By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The organization created to monitor the globe for illicit nuclear weapons testing has told its members to pay their dues in full or lose some service.

Citing insufficient funds, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization cancelled a scheduled course intended to train personnel at nuclear test monitoring centers. 

There are more than 100 such facilities around the world to collect seismological, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide information that might indicate whether a nuclear weapon has been exploded.

The cut comes amid CTBTO member concerns about waning support for the treaty, as the United States — the organization’s largest donor — currently opposes the treaty’s entry into force.

The CTBTO’s funding situation for 2002 is not dire.  With more than three months remaining, the organization has received 88 percent of its $84 million budget, according to spokeswoman Daniela Roskonova.

Like many U.N. organizations, the CTBTO rarely collects 100 percent of its dues, but it has collected 92 percent to 98 percent of its annual budgets since it was created five years ago, making it “the envy” of the U.N. system, Roskonova said.

Still, two-thirds of its 166 members have not paid full dues this year and that shortfall — plus a devaluation of the budgeted currency, the U.S. dollar, relative to the euro — has tightened finances and prompted the training cut.  Most of the delinquent members are developing countries and contribute small fractions of the total budget, she said.

“We had to cut something, so it was cut,” she said.  The cut also sent “a very clear message to the membership,” she said, “OK, you guys, you have to pay.”

The CTBTO also will have to pay an unforeseen expenditure this year.  An International Labor Organization tribunal ruled in July it must pay back salary and benefits to a former employee let go, for losses incurred until the employee found another job.  The organization has not yet determined how much that would be.

Roskonova said such decisions are not unusual.  “The International Atomic Energy Agency has had three of those decisions already, this is our first one.”

The CTBTO was created in March 1997, and has been rapidly expanding since, adding monitoring stations and laboratories toward its goal of 337 facilities.  The data distribution system has been running since mid-1999, relaying data collected at monitoring stations to the organization’s headquarters in Vienna for processing and archival purposes.  Data are forwarded to requesting treaty parties so they can perform their own analysis.

Current operations are considered preparations for implementation once the treaty enters into force.

Some Reduced Support

The funding issue is closely tied to a continued international debate over the importance of the treaty, pitting the United States against key U.S. allies.

“This is very much related to the obvious question about the future viability of the treaty regime caused in large part by the Bush administration’s continued resistance to the CTBT and decision last year to withhold a portion of the United States’ assessment,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, who also lobbies on behalf of the organization here in Washington, said.

The Bush administration this year is withholding $800,000 in dues this year that would help fund a mechanism for on-site inspections of suspected illicit activities.  With no intention of allowing the treaty to go into force, the administration sees no use for the inspections.

Eighteen foreign ministers Saturday issued a statement arguing the importance of the treaty and urging increased support for it, including expansion of the verification system (see GSN, Sept. 16).  Signers included the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and Russia.

The Bush administration, however, opposes ratifying the treaty and its entry into force.  Former President Bill Clinton signed the treaty.

Administration officials have expressed concerns the treaty’s verification system would not work well and its curb on nuclear testing could harm U.S. national security by preventing testing of aging weapons systems in the event they develop problems.

A July 31 National Academy of Sciences study, however, concluded the treaty can be verified effectively and would not harm the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile (see GSN, July 31). 

Administration officials have said they intend to abide by the 10-year U.S. moratorium initiated by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1992, though they also refuse to rule out future testing.  For entry into force, 44 specific members must ratify, but 13 of those have not yet done so, including the United States, China, North Korea, India and Pakistan.

The administration also is considering developing a new type of nuclear weapon for use against deeply buried and hardened targets, such as WMD storage bunkers, for which officials someday might chose to resume testing (see GSN Aug. 7).

Some Reasons Cited

CTBTO members range from the United States, which accounts for the largest contribution, $16.5 million, to tiny Pacific island nations such as Fiji, which contains two monitoring stations, but contributes very little funding.

Colombia and Iran have refused to pay their dues, saying they are prohibited by their national constitutions from doing so until the treaty enters force, according to a diplomat associated with the organization.

Iranian and Chinese authorities in the past year also disconnected their monitoring stations from the CTBTO system (see GSN, March 8), and China also has not paid its dues, the diplomat said.

Italy appears to be the only major Western member that has not yet paid, though not for political reasons, but instead because of a problem with a change of domestic law, Roskonova said.

“Other countries are probably using Iran as a pretext not to ratify and not to pay,” the diplomat said.  “Everybody has found a good excuse in what Iran is doing.”

Kimball believes problems with securing funding result in part from the U.S. decision to withhold funds.

“What we see happening here is some developing countries that have a number of their own domestic priorities that require financing asking the question, if the major Western states are not fully contributing to this system funding, and this is not going to come on for some time, why should we?” said Kimball.

States also are questioning, Kimball said, why they should fund the system when it will provide data to countries like the United States that will never fully join.

Some Bush administration officials had been looking for ways to pull out of treaty, but State Department lawyers determined a president cannot withdraw a treaty from the Senate once it has been submitted for approval, the New York Times reported in July 2001.

Aspects of the CTBTO are nevertheless valued by the United States, which is the organization’s largest single donor and agencies of which regularly receive CTBTO data to enhance U.S. detection capabilities. 

In 1999, when the treaty was up for Senate consideration, senior U.S. military officials said the system was useful, that it would enhance U.S. capabilities for monitoring suspected nuclear weapons testing.

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