PRESS CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY BY AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY BY AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR
19960826
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
"The Australian Government has decided at the highest level and of course in consultation with others to ask the President of the General Assembly to resume consideration in plenary of agenda item 65 on 9 September so that we may keep the promise of adopting and opening for signature a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty before the fiftieth session ends", Australian Ambassador Richard Butler said Friday, 23 August at a late afternoon press conference. For that purpose, Australia had tabled a procedural draft resolution. That text would have the Assembly adopt the treaty drafted at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and open it for signature.
Mr. Butler said that it had been almost 40 years since the international community had begun searching for a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty, and that during the past three years the General Assembly had passed unanimous resolutions calling for such a treaty to be brought to a conclusion. "On Tuesday of this week, after almost three years of exhaustive work on that treaty, one Member State went beyond its absolute right to agree or disagree with the text of the treaty and blocked the transmission of a text which has widespread support -- including by all of those States that are able to conduct nuclear tests." That one State "thus sought to prevent the General Assembly from resuming its consideration of a comprehensive test-ban treaty."
On 12 December 1995 the Assembly had unanimously decided to resume consideration of item 65 (comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty) before the end of the fiftieth session in order to endorse a comprehensive test-ban treaty, Mr. Butler said. India had joined in that decision.
[Note - By operative paragraph 2 of its resolution 50/65 of 12 December 1995, the Assembly called upon all States participating in the Conference on Disarmament, in particular the nuclear-weapon States, to conclude, as a task of the highest priority, a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty "so as to enable its signature by the outset of the fifty-first session of the General Assembly". In operative paragraph 6, the Assembly went on to declare its readiness to resume consideration of its agenda item on the treaty, "as necessary, before its fifty-first session in order to endorse the text of a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty". Operative paragraph 2 was adopted by an Assembly vote of 166 in favour, to none against, with 1 abstention (China). The resolution as a whole was adopted by the Assembly without a vote.]
Australia was not prepared to accept that one State could take action to prevent others from signing a treaty, he said. "We believe we are strongly supported in this action. We bear no hostility towards the State that has the view that it has. But we are not prepared to accept that this unique moment in time, where we can bring about an end to all nuclear testing, will be withheld from the international community."
He said he expected the Assembly would meet beginning on 9 September. He expected the treaty to be adopted and open for signature within a few weeks.
He urged journalists to read articles 1 and 2 of the treaty. "It's not quite tablets of stone", he said, "but it's as near as it gets in international law. States will undertake to never again conduct nuclear explosions. There have been 530 of those, many of them in the atmosphere, since 1945. This is the moment where it can end. I fail to think that this is not going to attract the overwhelming support of the General Assembly."
Asked if a two-thirds majority or a simple majority would be required for the Assembly to adopt the proposed draft resolution, he said a simple majority was necessary.
Would a simple majority be required to re-open consideration of the agenda item? a correspondent inquired. "We don't consider that the matter is closed", he responded "You only re-open something if it has been closed. On 12 December [1995], the President [of the Assembly] said that we've finished consideration of item 65. But 10 minutes before that the General Assembly had unanimously decided to continue consideration of item 65 on this issue." Following legal advice, in his recent letter to General Assembly President Diogo Freitas do Amaral (Portugal) requesting the 9 September plenary session he had asked the President to "resume" consideration of the item.
When asked to name the co-sponsors of the draft resolution, he said the list of co-sponsors was not yet closed. By 9 September, he said, "I wager you it will be a very, very long list. . . . Resolution 65 of 12 December 1995 was co-sponsored by 92 States. Think big. Ninety-two States did that, and I see no reason why this would be less. I have every expectation that it might be more."
To a query as to whether there might be amendments to the treaty presented in debate on the draft resolution, he said he did not believe there would be any persuasive majority to do anything more than approve the text of the treaty as it had been negotiated in Geneva. "We've had a long time negotiating the text. It's finely balanced, it can't be opened without risk of destroying the basic commitment never to explode these things again. . . . I don't believe amendments to the resolution will succeed, nor do I believe they should."
Nuclear-test-ban Briefing - 3 - 26 August 1996
When asked if the treaty contained penalties for violations, he said there were provisions referring violations to higher political authority, and there was an organization of States that would continue to monitor the application of the treaty. He could not say what specific penalties there would be on any given infringement.
A correspondent asked for Mr. Butler's response to the presumption that the treaty was meant to keep the threshold States from becoming nuclear States and thus maintain the superiority of the five nuclear-power States. "I think that argument is tragically misconceived", he said. Historically, nuclear- weapons testing was used for the development of ever-more-sophisticated nuclear-weapons systems. "The decision by nuclear-weapons States not to test explode any more sends an enormously powerful and clear signal that they have turned a corner in their relationship with nuclear weapons. They're not going to go on developing more and new and different kinds of them. This is a contribution toward nuclear disarmament.
"Of course a prohibition on testing by the threshold and so-called undeclared States would mightily affect whatever plans they might have to develop quantity and quality of nuclear weapons", he continued. "And that's part of what's being sought here."
Asked why the treaty should not also include a date for the disarmament of the nuclear powers, Mr. Butler said, "Nuclear disarmament is of irreducible importance and should be pursued. There are many ideas which India has advanced with respect to nuclear disarmament which I deeply share." The Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which the Australian Ambassador chaired, and which finished its work last week, would present its report to the General Assembly on 30 September.
"But", he continued, "it is not an either/or proposition. We need both. . . . India was tragically wrong to seek to block the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. It is right to want progress in nuclear disarmament. . . . Let's not make one hostage of the other."
Had he secured any promises from India that it was not going to try to sabotage the passage of the draft resolution? No, he said, he had yet to speak to the Indian Ambassador, Prakash Shah, but he hoped to speak with him soon.
Asked if Pakistan and Bangladesh were co-sponsors of the draft resolution, he said it was too early to discuss the list of co-sponsors, but it would be very long and he would be surprised if it did not include those two States.
Nuclear-test-ban Briefing - 4 - 26 August 1996
A correspondent asked how he proposed to reconcile the clause of the treaty which required India to consent to the treaty in order for it to enter into force? Ambassador Butler said India, Israel, Pakistan and others, possibly including Australia, faced the same situation. A provision of the treaty said that if after three years, for want of ratification by some States such as India, the treaty had not yet entered into force, the States involved would confer again and find ways to bring it into force. He would like to think that after reflecting for a while India would decide to ratify the treaty.
Would the treaty be as binding coming out of the General Assembly as it would have if it had achieved consensus at the Conference on Disarmament? another correspondent queried. "Absolutely", Mr. Butler replied. The Assembly would have had to adopt the text in any case. "This is what was always going to happen. It's had to be done in a slightly unusual way, by having one Member State asking for the text to be brought across the sea from Geneva, because a member of the Conference on Disarmament did something that no one thought was going to happen." If anyone had torn up the rules, it was India.
A correspondent asked if the adoption of the draft resolution by the General Assembly would mean an end to nuclear tests, whether India liked it or not. Mr. Butler said, "It is virtually unthinkable that any State that had signed the treaty would then conduct a nuclear test. Any State that had remained outside, of course, would presumably consider itself outside the obligations of the treaty."
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