ismail said his country will back the resolution, but he added that non-nuclear states can be forgiven for thinking that “the nuclear states desire nothing else but the retention of the status quo.”

Richard Butler, Australia’s U.N. ambassador, conceded, “Few, if any, would not have preferred (the CTBT) to be different in some respects.” But he argued that the treaty nonetheless was the successful result of a four-decade struggle to stop nuclear testing, and should not be thrown away.

But with India and Pakistan united in their desire to stay outside the treaty’s provisions, U.N. approval and any subsequent signings may not be enough to save the treaty from oblivion.