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Clinton pleads Senate to ratify CTBT

C K Arora in Washington

President Bill Clinton has pleaded with an unwilling US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arguing that it would help stop other countries, including India, Pakistan and China, from testing and deploying nuclear weapons.

Launching a week-long campaign yesterday to convince the 100-member Republican-controlled Senate of the justification for the treaty, he warned, ''If the Senate votes this treaty down, it would be a signal that the United States now wants to lead the world away from the cause of non-proliferation.''

''We would be giving the green light to all these other people,'' he added.

The president frankly admitted that he did not have the 67 votes needed to ratify the treaty. ''I hope we can get them,'' he told the media before a meeting with his top foreign policy aides to draw up a strategy to secure its passage.

The Senate, which has been opposing discussion on the CTBT for the last two years, is going to debate it on Friday and the vote on it is expected the following Tuesday.

Earlier, state department spokesman James Rubin, stressing the need for ratification, said, ''Just today, we saw the new leader of the BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party), or I guess the foreign minister of India (Jaswant Singh), specifically stating that they were moving towards a decision to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty this fall.

''We think that's a very positive development. If the United States fails to ratify the CTBT, it will be that much harder, if not impossible, to get countries like India and Pakistan to sign this treaty,'' he added.

''So anyone who is concerned about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- in particular, nuclear weapons in India, in Pakistan or any other part of the world -- should support the ratification of this treaty, and those who oppose it must understand the deep damage they will do to our ability to put pressure on governments around the world not to go down the nuclear road,'' the spokesman remarked.

Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, ''This (CTBT) is a dangerous proposal and I am confident that the United States Senate will vote to reject it.''

''The facts are not on the administration's side. This is an ill-conceived treaty in the first place which our own CIA acknowledges that it cannot verify,'' he said.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will testify at a hearing of the committee on Thursday.

For the treaty to come into force, it must be ratified by all 44 countries in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament that have nuclear reactors or research programmes, including the United States. Only 23 of them have done so till now.

In all, more than 150 countries have signed the treaty, but less than a third have ratified it.

US officials said that Washington's stance was key to persuading others to follow suit.

All the 45 Democratic Senators are expected to vote for the treaty in the US Senate, along with a handful of Republicans, leaving the White House about 15 votes short of the 67 it needs to get the Senate's approval.

UNI

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