DISARMAMENT: Pakistan Ready to Sign Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 1998 (IPS) - Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is ready to sign the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and abandon any further nuclear tests, U.N. and Pakistani officials said Tuesday.

Following a meeting Monday between Sharif and U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger confirmed that Pakistan is ready to make a “positive statement” about the CTBT shortly, although he gave no further details.

Pakistan has refused to sign the CTBT until its nemesis, India, also signed and both nations raised fears of nuclear escalation in South Asia when they conducted nuclear test explosions in May.

Sharif, however, was expected to announce that Islamabad will support an end to nuclear test explosions when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday afternoon, according to sources here.

“We will be pleased if Pakistan accepts the CTBT,” Berger said. “It will be a very good thing for Pakistan to do it first and take the high moral ground.”

In recent weeks, Pakistani officials have hinted at a softer stance on nuclear testing, dropping their previous insistence that India must also sign the CTBT for their government to do so. Instead, Pakistani diplomats have emphasised that any progress on the CTBT must include the dropping of “coercive” measures, including economic sanctions which the United States slapped on both India and Pakistan following their nuclear tests.

Pakistan, which has been gripped by a severe economic crisis, including the depletion of its foreign exchange and a worsening stock market, is ill-equipped to deal for a long time with any U.S. sanctions. The economic pressures on the Sharif government were openly discussed when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Strobe Talbott visited Islamabad last month. Both sides reportedly talked in private about the necessary conditions for Pakistan to sign on to the CTBT.

Despite these discussions, Pakistani officials consistently denied that they are under any pressure to sign the pact quickly. “We are facing no deadlines,” Communications Minister Mushahid Hussein said last week. “We have until next year to sign.”

The treaty, which would ban all nuclear test explosions, was opened for signature after the General Assembly approved it in September 1996. Under the treaty’s strict terms, it must be ratified by all 44 nations deemed to have potential nuclear capability – including the five declared nuclear powers as well as the three “probable” nuclear states of India, Pakistan and Israel – by September 1999 if it is to take effect.

At the time that the treaty was opened for signature, its prospects were dim, particularly after India took a hard-line stance against signing. “We will not sign, and the treaty will never take effect,” India’s U.N. negotiator on arms control in Geneva, Arundhati Ghose, said at the time.

Yet the nuclear tests in South Asia, by raising the stakes for proliferation in the subcontinent, may actually have helped to strengthen the CTBT’s chances by increasing the pressure on Islamabad and New Delhi. If Pakistan signs on – and ratification by Sharif’s Muslim League-dominated Parliament follows – India and North Korea are likely to be the only remaining hurdles to obtaining the 44 necessary ratifications, said Jim Wurst, a journalist specialising in disarmament issues.

Any signing of the CTBT by Pakistan, Wurst said, would “give test ban supporters in the United States an extra boost”, since Washington has cited worries about India and Pakistan in explaining its own hesitation on signing. He added that it could also help to avoid the one thing some diplomats feared next year: the prospect that recalcitrant countries would be subjected to immense coercion by the treaty’s backers before the September deadline.

The question remains: What price will be exacted before the two South Asian states agree to a test ban?

Pakistani officials clearly want the United States and United Nations to take a more active role in mediating the crisis in Kashmir – a topic discussed by Sharif and Clinton Monday, but one on which India rejects any outside intervention. Islamabad also wants U.S. amendments which condition military sales and most aid on Pakistan’s certification as a non-nuclear state – now impossible, given the May tests – to be dropped.

Indian officials, for their part, reportedly told Talbott in August that if New Delhi were to sign the CTBT, it should be granted a permanent membership in the currently 15-nation Security Council. (The current five permanent members – China, Britain, France, Russia and the United States – also are the world’s five declared nuclear powers.)

There is no sign that Washington is willing or even able to deliver such rewards, and U.S. officials denied that they would offer anything in exchange for Pakistan’s signing of the CTBT. Wurst, however, noted that since any signing would in effect put Pakistan “back on the side of the angels”, it is likely that “all the sanctions imposed upon them would be lifted”.

South Asia’s nuclear woes will not necessarily end with any signing of the CTBT. Neither India nor Pakistan has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so that – even if both eventually accept a test ban – neither currently allows outside inspections of its nuclear facilities, and either one could still go ahead to “weaponise” its nuclear programme.