Analysis: US under test ban pressure

The Senate has failed to endorse the agreement

By Defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus

The Russian parliament's decision to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty puts additional pressure upon the United States, which has not endorsed the agreement.

A ban on all nuclear testing is seen as a critical element of efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weaponry.

And, with a review conference due to begin in New York on Monday, looking at the whole nuclear non proliferation regime, Washington is likely to come in for some considerable criticism.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was open for signature at the United Nations in September 1996.

Monitoring

It has been signed by 155 states and subsequently ratified by a little more than 50 of them.

Its logic is simple - if you ban the testing of nuclear weapons then few countries who do not have them already will be able to develop a nuclear arsenal.

Once it enters into force, the CTBT would establish a sophisticated monitoring system that experts believe would be able to detect any secret nuclear test that might take place.

But the CTBT cannot enter into force until 44 designated countries ratify its text.

Among them are the five declared nuclear weapon states along with India, Israel and Pakistan.

Last year, the US Senate failed to ratify the treaty, despite strong support for it from the Clinton administration.

While it is not just the US Senate's refusal to ratify that is holding up the treaty's implementation, the Senate's action has cost Washington some of the moral high ground in the disarmament debate.

The Russian Duma's ratification of the CTBT accentuates the US Senate's failure to do so.