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U.N. Leaders Urge Nations to Ratify CTBT
While the Bush administration is boycotting this week’s Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty conference, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday urged the United States and 10 other nations to ratify the pact and bring it into force, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 21). “The longer entry into force of the treaty is delayed, the greater the risk that someone, somewhere, will test nuclear weapons,” Annan said yesterday as the three-day conference opened. “That would be a major setback for the cause of nonproliferation and disarmament.” The treaty has 33 of the 44 signatures from “Annex A” nations needed to bring the pact into force. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also pressed for ratification. “Sixty years after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this conference is an opportunity to reaffirm our common commitment to the CTBT,” Straw said. The United States has signed the treaty, but the Bush administration opposes it, AP reported. Pakistan “does not give priority” to the treaty, said Dutch Ambassador Jaap Ramaker, the special representative charged with promoting ratification. He said Indian officials would not meet with him. Ramaker added that ratification by Israel, Egypt, Iran and North Korea “is in one way or the other tied to wider regional security issues which complicate matters.” China and Vietnam seem to favor eventual ratification, he said, adding that he hopes to meet with Indonesian and Colombian officials to discuss the issue (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 22).
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