A senior U.S. State Department official on Monday touted the benefits of President Barack Obama’s plan for a U.N. Security Council resolution against nuclear testing.
With the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty still not entered into force, “we call on all states to maintain the moratoria on nuclear explosive tests. Sustaining these moratoria is in the national security interest of the United States, as well as that of the entire world,” Anita Friedt, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said in a speech to a nuclear disarmament conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“The United States is engaging Members of the U.N. Security Council on a resolution that would emphasize the importance of maintaining these moratoria and would build support for the completion of the Treaty’s verification regime, based on International Monitoring System,” according to Friedt’s prepared comments.
A State Department official on Tuesday said the talks include the five permanent Security Council states – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – which are also the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The International Day Against Nuclear Tests is observed on Aug. 29, the anniversary of the 1991 closure of the Soviet Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. That action spurred the United States to enact its own voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing and led to negotiations in the mid-1990s of the test ban treaty.
The accord has been signed by 183 nations and ratified by 164. Another eight of the 44 “Annex 2″ states must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force. The holdouts are China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, and the United States.
President Barack Obama included U.S. ratification of the treaty among the nonproliferation goals laid out in his 2009 nonproliferation-focused speech in Prague, but his administration never formally submitted it for approval by the Senate. The upper chamber previously rejected ratification in 1999, and approval seemed unlikely at best after Republicans regained the majority in 2014.
The administration, though, remains “engaged in a serious effort to inform the public and Members of Congress of why bringing the CTBT into force and improvements in its verification architecture are in our own national security,” Friedt said, echoing the message from other administration officials in recent years regarding pro-CTBT efforts.
North Korea is the sole nation known to have conducted underground nuclear testing over the last few years. The treaty’s proponents say the test ban would be a key step in preventing additional nations from developing nuclear weapons. In the United States, opponents say the nation may someday need to test new nuclear weapons and that the technology is not yet available to absolutely ensure that any underground blast would be detected – points strongly contested by the CTBT’s backers.
The CTBT global detection web is 90 percent finished, with roughly 300 seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide sensor stations in operation around the globe, according to the United Nations.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and other lawmakers have warned the administration against attempting to skirt the chamber’s role in ratifying U.S. participation in global treaties via the U.N. Security Council resolution. The White House has said it has no such intent.
Corker’s committee has scheduled a hearing on the proposed Security Council resolution for Tuesday.
Friedt emphasized Obama’s successes in nonproliferation – including the New START treaty with Russia and the Iran nuclear deal – but lashed the final report issued last week from the United Nations’ Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on nuclear disarmament.
The OEWG document, approved in a 68-22 vote, recommended a number of measures toward global nuclear disarmament, headlined by starting negotiations next year on a legally binding prohibition of nuclear weapons.
“Even as the United States builds upon decades of pragmatic steps to reduce the role and number of its nuclear weapons, a group of countries are pursuing a polarizing and unverifiable nuclear weapons ban treaty that could actually end up harming the proven, practical, and inclusive efforts that have achieved tangible results on disarmament and will continue to do so,” Friedt said. “We know that nuclear disarmament can only be achieved through an approach that takes into account the views and the security interests of all states.”
She added: “The OEWG final report and efforts to institute a legal ban on nuclear weapons fail to take account of the international security environment and will neither lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons nor uphold the principle of undiminished security for all.”
The comments drew a quick, sharp response from the arms control community.
“I’m neutral on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons but US denunciations are counterproductive to its own limited agenda,” Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, said via Twitter.
