Vienna, April 28: After US President Barack Obama’s recent successes with disarmament and nuclear security, his aim of bringing the global ban onnuclear tests into force may seem like just another box to check off on his nuclear to-do list.
But even if the US Senate ratifies the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), it might take a long time before the pact becomes a legal reality, diplomats and experts say.
They point to Iran, which is seen as obstructing the pact, and to other important players like Israel, India and Pakistan, that have yet to fully sign on.
The CTBT is closely intertwined with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is set to be reviewed by its member states in New York from May 3.
“The CTBT is of enormous importance for the credibility of the NPT,” said Rebecca Johnson, an expert on non-proliferation treaties who heads the aptly-named Acronym Institute in London.
When the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995 to stem the spread of nuclear arms, the countries that did not have such weapons agreed to this only because the global nuclear test ban was being negotiated at that time.
The CTBT was opened for signature in 1996. But according to its text, it cannot come into force until certain countries have turned it into national law. Besides the United States, Egypt, Israel, Iran, China and Indonesia still have to ratify it, while India, Pakistan and North Korea have not even signed.
But experts and diplomats warned of expecting that everyone would fall in step with the US. “I don’t think it’s going to be quite that easy,” Johnson said.
Several Western diplomats said they have doubts about Iran’s position, as the Islamic republic has been obstructing progress on the CTBT’s system of monitoring stations to detect nuclear tests.
An Iranian nuclear official complained in December that a new seismic station in neighbouring Turkmenistan could be used to spy on Iran. The station is part of a network that is nearly completed and that detected North Korea’s two nuclear tests, despite the fact that the CTBT organization is only operating provisionally in Vienna.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this raised questions about the motives of Iran, which claims it has a purely civilian nuclear programme but is being suspected of secretly working towards nuclear arms.
One diplomat said about Iran’s alleged delaying tactics: “We find this especially strange, because the CTBT sets boundaries for nuclear weapon states, not for countries without nuclear weapons.”
Iranian officials were also slowing down talks on a manual for inspections that the treaty foresees if a country is suspected of having broken the ban, according to the diplomats, but in this, the Islamic country is not alone.
Israel is worried that such inspections might expose its nuclear weapons programme, according to verification expert Andreas Persbo.
“In the past they have raised really ridiculous objections” about the inspection regime, said Persbo, who heads the VERTIC think tank in London.
In Cairo, the CTBT is also contentious. Egypt wants to see progress on Middle Eastern peace and on Israel joining the NPT before it would follow the US and other weapons states and ratify, Egyptian officials said.
“Before the nuclear weapon states start to disarm, they want everyone else to be naked,” one official said on condition of anonymity.
While Iran, Israel and Egypt are watching each other’s moves, a similar situation could block India and Pakistan from signing on to the CTBT.
China might ratify after the US, but nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have their sights trained on each other rather than on Washington, Persbo said.
“We have a real arms race going on, and the CTBT is perceived as being contrary to arms development,” he added.
While no-one can say whether North Korea would ever agree to a ban, experts and diplomats cited Indonesia as the country that has stated it would ratify if the US did so.
But Obama first has to win an uphill battle in getting enough votes in the Senate, which has to approve the treaty. Further slowing his effort is a Senate with a full agenda for the rest of this year and its need to consider the US-Russian START arms reduction treaty.
Both treaties require two-thirds of the vote, meaning Obama and his Democrats must win over a large number of Republicans who have opposed a test ban, arguing it places limits on America’s technological superiority.
–Agencies