PRESS RELEASE

6 June 1996

UK Position Threatens Test Ban

The United Kingdom is taking a position that will, in all likelihood, mean that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, currently under negotiation in Geneva, will never take effect. The U.K. government is insisting that the five nuclear-weapons states and all three “threshold” states - India, Israel, and Pakistan - must ratify the treaty before it enters into force. However, it is unlikely that India will ever ratify the treaty. If so, the U.K., intentionally or not, is creating a situation where the CTBT will never come into force.

Negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty have been taking place at the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva since January 1994. The treaty will ban all nuclear weapons test explosions. Last year, the United Nations resolved that a treaty should be signed at the UN in September 1996. To meet that deadline, negotiators in Geneva have imposed a deadline of the end of June for agreement on the text of the treaty.

Amb. Jaap Ramaker, president of the Nuclear Test Ban negotiations at the CD, last week put down a clean text of the treaty in order to advance the negotiations. The “entry into force” provision in the new text requires the 37 countries taking part in two elements in the international monitoring system all must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force. The reasoning behind that somewhat obscure list is that it is the easiest way to include all eight nuclear and threshold states without specifically citing them.

However, by insisting that all eight must ratify, the U.K. makes it possible for any one country to prevent the treaty entering into force. In fact, many observers believe that India, for political reasons, is extremely unlikely to ever ratify the treaty. In fact, a provision requiring them to ratify before the CTBT enters into force actually strengthens the hand of those in India who oppose the treaty.

The U.K. is aware that some might view their position as intentionally sabotaging the treaty. In a speech at the negotiations on 14 May 1996, David Davis, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said “I should make absolutely clear that we do not hold this position so firmly because we have a secret desire to test again. Having made clear that we have no plans to test again, we can have no interest in seeing negotiations fail. But it is vital that the international community should not miss the opportunity to make a real contribution to non-proliferation and global stability by the establishment of a universal treaty.”

U.K. allies, including Canada and Australia, are strongly opposed to the U.K. position, while Russia and China support it. One senior Western diplomat called the entry into force provision “an abomination”. The United States government is split on the issue. Most other treaties, such as the Chemical Weapons Convention, only require a simple number of states to ratify before they enter into force.

"The U.K. is threatening the next major acheivement in international multilateral arms control", said Stephen Young, Senior Analyst at BASIC. "If the U.K. holds this position, the test ban may never enter into force. It would be an utter and abysmal failure if the test ban fails, and the U.K. would be responsible."

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