Setback for nuclear-free world

India's rejection of the nuclear test ban treaty this month is a setback for a cause which the South Asian nation itself ardently campaigned for over the last four decades. In its rejection, New Delhi has not only pushed back the global post- Cold War momentum favoring nuclear restraint, but has compromised its own regional security.

On the one hand, India says it is for a nuclear weapons-free world. On the other, it has scuttled the only nuclear restraint measure to have been put on the global negotiating agenda in a quarter century.

India, Libya and Bhutan were the only opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the Sept. 8 vote in the UN General Assembly. The test ban resolution was backed by 158 of the 185 UN member states, with five abstentions.

However, the CTBT, which was debated at the UN Disarmament Conference for more than two-and-a-half years, cannot come into force until all the 44 states, including India, ratify it.

India's opposition to the CTBT would make sense if it was to propose a serious alternative. But it has not done so.

At the same time, New Delhi is under pressure to expand, deepen and even exercise the nuclear weapons option which it has possessed since May 1974, when it carried out an atomic test explosion.

India's argument that the CTBT will not achieve its aim unless it also bans nonexplosive tests is challenged by most Western nuclear experts who agree that a ban on test explosions is enough to stop nuclear weapons development.

Nonexplosive tests yield some useful information to weapon designers, but not enough to develop new weapons or substantially improve existing ones.

From the looks of it, the CTBT is unlikely to become international law if India keeps scuttling things. And this will be a serious setback for global peace and security.

-- The Nation, Bangkok