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US to continue with moratorium on nuclear tests

The White House has said that the United States would retain its moratorium on nuclear weapons testing and continue to abide by the terms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty rejected by the Senate.

''We intend to abide by the terms of this,'' White House National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said in a telephone interview following the Senate's vote yesterday to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Sandy Berger denounced the rejection as a 'rush to misjudgement' in which the administration was given too little time to argue its case for the treaty. But Berger said the rejection was not final and the treaty was not dead.

Americans were not interested in resuming nuclear testing, Berger said. The United States halted nuclear testing in 1992.

Berger said that under terms of the Vienna Convention governing treaties, a country that signs a treaty is obligated not to violate it unless the president renounces it, and Clinton has no intention of renouncing it.

However, he said, the US by rejecting the treaty loses the opportunity to benefit from the monitoring and inspection systems that would be implemented when the treaty takes effect.

Meanwhile, President Bill Clinton has said that ''the fight is far from over'' and vowed the US would eventually ratify a treaty banning nuclear weapons testing despite the Senate's rejection of the pact.

The president, speaking at the White House lawn, said yesterday that the US would continue to adhere to its moratorium on nuclear testing and urged other countries that have also halted testing to follow suit.

''For now the Senate has said no, but I am sending a different message. We want to limit the nuclear threat. We want to bring the test ban treaty into force,'' Clinton said.

''I assure you the fight is far from over ... When all is said and done the United States will ratify the treaty,'' he said.

He termed the CTBT's rejection by the Republican-controlled Senate a 'reckless' and 'partisan' act, which followed failed negotiations to delay the vote.

''I wish we could have had a responsible alternative. I worked until the eleventh hour to achieve it. This was a political deal and I hope it will get the treatment from the American people it richly deserves,'' he said.

UNI

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