DISARMAMENT: Nuclear States Have Alternatives to Testing

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Judith Perera

LONDON, Jul 4 1996 (IPS) - Despite last week’s failure to agree a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in Geneva, negotiating chairman Jaap Ramaker of the Netherlands believes the treaty will be ready to sign at the United Nations in New York this September.

Delegates have been given copies of the final draft for discussion with their governments and Ramaker expects it to be approved when the international Conference on Disarmament resumes its work in Geneva on Jul. 29.

However, it may have to go ahead without India, which is insisting that the treaty should be more than just a commitment to stop testing but a step towards total nuclear disarmament.

New Delhi says the treaty is discriminatory because it would stop non-nuclear nations from developing nuclear arms without requiring the nuclear states — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — to commit themselves to disarmament.

Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral says the CTBT will be a “charade” if it allows the nuclear powers to fine-tune their arsenals through scientific experiments while barring nations like India from developing such weapons.

“It seeks to create a situation where the five nuclear weapon power states will not only continue to have a stockpile of weapons but will be able to go on making them more sophisticated,” he has said.

Indeed, one of the arguments used by France to justify its last series of tests in the Pacific, is that they were needed to fine- tune the systems that France will have to depend on after the CTBT comes into force.

France argues that its Preparatory Programme for Limiting Atomic Tests lags behind similar programmes in the United States and Britain.

The U.S. has also been working hard to ensure that all the necessary facilities will be in place before testing has to stop. A new testing centre — the 1.1 billion dollar National Ignition Facility — is being built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California primarily to support weapons research.

The facility will enable scientists to study the physics of thermonuclear reactions. U.S. energy secretary Hazel O’Leary said at the end of last year that “the National Ignition Facility will contribute to the ability of the United States to maintain its nuclear stockpile without underground testing”.

There are two main issues which will need to be resolved. The first, is whether all five official nuclear powers and the three “threshold” nuclear states (India, Pakistan, and Israel) will have to ratify the treaty before it becomes legally binding.

India argued that it could not sign if the nuclear weapons states do not commit themselves to total nuclear disarmament within a specified time.

The second issue concerns the policing of the treaty and whether individual states with evidence of a violation should be able to call for an “on-site inspection” by the treaty’s secretariat. Ramaker’s draft tries to address these problems.

It proposes that the five nuclear and three threshold states should ratify before the treaty becomes law — but failing that an international conference could be called after three years to decide whether to go ahead without them.

As to on-site inspection, the draft proposes that “national technical means” could be used to invoke an inspection, but a majority of the treaty’s 51-member executive council would have to agree.

Greenpeace has welcomed the text and suggests that if necessary it should go ahead without India. “Greenpeace urges India to join a test ban treaty, but we don’t want a treaty that can be held hostage to one nation’s unwillingness to sign,” says Josh Handler of the organisation’s disarmament campaign.

India is not expected to drop its demands for a linkage with disarmament. “It is fairly clear that India will not bend under the pressure,” says Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.

And while there are several voices in India calling for its nuclear option to be converted into a reality, he does not expect the government to go down that route.

“I do not believe the government will exercise its nuclear option, either by testing or declaring India to be a nuclear power in the near future,” he insists.

“But equally, it won’t give up the option,” he said. Clearly, without testing any weapon produced will not be sophisticated. “But if you are killed by a first generation or fourth generation weapon, does it make a difference?” Singh remarks.

He warns that it would not be wise for the nuclear powers to try to isolate India when the talks resume later this month. “Pressure on democracies can be counter-productive,” he says. “The best way to deal with India is to leave it alone.”