PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF INDIA

30 August 1996

Press Briefing

19960830 FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY

"We will participate in the General Assembly session, we will point out the substantive shortcomings of the comprehensive test-ban treaty, we will tell the world what the entry-into-force clause is and how it came into being, and we will work against the [Australian] draft resolution", Indian Ambassador Prakash Shah told correspondents in a press conference at Headquarters this morning. "If you are going to look at the future of humanity, if you want security, if you want peace, the only way to do it is the security that all of us will get through the elimination of nuclear weapons. And we do not believe that by measures that actually take the focus away from the elimination of nuclear weapons we are doing any service to humanity as such."

Ambassador Shah was briefing the press in order to dispel any misrepresentation or misunderstandings regarding India's position on the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty (CTBT), which was under negotiation at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and which Australia has proposed to bring to a resumed General Assembly meeting on 9 September for the purpose of seeking the Assembly's endorsement. The Australian proposal, submitted in a letter to General Assembly President Diogo Freitas do Amaral (Portugal), contains a draft resolution by which the Assembly would adopt the treaty drafted at the Conference and open it for signature.

Mr. Shah said that in Geneva the nuclear-weapons Powers and their allies had persistently refused to even discuss the elimination of nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework. He called the proposed treaty "a flawed document that not only does not meet India's concerns, but even fails to meet the terms of the mandate given to the CTBT." The treaty had not obtained consensus in the conference, did not place the banning of tests within a nuclear-disarmament framework, and remained "merely an extension of the exercise to limit horizontal nuclear proliferation. It does not stop development of nuclear weapons or their qualitative improvement by the nuclear-weapon countries."

Saying that India was the only country that since 1974 had observed a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests, Mr. Shah stated: "Our opposition to this document has nothing to do with any change in our policy in continuing this moratorium."

The Ambassador said India had always visualized the test-ban treaty as a genuine and irreversible step along the road to nuclear disarmament. For that purpose, India's vision of such a treaty was that: (a) such a treaty should be securely anchored in a global-disarmament contract and linked through treaty language to the elimination of nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework; (b)

it should end all nuclear-weapon development be it explosive-based or non- explosive based; and (c) it should not provide a licence, such as was provided by the indefinitely extended Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to proliferate nuclear weapons.

When the negotiations had begun in Geneva, India had thought that the nuclear-weapons States were ready to take such a firm first step on the road to nuclear disarmament, Mr. Shah said. Unfortunately, the draft document that had emerged after more than two years of negotiations tragically fell short of India's hopes and vision. It was a pity that the Conference had stopped negotiations on the treaty.

He cited the [January 1994] mandate's call for a treaty "which would contribute effectively to the prevention of proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects, to the process of nuclear disarmament and therefore to the enhancement of international peace and security". He said, "The document that Australia is presenting to bring before the General Assembly tragically falls short of this mandate".

When all of India's efforts at negotiating amendments failed and there was an adamant refusal to change the text, India had made it clear that it would not be able to sign such a document. After that announcement, article 14 on entry into force had been suddenly modified, with a view to imposing the flawed document on India. "Such a provision is unprecedented in treaty negotiating practices and contrary to all legal norms. It denies India its sovereign right of exercising consent and contains an element of implied coercion." India had subsequently proposed that the entry-into-force article be amended to read exactly as it was in the Chemical Weapons Convention. That would have enabled the flawed text to become the comprehensive test-ban treaty in due course. But the proposal was rejected.

"In effect, the negotiators in Geneva inexplicably gave 44 countries an unwanted veto", Mr. Shah said. India was one of the countries which did not want the veto and had not sought it.

There were now attempts to circumvent the decision of the Conference in Geneva by a procedural manoeuvre, he continued. If the membership of the United Nations wished to convene a resumed session of the Assembly to consider agenda item 65 on the treaty, India had no hesitation in participating in the resumed session. He expressed the hope that those who wanted to bring to the Assembly a document purporting to be the comprehensive test-ban treaty would be equally democratic and transparent when the consideration of item 65 was resumed.

A correspondent asked what he had meant by "implied coercion"? Mr. Shah said that under legal norms, every country has a right whether to sign a treaty or not. But the current draft treaty contained a provision that said that it would not become a treaty unless 44 countries, including India, signed it.

