Hard Cases Stymie Test Ban Treaty

Nearly a decade ago, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature. Since then, all but 17 UN members have signed the accord, and major progress has been made in building a complex technological system to verify its implementation. However, the treaty has yet to enter into force because of opposition from the United States and several other countries.

In recent interviews with Arms Control Today, two senior diplomats responsible for taking the CTBT forward described both the progress and the impediments to entry into force. Tibor Tóth, a Hungarian diplomat who recently became the second-ever executive-secretary of the body charged with carrying out the treaty, focused on the efforts to develop the technical infrastructure to carry out the accord. Jaap Ramaker, a Dutch diplomat whom the countries that have already ratified the treaty have tasked to serve as a liaison with those that have not done so, discussed the diplomatic obstacles to the accord’s entry into force.

Progress Toward Entry Into Force

Speaking to Arms Control Today less than a month after states gathered Sept. 21-23 to measure progress toward the treaty’s entry into force, Ramaker pointed out that 176 states have already signed the test ban, while 125 states have ratified the treaty. In terms of signatures, Ramaker said in the Oct. 18 interview that “we are running up against a number of hard cases from a number of points of view.”

One obstacle comes in troubled regions such as the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East, and South Asia, where Ramaker said the hurdles to signature or ratification should “be seen as part of a wider regional context.”

States in these regions are among 44 specific countries with nuclear facilities that must ratify the CTBT for it to enter into force. Eleven of those 44 have failed to do so. They include India, North Korea, and Pakistan, which have not signed the treaty, and China, which joins the United States in signing but not ratifying the accord.

Ramaker has pinned some of his hopes for thinning the remaining holdouts on some other states. In particular, he cited Colombia, Indonesia, and Vietnam as being “on the right track” toward ratification. After a November 2004 visit to Vietnam, Ramaker said he left with the impression that the government “is really working” on ratification and he hopes to visit Indonesia soon to discuss ratification hurdles in Jakarta.

He was able to offer fewer reassurances when it came to possible ratification by states possessing nuclear weapons. During a visit to Beijing in April, the Chinese government assured Ramaker that it is “now working very hard on the internal legal proceedings needed for ratification.” Ramaker takes “their word for it,” but China, which signed the treaty in 1996, first submitted the treaty to the National People’s Congress for ratification in 1999.

Likewise, Ramaker could shed no new light on the situation with regard to a possible U.S. ratification. But during the September conference of treaty ratifiers seeking its entry into force, he expressed the hope that Washington “in due course would wish to revisit the question of the [CTBT] and analyze whether or not, on balance, one would indeed not be better off with the Treaty than without it.” The United States did not send a representative to the conference.

The United States signed the CTBT in 1996, but the Senate rejected the treaty in a 51-48 vote in 1999. The Bush administration made clear when it took office in 2001 that it would not resubmit the treaty for Senate approval, although the United States has continued to support building the International Monitoring System (IMS) that would be used to verify the accord.

Progress has been slow in South Asia as well. The Indian government has even refused to receive Ramaker. By contrast, the Dutch diplomat said he had “a good exchange of views” during a visit to Pakistan in November 2004. Pakistan, which has not signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Ramaker acknowledged that he did not see any movement in Islamabad toward signing the treaty but said he did encourage his Pakistani interlocutors to “continue down the path” of nuclear confidence-building vis-à-vis India and to consider formalizing “their confidence-building measures on nuclear testing into some sort of a bilateral arrangement.”

In 1999, India and Pakistan strengthened their unilateral moratoria on nuclear testing by stating in the Lahore Declaration that these commitments would be binding “unless either side…decides that extraordinary events have jeopardized its supreme interests.” The agreement was renewed following bilateral talks in June 2004. A proposed nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India includes an Indian pledge to the United States to continue its moratorium. (See ACT, September 2005.)

The International Monitoring System

Ramaker argued that relations between nuclear-weapon states in particular will be positively affected once the IMS is fully functional because, for them, “it will be essential that they can have the full confidence that no cheating takes place and that no breakout can take place.” The IMS will use 321 monitoring stations and four different technologies to detect nuclear tests.

Those sentiments were echoed by Tóth, who took over Aug. 1 as the head of the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). In a Sept. 30 interview with Arms Control Today, Tóth noted that, nine years after the CTBT was opened for signature, the IMS is approaching completion: 209 monitoring stations are up and running, with more than half of those put in place over the last two years alone. In the same period, the output of monitoring data, which is sent to 700 end users in 89 countries, has almost tripled from 5 gigabytes to 14 gigabytes per day.

Tóth said, however, that the previous rapid pace of construction may soon decrease. “The bad news is that we have to build the remaining one-third [of IMS stations], and the low-lying fruit in terms of stations to be built have been built, so those stations that remain are in difficult geographic places; climate-wise in difficult places; or, because of administrative and other arrangements, in difficult conditions,” Tóth cautioned.

