ACRONYM Reports

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Now or Never

ACRONYM Report No.8, October 1995

Introduction

A comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT) has long been an objective of nuclear disarmament and arms control advocates. Stumbling on the issue of verification, intrusiveness and confidence, the US, the USSR and the UK failed to give the world a CTBT in 1963, settling instead on a treaty banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space.1 As the three major nuclear powers accelerated their underground nuclear testing programmes, France and China continued testing in the atmosphere until 1974 and 1980 respectively.

The demand for a CTBT came up again during negotiations on what became the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but only found its way into the preamble and the vague commitments of Article VI on nuclear disarmament. Tripartite negotiations between the US, the USSR and the UK 19771980 foundered when the pro-nuclear administrations of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power in Britain and the US. In 1990, lack of progress on a CTBT caused the failure of a final declaration at the Fourth Review Conference of the NPT: led by Mexico, the non-aligned states held out for a firm commitment to start negotiations, which the nuclear-weapon states refused.

As states began to prepare for the historic decision on extending the NPT in 1995, France and China joined the Treaty. Four of the five nuclear-weapon states made indefinite extension a major foreign policy objective. With the upheavals in Europe signalling the end of the Cold War and the futility of continuing the nuclear arms race between the US and Russia, the conditions for achieving a CTBT looked propitious. Following agreement in 1993 on a negotiating mandate for the Conference on Disarmament (CD), reinforced by the resolution passed unanimously by 156 states in the United Nations General Assembly in December 1993, negotiations commenced in January 1994.

During that year, many countries called for completion of a CTBT by the opening of the NPT Review and Extension Conference in April 1995. The nuclear-weapon states - France and China in particular - wanted to ensure that this would not be achieved. During 1994, therefore, negotiations concentrated on technical and verification questions, with little progress on the substantive political questions of scope, entry into force and the treaty's implementing organisation.

This is a report of the Conference on Disarmament and CTBT negotiations in 1995, summarising progress from January to September 1995.