India Press Conference - 3 - 30 August 1996

Another correspondent said that India had been accused of going back on its word after voting in favour of the Assembly's 12 December 1995 resolution (resolution 50/65), which supported the endorsement of a comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty before the end of the fiftieth session. Mr. Shah stated that India had not only backed the resolution, but in 1954 had been the first country to propose a nuclear test ban. India was prepared even today to negotiate a test-ban treaty that took into account India's aforementioned stipulations -- such as, that such a treaty should be linked to the elimination of nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework.

When asked about Australian Ambassador Richard Butler's statement that India had torn up the rules of the Conference on Disarmament in order to block the passage of the test-ban treaty, Mr. Shah said, "I'm afraid that the Australian Ambassador perhaps forgot to present the factual position". The Conference worked on consensus. Its report had been approved and would come to the fifty-first session of the General Assembly. That report made it amply clear that there had been no consensus on the text. In that way, the Conference had followed its rules of procedure. So if anyone had torn up the rules, it was those who were now circumventing the principle of consensus in the Conference. By bringing it to the General Assembly through a procedural manoeuvre, they might be setting a bad precedent.

As for any erosion of the credibility of the Conference, he said to remember that the credibility of the Conference had already been affected adversely by the refusal of the nuclear-weapons Powers to even agree to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework. Even the establishment of the ad hoc committee was vetoed by one or two countries because they did not want to discuss a treaty banning nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework. It is to the credit of the members of the Conference in Geneva, that despite a whole-hearted majority there for establishing such an ad hoc committee, they had not subverted the rules of the Conference to come to New York in order to present or negotiate a treaty on nuclear weapons.

Asked if he thought a simple majority would suffice for the approval of the Australian draft resolution, Ambassador Shah said that under Article 18 of the Charter, General Assembly decisions affecting international peace and security required a two-thirds majority. If Australia and the draft resolution sponsors thought that the treaty was such an important issue and affected international peace and security, then Article 18 should apply.

When asked if he was going to try to get support for India's position among other Member States, he said that India already had considerable support for the principle it was enunciating. Was there any possibility that the proposed General Assembly meeting might not be held, a correspondent asked. Mr. Shah replied that India had made it very clear that the Assembly could resume consideration of any agenda item in accordance with the rules of procedure. However, resolution 50/65, which was referred to in Ambassador Butler's letter to Assembly President do Amaral, made it very clear that the session could only be resumed for endorsing the treaty which came from the

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Conference. Therefore, in India's view, the session could not be resumed solely for the purpose of endorsing a comprehensive test-ban treaty since no such treaty had been approved by the Conference for transmission to the General Assembly. But, as he had indicated, if a session were to be held, India would participate in it.

A correspondent said that given that India itself was a nuclear Power and had the largest nuclear programme in south Asia, what were the practical reasons for not signing the treaty? Ambassador Shah said: "The world recognizes five nuclear-weapon Powers, and I think we should precede on that basis since that is the basis of all treaty-making on nuclear disarmament. So there are only five accepted nuclear-weapon Powers in all international treaties."

A correspondent said that Mr. Butler had suggested that there was a lot of disappointment with India's actions because they were a rejection of that country's former universal approach to disarmament in favour of a nationalist one. Mr. Shah said, "We are taking a universal view. We are perhaps the only country that is taking a long-term view". As 113 countries had said in the Cartagena Declaration: the ultimate goal is the elimination of nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework, and the test-ban treaty should be negotiated in that context.

Asked if India was going to present amendments to the Australian draft resolution, he said he would have to wait and see.

To a query as to whether India could get one third of the Member States to vote against the draft resolution, he answered that his country's goal was to make its position clear and leave it to each individual country to proceed as it wished in the Assembly.

When asked if it was unrealistic to expect the nuclear-weapons States to give up their weapons, he said no. Regarding weapons of mass destruction, the world had a treaty banning biological weapons and had concluded a treaty for the elimination of chemical weapons within a time-bound framework. "The only weapons of mass destruction for which we do not have an international treaty are nuclear weapons. And not only can it be done, it should be done."

A correspondent said that Ambassador Butler had said that the proposed treaty should be viewed as just a first step, and he wondered if such a perspective might not affect India's position. "There is nothing in the draft that Australia is presenting which links it to such nuclear disarmament. And when there is no such linkage it is difficult to believe that there could be any first step." All India had asked for in Geneva was that in the preamble all the parties commit themselves to working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework. A date was not specified. If such a commitment had been made in the treaty, then it could have been viewed as a first step.

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