Still, the PTS plans to have 90-95 percent of IMS stations ready by the end of 2007. The organization is already beginning to shift from the build-up phase to normal operations. For almost a year now, the PTS has been running a system-wide performance test to assess the reliability and security of the IMS. The test also is used to evaluate the Global Communications Infrastructure that connects IMS stations with the International Data Centre in Vienna. The PTS hopes that the test will demonstrate how the different IMS elements “would work together in as seamlessly a way as it is possible,” Tóth said.

Funding

Even in the absence of the treaty’s entry into force, construction of the IMS has required consistent financial support from signatories, including from nonratifiers such as the United States. (See ACT, October 2004).

Tóth described the level of financial support for the CTBTO as “very healthy,” with the organization receiving 90-95 percent of the contributions it seeks. He said he was hopeful that in 2005 the CTBTO will again receive above 90 percent of the funds that it would need to pay its full proposed $105 million annual budget. Tóth cautioned, however, that “we will have to see whether this payment pattern will continue or not.”

In the case of the United States, Tóth believes there might be “a continued discussion” about financial contributions. In August 2001, Washington decided it would no longer pay its share of the dues for on-site inspections and estimated the cost at somewhere between $1 million to $3 million annually. But the Bush administration went further this year, requesting that Congress make an additional $5 million cut, or provide a total contribution of $7.5 million less than the CTBTO estimated should be Washington’s appropriate share. The House has supported the administration’s requested cut while the Senate has not. The two bodies are in the process of working out their differences in a House-Senate conference committee. (See ACT, September 2005.)

Tóth expressed his hope that the House-Senate conference committee would restore much of the funds to continue construction of the IMS. “For the continued build-up of the system, we need the money,” Tóth urged. Should Congress decide not to restore the full U.S. contribution, Tóth anticipates that such cuts “might be in 2006 a one-time shortfall,” referring to comments by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February that the lower funding requested this year “does not signal a change in U.S. policy toward” the CTBT.

Tóth also hinted at problems with some smaller contributions from other member states of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBTO. As other diplomats told Arms Control Today privately, several states, including Argentina and Brazil, have been in arrears for many years now. He claimed that any debts to the organization do not necessarily reflect “an absence of political dedication” by states concerned and may be explained by domestic politics. But he noted that “even small contributions are essential for CTBTO’s work.”

Preparing the On-site Inspection Regime

The CTBTO continues to plan how it would investigate a suspicious event on the territory of any treaty member once the CTBT goes into effect. But the Bush administration’s lack of support for discussions of on-site inspection activities has hampered this work. In particular, efforts to negotiate an on-site inspection operational manual that will specify inspection procedures as well as equipment to be used during such inspections have been painstakingly slow. Still, member states have now reviewed an initial draft of the lengthy manual.

Tóth said that, over the next two to three years, the PTS will “test whatever we have created in the last couple of years, based on the level of readiness that we have achieved.” In November, the Preparatory Commission is expected to approve an integrated field exercise to be conducted in 2008. Tóth described the purpose of the exercise to see “how, in an integrated context, the [on-site inspection] elements can be brought together.” Tóth does not see any effort to accelerate on-site inspection preparations before then: “There’s no speeding up, no slowing down, we are moving forward as it is prescribed.”

Additional Missions?

Tóth also reported on progress in making IMS data available for humanitarian and scientific purposes. Until recently, a few states had objected to the use of real-time IMS data for such purposes because of concerns about confidentiality. But the humanitarian catastrophe following the December 2004 tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Asia sparked discussions on how test ban monitoring data could have been used for early-warning purposes.

In March, the Preparatory Commission allowed the PTS on a trial basis to share data from seismic and hydroacoustic stations immediately with any tsunami warning organization recognized by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Seismic stations monitor the vibrations of the earth and seek to distinguish nuclear tests from other earth-shaking events, such as earthquakes. Hydroacoustic stations use underwater microphones anchored to cables to pick out underwater explosions vast distances away. (See ACT, April 2005.)Since then, Tóth said, “we did our homework,” noting that the PTS had been able to cut the lead time for certain raw data transmitted to tsunami warning organizations from two hours to 20 minutes, thus greatly increasing its early-warning potential. “This is life-saving data” for states potentially affected by disasters like the tsunami, Tóth said.

Looking ahead, Tóth said that recent diplomatic discussions have encouraged the PTS “to remain helpful and relevant for humanitarian, disaster-alert, and other purposes” without straying far from its main purpose of test ban monitoring. Tóth mentioned specific examples, such as the potential use of IMS data to study global warming phenomena or IMS infrasound [sonar-based] technology to detect volcanic eruptions and provide safe security overflight information. Tóth said that activities related to using IMS data for humanitarian and scientific purposes have not resulted in significant additional costs.

Both Ramaker and Tóth emphasized the importance of continued and concerted high-level support for the CTBT as it approaches its 10th anniversary next year. Tóth described universalization of the treaty as “a job shared with the members of our constituency, the signatories and ratifiers.” Ramaker stated that he is receiving high-level support from a range of countries but stated that “it is important that the question of the test ban and entry into force is being raised at times at a sufficiently high political level.” He warned, “[T]hat does not always happen.... That has to change.”