DISARMAMENT: Russian Support For CTBT Suddenly Looking Shaky

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Jul 23 1996 (IPS) - Russian officials say they are working on contingency plans to change their nuclear weapons policy in the event that India’s refusal to sign a test ban treaty leads to a renewed nuclear weapons race — particularly in China.

Moscow foreign ministry sources say they are concerned that India’s refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) without deeper conditions on total nuclear disarmament will unravel the entire general consensus on nuclear weapons.

“Today Russia’s main task is to persuade India not to rock the boat and to join the CTBT on the conditions proposed,” adds Vladimir Orlov, editor of Yaderny Konrol (Nuclear Control) magazine. “But if the effort fails, then Moscow may have no choice other than to revamp its position in the interests of her national security.”

In CTBT drafting negotiations in Geneva last month New Delhi said the treaty draft as it stood was 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 to disarmament.

Valery Schukin, member of the Russian delegation in Geneva, says Indian demands for a ten-year timetable for global disarmament and the banning of weapons development through computer simulation were “mere negotiating tactics” that held no water.

“It is impossible to achieve annihilation of all nuclear arsenals in ten years. What we can speak about in practical terms is drastic reduction of nuclear weapons in ten years,” he said.

But India’s resistance in Geneva left Russia in a quandary, says Sergei Solodovnik, a leading research fellow at the Moscow Institute of International Relations.

“Nobody can imagine that India can threaten Russia’s security. What would really be seen by Moscow as an unwanted development is China’s possible turn back on its promise to halt tests following India’s rejection of the CTBT.

“And if China goes back on its promise to halt all nuclear tests this would challenge Russian security in the Asia-Pacific region.” The prospect is feeding dissent in Moscow as well.

In April, before Geneva, Russia reiterated its commitment to the CTBT principle at the Group of Seven nuclear safety summit in Moscow, while reserving its right to withdraw from the treaty if its national security interests were threatened.

The compromise failed to end the bitter ‘fights under the carpet’ in the Kremlin. The Russian government and foreign ministry, seeking rapproachment with the West, stood firm behind the CTBT and its own self-imposed moratoriums on nuclear tests.

The atomic energy ministry , the powerful military-industrial complex and experts at the dozens of nuclear research cities dotting the Federation oppose both. They argue that without tests they cannot safely maintain nuclear warheads at combat readiness, a view used by France to defend its own underground testing in the Pacific this year.

“Nuclear tests are needed not to build up new nuclear arms but to upkeep existing ones,” Vladimir Belousov of the Central Physics Institute of the Russian defence ministry told IPS. “For this purpose four to five nuclear explosions with overall power not exceeding 100 kilotons would be enough to satisfy the needs of all the nuclear club members”

Russia was the first nuclear power to offer a moratorium on nuclear tests, way back in 1958 and since 1990 Russia has voluntarily refrained from new tests.

However while Russia’s atomic minister Victor Mikhailov says only that the CTBT is more of a gain rather than loss for the country, his ministry spokesman Georgy Kaurov has publicly described the decision to sign a CTBT as entirely “politically motivated”.

And he has opened up the possibility of joint Russo-Chinese support for nuclear blasts of a different kind. China has formally proposed that the CTBT be reviewed in 10 years to see if ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosions could be allowed — in mining and construction for example.

Even though in Geneva Russian ambassador Grigory Berdennikov had said Russia was “ready to impose the test ban on peaceful explosions as well,” Kaurov now says the Russian position on ‘peaceful’ blasts “could be reconsidered”.

Vladimir Klimenko, chief of staff at Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s National Security Agency recently speculated in an article for Yaderny Kontrol that underground nuclear blasts could be used to vapourise unwanted nuclear waste from the nuclear energy industry.

He also suggested that underground blast could be a quicker, cheaper and easier alternative to dismantling unwanted nuclear weapons when implementing international arms control pacts.

The CTBT consensus is unravelling elsewhere too. Russia and other nations are beginning to lean towards the view that a ban on live tests will benefit only the U.S. and Britain, which cooperates with Washington on testing nuclear weapons by computer simulation.

Russian technology lags far behind U.S. technology in this field, according to experts at the former secret city of Chelyabinsk.

Meanwhile the U.S. has 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 has confirmed that “the National Ignition Facility will contribute to the ability of the United States to maintain its nuclear stockpile without underground testing”.

CTBT 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.